Education Bookcast

Learning styles are one of the most widely believed psychological ideas known by scientists to be invalid. Over 90% of university students in the USA believe in them, and most adults will gladly share whether they consider themselves to be visual, auditory, or kinaesthetic learners (VAK theory is the leading learning styles theory). In this episode, we look at six publications showing the problems with learning styles theories. The problems fall into three layers: The questionnaires for many learning styles theories (i.e. the way in which the learning style of a given person is determined) have problems of validity, meaning that they don't measure anything, or they don't measure what they claim to measure. For example, if everyone answers that they would rather learn a dance by dancing it rather than by watching it or listening to an explanation, then that probably says more about what a good way to teach dancing is, rather than what learning style the individuals have. The questionnaires also suffer from pr