Investigating the Intuitive Appeal of Learning Styles

• In Event: Ways of Knowing, Ways of Being

Abstract

Large numbers of students, teachers, administrators, and researchers in education continue to believe that individuals have particular ‘learning styles’, and that learning will be more effective if educators try to match their teaching approaches to these learning styles, despite the lack of evidence backing these claims. Scholars have called for more research on why learning styles are so intuitively appealing. I suggest four moral intuitions or sensibilities that underlie their appeal: (1) an attachment to rational control, (2) our sense of justice, (3) Romantic-style individualism, and (4) reverence for the natural. Speaking to these intuitions could reinforce appeals to evidence in efforts to debunk the myth of learning styles.

Author

• Ilya Zrudlo, Queen's University - Kingston