Are you a visual learner? What research says about learning styles
"I'm a visual learner." It's one of the most popular ideas in education: everyone has a learning style – visual, auditory, reading/writing or hands-on – and you learn best when lessons match it. It sounds sensible. But when researchers looked for evidence, they found very little.
What the review found
In 2008, psychologists Harold Pashler, Mark McDaniel, Doug Rohrer and Robert Bjork reviewed the research on learning styles. They focused on one specific claim: that teaching people in their preferred style makes them learn better.
To test that properly, you'd need an experiment in which, say, "visual learners" do better with a visual lesson and "auditory learners" do better with an audio lesson. The reviewers found almost no studies designed that way – and the few that were did not support the idea. Their conclusion: there was no adequate evidence base to justify using learning-styles assessments in education.
People do have preferences
None of this means everyone is the same. People differ in what they enjoy, what they already know and how fast they pick things up. But a preference for pictures isn't the same as learning better from pictures.
What usually matters more is the content. Maps are best for geography, diagrams for how the heart works, listening for pronunciation, and practice for riding a bike – whatever your "style".
What works for everyone
Instead of matching lessons to a style, use techniques that help almost every learner:
- Practice testing – answering questions instead of re-reading. Why it works.
- Spacing – a little every day instead of cramming.
- Mixing – shuffling different types of problem together. Here's how.
- Feedback – finding out right away why an answer is right or wrong.
- Words and pictures together – a clear diagram next to a short explanation helps most people.
For teachers
Dropping learning styles frees up time. Instead of preparing four versions of a lesson, you can spend it on frequent low-stakes quizzes and good feedback – two things with strong evidence behind them. More on quizzes in class.
The review
- Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D., & Bjork, R. (2008). Learning styles: Concepts and evidence. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 9(3).