Learn­ing styles, you’ve heard of them before: visual, kinaes­thetic or audi­tory learn­ers; left and right brain­ers; activists, reflec­tors and ana­lysts.

How­ever learn­ing styles are “the­o­ret­i­cally inco­her­ent and con­cep­tu­ally con­fused” con­cluded a 2004 study from the UK’s Learn­ing and Skills Devel­op­ment Agency—an agency set up by the UK gov­ern­ment to “improve the qual­ity of post-16 edu­ca­tion and train­ing”, saying:

We should stop using these terms. There’s no sci­en­tific jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for them.

The stud­ies were never pub­lished because of incon­sis­ten­cies between the sci­en­tific evi­dence and gov­ern­ment pol­icy (ahem), but the arti­cle above dis­cusses it and offers the fol­low­ing, excel­lent conclusion:

We do stu­dents a seri­ous dis­ser­vice by imply­ing they have only one learn­ing style, rather than a flex­i­ble reper­toire from which to choose, depend­ing on the con­text. Learning-style instru­ments vary markedly in qual­ity and some (eg Allinson and Hayes’s CSI or Entwistle’s Assist) could be used to start a dia­logue with stu­dents about their learn­ing, assess­ment and the pur­poses of education.

How­ever I want to chal­lenge the notion that we dis­cover some­thing worth­while about our stu­dents’ learn­ing by ask­ing 12, 20 or even 80 ques­tions, all devoid of con­text. Instead we need to face up to the com­plex­i­ties involved in teach­ing and learn­ing, which can­not be “deliv­ered” like piz­zas. Stu­dents need knowl­edge­able, voca­tion­ally qual­i­fied and car­ing teach­ers, who can enter into a dia­logue with them about how to become bet­ter learn­ers, as well as what it means to be a painter or nurs­ery nurse.

via @bfchirpy