As far as style of learning is concerned we no longer think that ‘one size fits all’. One of the reasons that we think about learning differently is the immense amount of research and theories concerning the different ways people think and learn. Research into cognition (how we perceive, how we learn, how we think) came to prominence
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in the 1950s when the thinking was that research into styles could form a bridge with the study of personality (Robert Sternberg 1997: 134). More recently, a systematic review of learning styles and pedagogy in post-16 learning – known as the Coffield Review – identified 71 models of learning styles, and categorized 13 of those as major models (Frank Coffield et al. 2004). David Hargreaves (2005: 11) has described the main applications of learning styles models in use in schools and colleges:
There are very many different schemes for determining learning styles, using dif-ferent names and based on difdif-ferent questions, though a relatively small number of these schemes accounts for the majority of applications in UK schools/colleges. So a new language of learning styles can commonly be found in schools – or more accurately a range of different languages:
* Activists, theorist, pragmatists, reflectors
* Divergers, convergers, assimilators, accommodaters
* Verbalizers, imagers, analytics, wholists
* Analysts, changers, realists
* Visual, auditory, kinaesthetic.
The Coffield Review has been only one source of criticism of concepts and models of learning styles. Concerns have been expressed that there is no overall model that integrates all the theories, and that the concepts appear to be unsup-ported by evidence from neuroscience to link the theories to activity in the brain. But neuroscience is a fairly young discipline, and those working in the area have them-selves admitted that ‘functional resonance imaging’ has so far only been concerned with the learning of simple tasks, and therefore the relationship between the ele-ments of learning styles and any brain activation is still hypothetical.3
But as my friend Ann commented, ‘We didn’t have to wait for pictures from space to know that the earth was round, did we?’ and indeed, in this respect, perhaps it is that neuroscience has yet to catch up with psychology. But nevertheless, it’s also important to have a critical understanding of the claims of learning style theory, so that we can deflect criticisms that, as educators, we too readily pick up and use the latest user-friendly assessment tool that comes our way.
The first aspect to clarify is the crucial distinction between style and ability. As Robert Sternberg (1997: 12) points out, an ability refers to how well someone can do something, whereas a style refers to how someone uses that ability, how they like to do something. People may be practically identical in their abilities and yet have very different styles.
A second aspect is that styles are not good or bad, they’re just different. But there is no doubt that some styles fit in our system of schooling more than others. It’s a rather large generalization, but since teachers are likely to have been successful
learners within the school system, they are more likely to teach in a style that has served them successfully. When a learner’s style matches that of a teacher then, unsurprisingly, students are likely to describe the experience as ‘effective teaching’
(Entwistle and Tait 1990). Conversely, a mismatch between a teaching style and the learning style of a student can be a big turn off for the student. So in any engagement with young people, it’s helpful to be able to recognize whether issues of non-achievement relate to learning style rather than lack of ability on behalf of the student. And as you’ll see as you read further, successful engagement with young people involves raising your own self-awareness: we all need to be able to recognize and understand our own preferred learning and thinking styles, and develop the flexibility to adjust our approaches to accommodate the various styles of young people.
A third aspect we need to guard against is that psychological theories tend to like to put people into boxes. You will see later on that I have suggested ways to use what is perhaps the most popular of the learning styles categorizations – visual, auditory, kinaesthetic. But in practice it is still a constant battle to stop people referring to them as though they were fixed and permanent categories. They are preferences, I insist. We all use a range of styles, it’s just that we may have got into the habit of favouring one over the others. But if we slip into the habit of telling young people that they are ‘A visual learner’ or ‘A kinaesthetic learner’, then we are doing no more than reverting to the more or less discredited way we used to think about intelligence – as something that is fixed and immutable. Rather, we need to be encouraging young people to develop their capacity for flexibility in thinking – as in behaviour:
Realistically [ ... ] people cannot be as easily pigeonholed as psychologists would often seem to like them to be. Most people, at least, are more flexible than psy-chological theories give them credit for.
Robert Sternberg 1997:145
A final point leads on from this tendency to label people. David Hargreaves (2005: 11–12) has pointed out that young people can internalize a label and think of themselves as a certain type of learner who should concentrate on a diagnosed style.
In Hargreaves’ view, this is poor professional practice that can damage a student’s learning and development. A good education does not limit young people to a par-ticular style or type, but gives them opportunities to strengthen other learning styles and so broaden their intellectual development.
Despite the criticisms, the reason that interest in learning styles remains strong is probably that, intuitively, we sense that styles exist, and that they can account for differences in performance that abilities do not account for:
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Styles matter. Moreover, they are often confused with abilities, so that students or others are thought to be incompetent not because they are lacking in abilities, but because their styles of thinking do not match those of the people doing the assessment. Especially in teaching, we need to take into account students’ styles of thinking if we hope to reach them.
Robert Sternberg 1997:158
And even though a model we favour might have dubious ‘scientific’ credentials, if nothing else, there is a value in thinking of descriptions of learning styles as meta-phors. The usefulness of a metaphor lies in providing us with a framework and a form of language to help young people understand how they think and learn. It can be immensely empowering for young people to discover that their inability to learn may be because they have become ‘stuck’ in a particular mode of thinking and learning, that actually it’s a preferred style rather than a fixed part of their personality, and that they have the capacity for far more flexibility in order to achieve their potential.