2010/01/07 · 1 citation
Psychology · #Learning Styles and Cognitive Differences #Style (visual arts) #Psychology #Computer science #History #Archaeology
paper · doi:10.1126/science.327.5962.129-b
openalex publication_date 2010/01/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/27
Are you a visual learner? Verbal? Auditory? Kinesthetic? Creative? Practical? Analytical? Divergent? Assimilative? Accommodating? There's a huge industry out there on “learning styles.” It's based on the theory that people learn best when taught in a manner compatible with their style. But now a team of psychologists argues that the literature offers no evidence that such “matching” improves learning. The authors, headed by Harold Pashler of the University of California, San Diego, set a rigorous standard: For any experiment to be valid, it must randomly assign students to two different teaching conditions on a particular subject, then give them all the same test. The theory is supported if students who prefer teaching style “A” do better than students who prefer style “B” when style “A” is used—and that the reverse is true with teaching style “B.” Pashler's team reports that very few studies used this design and concludes that if a teaching technique is good, it's better for everyone regardless of learning style. The lack of hard evidence suggests that “people out there are selling tests and packages and workshops without having any remote idea whether the methods they promote provide any real educational benefits,” says Pashler. The report appeared in the December issue of Psychological Science in the Public Interest . Psychologist Robert Sternberg of Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, says the paper “does not even begin to be a serious review of the field. … [In] limiting themselves to random-assignment studies, they ignored almost the entire literature.” Just so, says Pashler—most of it is “weak.”