1. If learning styles are nonsense, why are we using them?
Kerill Kennedy
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There will be a list of references at the end of this file
Please save questions until the end

2. A little about me

3. A little about me

4. A little about me

5. A little about me

6. What learning style models are there?
Matching/meshing hypothesis: People learn best when the style of teaching/content is adapted to their individual learning style
KOLB
Honey & Mumford
VARK
Dunn & Dunn
Many many others

7. They can be quite pretty!
Kolb (original & later)
VARK

8. Who believes in learning styles?
EFL:
Primary & Secondary teachers in the UK: 93%
Higher education in the UK: 58%
Dekker et al,2012
Belief vs Use in UK HE: 53% to 33%
Newton & Mahallad,2017
HE Faculty and Students USA: 64%, 88%
Dandy & Bandersky, 2014

9. What are some common criticisms of learning styles?TP

10. Relevance, Culture & Scales issues
Scale validity and reliability
Relevance & Culture:
‘I often wear a sweater or jacket indoors’.

11. Cui bono fuisset?
Cicero 80BC

12. Logical issues with learning styles
Teach geometry aurally?
Teach pronunciation and speaking visually?
Opposing suggestions on what learners should do
Tick box exercise
12 sided shape with a dihedral angle of degree

13. The Matching/Meshing Hypothesis redux
“The contrast between the enormous popularity
of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing.”
Pashler et al, 2009
Flawed methodologies
Lack of evidence for matching hypothesis

14. The dangers of learning styles
Wasting student time testing them
Possibly worse learning by adhering to non-scientific ideas
Wasted money
Waste of teacher time in preparation and lesson prep

15. Common responses to criticisms
Learners believe
Why trust academics?
Untrained researchers

16. Babies and Bathwater

17. Babies and Bathwater
Is the only reason to teach things with different methods
due to learning styles?
Provide benefit to other cognitive skills
Klein, 2003
More fun (motivation)
Energy levels

18. Memory & Money- Test 1
For those not very familiar with UK money:
on all coins in the UK there is The Queen’s head.
Does she look to the left or the right?
For those familiar with UK money:
What is written around the other side?
What is under the Queen’s neck?

19. The Speaker- Test 2
At the start of the presentations I told you some things about
me, what do you remember?

20. Memory- Encoding & Interference

21. Old friends
Primacy/Recency effect
Emotion and stress
Orthography vs. Phonology

22. Other effects on learning & retention
Testing effect Yang et. Al, 2018
Revision effect/Repeated Retrieval
“Repeated retrieval of information is the key to long-term retention.”
Karpicke & Roediger, 2006 Coursebook design.
Deeper processing & self reference Craik & Tulving, 1975
Learner Centred Paradigm McManus 2001

23. Summary & Conclusions
The evidence suggests that teaching tailored to learning
styles does not actually work at all.
There are still benefits in terms of motivation, energy levels and encoding in varying the tasks and methods of teaching
There are many other areas of psychology that can be explored for ways to promote learning.

24. Questions?

25. Selected References
Coffield, F., Moseley, D., Hall, E. and Ecclestone, K. (2004). Is there a role for learning styles in personalised education and training?: International Journal of Lifelong Education: Vol 24, No 3. 
Craik, F.I.M. & Tulving, E. (1975). Depth of processing and retention of words in episodic memory.  Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 104,
Dandy K., Bendersky K. (2014). Student and faculty beliefs about learning in higher education: implications for teaching. Int. J. Teach. Learn. High. Educ. 26 358–380.
Dekker S., Lee N. C., Howard-Jones P., Jolles J  ‘Neuromyths in education: prevalence and predictors of misconceptions among teachers’. Frontiers in psychology. 3: /fpsyg  
Grainger, J., & Holcomb, P. (2010). Neural constraints on the functional architecture for word recognition.In Neural Basis of reading. In P. L. Cornelissen, P. C. Hansen, L. M. Kringelbach, & A. K. Pugh (Eds.), The neural basis of reading (pp. 147K172). New York: Oxford University Press.
Massa, L. and Mayer, R ‘Testing the ATI hypothesis: Should multimedia instruction accommodate verbalizer-visualizer cognitive style?’. Learning and Individual Differences 16:
MCMANUS, D.A. (2001) The two paradigms of education and the peer review of teaching, Journal of Geoscience Education, 49(5), pp. 423–434.
Newton, P.M and Mahallad,M ‘Evidence-Based Higher Education - Is the Learning Styles 'Myth' Important?’ Frontiers in psychology. 8:444. doi: /fpsyg
Newton, Philip M. “The Learning Styles Myth is Thriving in Higher Education”Frontiers in psychology vol Dec. 2015, doi: /fpsyg
Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D., & Bjork, R. (2008). Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 9(3), 105–119. 
Perry D. Klein (2003) Rethinking the multiplicity of cognitive resources and curricular representations: Alternatives to 'learning styles' and 'multiple intelligences', Journal of Curriculum Studies, 35:1, 45-81, DOI:  /
Roediger, H.L. & Karpicke, J.D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long- term retention. Psychological Science, 17,

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