FAQ - What is a ‘learning style’? What implications does it have for my teaching?

Answer

What is a learning style? Is it akin to a clothing style, i.e. something we each have a preference for, but which may change radically over our lives and which we can choose to alter?  Or is it an attribute with which we are born and have great difficulty in changing?  This is very difficult to say definitively, because studies have not followed people from their early learning experiences through to adulthood, measuring their styles along the way.  However, what evidence exists suggests that good learners are ones who are reasonably flexible in their style, and that styles can indeed change in response to the learning situation.

Given that, what are some hypothesised learning styles, how do you measure them, and what do you do with the results?  Some of the commonly known Learning Styles Measures include: Kolb Learning Styles Inventory, Myers-Briggs Type Inventory (MBTI), Honey-Mumford Learning Styles, Visualiser-Verbaliser (Paivio), Holist-Serialist (Pask) or Wholist-Analyst or Field-Dependent/Field Independent. This FAQ will briefly present each of these including some links to the inventories, where they exist.

Visual-Verbal and Wholist-Analyst scales have been researched by Richard Riding, who suggests that these are independent dimensions, the first indicating representation and the second indicating process.

Example Learning Styles Inventories

Kolb’s learning cycle is well-known in education.  This cycle, if you look at the four stages, yields a model of learning styles that reflect preferences for one or more of the stages (Felder, 1996).  This model classifies students on two dimensions: 1) concrete to abstract, and 2) active to reflective.

This results in four types of learners:

• Type 1 (concrete, reflective).  A characteristic question of this learning type is "Why?" Type 1 learners respond well to explanations of how course material relates to their experience, their interests, and their future careers.  To be effective with Type 1 students, the instructor should function as a motivator.
• Type 2 (abstract, reflective).  A characteristic question of this learning type is "What?" Type 2 learners respond to information presented in an organized, logical fashion and benefit if they have time for reflection.  To be effective, the instructor should function as an expert.
• Type 3 (abstract, active).  A characteristic question of this learning type is "How?" Type 3 learners respond to having opportunities to work actively on well-defined tasks and to learn by trial-and-error in an environment that allows them to fail safely.  To be effective, the instructor should function as a coach, providing guided practice and feedback.
• Type 4 (concrete, active).  A characteristic question of this learning type is "What if?” Type 4 learners like applying course material in new situations to solve real problems.  To be effective, the instructor should stay out of the way, maximizing opportunities for the students to discover things for themselves.

Honey & Mumford identify four learning styles which are based on Kolb’s learning cycle: activists; reflectors; theorists; and pragmatists.  Activists have an open-minded approach to learning, involving themselves fully and without bias in new experiences.  They learn best in groups, using brainstorming. Reflectors prefer to stand back and view experiences from a number of different perspectives, collecting data and taking the time to work towards an appropriate conclusion.  They learn best working alone and with data.  Theorists prefer to analyse and synthesise, drawing new information into a systematic and logical 'theory', and learn best when evaluating ideas and theories.  Pragmatists are experimenters, trying out new ideas and techniques to see if they work in practice.  They learn best by solving problems and implementing solutions.  Your Staff Development Unit may have this inventory or you can buy this test for institutional use or try it individually for a small fee at: Honey-Mumford Learning Styles Questionnaire

Pask defines a learning style as a 'predisposition' to adopt a particular learning strategy.  He identifies two such learning styles - holist and serialist.  The holist style is one where the learner prefers to form a global view of what is to be learned and to make relations between aspects of it; the learner with a serialist style prefers to take a step-by-step, incremental approach.  This seems very similar to the field dependent/field independent distinction of Witkin (1962).  Field dependent people tend to organise information into interrelated 'wholes' while field independent people organise information into distinct concepts or components.  This dimension is sometimes measured by the Embedded Figures test.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is based on Jungian theory of psychological types and was designed with the belief that different vocations were suited to different personalities (Myers and McCaulley, 1985).  It is now used by numerous companies to make decisions about the suitability of employees for certain jobs.  There are four components to the score: extrovert-introvert, sensing-intuitive, thinking-feeling, and judgement-perception.  This yields 16 supposedly mutually exclusive types.  While these were designed as personality measures, others have suggested that these also indicate learning styles or preferences.

What do you do with the results?

The answer to this question is also still up for grabs. Some people believe that you should attempt to match the teaching style to the learner type.  There are been numerous studies on this topic using several of the learning styles measures.  Looking at the MBTI, a meta-review by Pittenger (1993) found that there was no significant benefit in learning outcomes for matching student and teacher styles and no disadvantage for mismatching.  There is ample evidence that, whatever a student’s style, when the goal of instruction is consistent with the strategies used to teach it, learning is optimal (Merrill, 1994).

However, studies in which visual-verbal measures were taken and students were taught logic either in accordance with their preference or against it, results indicated that ‘verbal’ students who were taught using visual methods actually got worse on an analytical reasoning test whereas ‘visualisers’ didn’t show any change with either teaching method.  It is important to note that all the students improved their logic test scores by the end of the course, i.e. they all learned the course content at least to some extent.  It turned out that the so-called visualisers actually seem to have a better developed ability to use all representations, and more importantly, to switch to a new representation when the current one isn’t working, including using non-graphical methods with facility.  The ‘verbalisers’ seem to stick to one representation, even when it is not proving fruitful.  The question is then: is this verbal-visual measure actually measuring performance with representations at some level, a skill that we know can be taught and improved, rather than a ‘style’ preference?  Is it a matter of a lack of exposure to different representations, an innate ability, or is it highly correlated to IQ (as many of these scales are)?

This raises the crucial question: Should we be attempting to teach for or against preference to develop students’ knowledge and abilities, i.e. do we assume they learn best when taught to their preference, or do we assume that exposing students to other styles will prompt more robust and flexible learning?  The answer to that is still out there waiting to be found.  In the meantime, it is probably worthwhile to consider building in a variety of teaching methods and representations.

It is also important to keep in mind the difference between learning styles and learning skills.  Many students don’t have the skills of good note taking, critical questioning, deep reading, identifying knowledge gaps.  These may be reflected in some learning styles inventories as perhaps being non-verbal or as being ‘action oriented’ rather than ‘reflective’ while they are just as likely to be a lack of skill to be addressed rather than catered to.

Nevertheless, it can be very useful for students and lecturers to take one of these inventories and then discuss the results.  Many people have never considered that there may be differing approaches nor have thought about their own way of learning.  It is this awareness-raising that may be the most important use for these learning style measures.

References

Felder, R. M. (1996). Matters of style, ASEE Prism, 6(4), pp. 18-23. Available here.

Honey, P. and Mumford, A. (1992). The Manual of Learning Styles. Available from Peter Honey, Ardingly House, 10 Linden Avenue, Maidenhead, Berks., SL6 6HB

Kolb, D.A. (1981) The Learning Style Inventory. Boston, MA: McBer.

Merrill, M.D. (1994). Research support for Component Display Theory. In M.D. Merrill, Instructional Design Theory, Educational Technology Publications.

Paivio, A. (1971) Imagery and Verbal Processes. New York: Holt Rinehart & Winston.

Pask, G. (1988) Learning Strategies, Teaching Strategies and Conceptual or Learning Style , in R. Schmeck (ed) (1988) Perspectives on Individual Differences, Learning Strategies and Learning Styles, New York & London: Plenum Press, pp. 83-100.

Pittenger, D.J. (1993). The utility of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Review of Educational Research, Vol. 63, No. 4, pp. 467-488.

Riding, R.J. (1991) Cognitive Styles Analysis. Birmingham: Learning & Training Technology.

Stenning, K., Cox, R. and Oberlander, J. (1995). Contrasting the cognitive effects of graphical and sentential logic teaching: reasoning, representation and individual differences. Language and Cognitive Processes, 10, 333-354.

Witkin, H.A. (1962) Psychological Differentiation: Studies in Development. New York: Wiley.

Disclaimer: This FAQ was written by Dr Jean McKendree and does not reflect an official endorsement by the HEA or any other organisation.  Any questions or queries should be sent to: enquiries@medev.ac.uk

Last updated: 01 July 2011