The Learning Styles Myth: Why VARK Doesn't Work

The learning styles myth is the belief that people learn better when information is presented in their preferred style, such as visual, auditory, reading/writing, or kinesthetic (the VARK model). People really do have preferences. But when researchers test whether matching teaching to those preferences improves learning, they find no benefit.

The key review came in 2008, when psychologists Harold Pashler, Mark McDaniel, Doug Rohrer, and Robert Bjork looked for experiments capable of testing the idea. They found virtually no evidence for it. Experiments since then point the same way. Yet a 2020 review of teacher surveys found that about nine in ten educators still believe in it.

This guide explains what learning styles theory claims, what the research found, why the myth is so sticky, and what to do instead, whether you're a student who was told you're a "visual learner" or a teacher deciding what to do with a VARK questionnaire.

What are learning styles?

Learning styles theories say that people differ in how they learn best and that teaching should be tailored to each person's style. There are many competing models. The best known among students and schools:

• VAK and VARK: VAK sorts people into visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners; VARK adds reading/writing. VARK was developed by Neil Fleming and Colleen Mills in the early 1990s and is usually measured with a short questionnaire about what you prefer.
• Kolb's learning styles: based on a cycle of experience, reflection, thinking, and experimenting.
• Honey and Mumford: activist, reflector, theorist, pragmatist.

The specific claim being tested is what Pashler and colleagues called the meshing hypothesis: instruction works best when it matches the learner's preferred style. A visual learner should get diagrams; an auditory learner should get spoken explanations. This is the part that schools act on, and it's the part that fails.

What does the research show?

The test that learning styles have to pass

Pashler's team set out what a convincing study would look like:

1. Classify students by learning style.
2. Randomly assign students from each style to different teaching methods.
3. Give everyone the same final test.
4. Show a crossover: visual learners do best with visual teaching, and auditory learners do best with auditory teaching.

Without that crossover, there's no case for tailoring. If everyone does better with diagrams, the answer is to use diagrams for everyone.

Their 2008 review found that very few studies had used this design at all. Of those that did, several flatly contradicted the meshing hypothesis. They concluded there was no adequate evidence base for using learning-styles assessments in education.

What happened when researchers ran the test

That last result helps explain the myth. Studying in your preferred format feels better. It just doesn't show up in the test.

What's true in the idea?

The myth survives partly because it's built on things that are true:

• People have preferences. Pashler's review found ample evidence that people will state how they like to receive information.
• People differ in abilities. Some people have stronger spatial reasoning or better verbal memory than others. That's a difference in ability, not a learning style, and it doesn't mean they need content delivered in one channel.
• Some content has a natural format. Geography needs maps. Pronunciation needs audio. Surgery needs hands. That's true for every learner, so it's a property of the material.
• Prior knowledge really does change what helps. A beginner may need worked examples that slow down an expert. That's well supported, and it's a better basis for tailoring than style. See cognitive load theory for the expertise reversal effect.

How many teachers believe in learning styles?

Most of them. In both large surveys below, learning styles was the most widely endorsed "neuromyth": a false belief about the brain and learning.

Other surveys find the same:

• Dekker et al. (2012): among 242 UK and Dutch teachers who were interested in neuroscience, 93% of UK and 96% of Dutch teachers agreed that people learn better in their preferred learning style. Teachers who knew more about the brain in general were more likely to believe neuromyths, not less.
• Newton and Salvi (2020): a review of 37 samples covering 15,405 educators in 18 countries found a weighted 89.1% believed in matching instruction to learning styles. There was no sign of the belief declining in recent years, and 95.4% of trainee teachers endorsed it.

Training helps a little. In Macdonald's survey, educators endorsed fewer neuromyths overall than the public, and people with high neuroscience exposure fewer still. But most of every group still endorsed learning styles.

Why does the learning styles myth persist?

• It matches experience. You do prefer some formats, and studying that way feels easier. As the Knoll study showed, that feeling doesn't track what you remember.
• It sounds like brain science. Different senses are processed in different brain areas. That's true, but those areas are heavily interconnected, and it doesn't follow that people learn best through one channel.
• People like types. Being labeled a "visual learner" is like a personality quiz result: it feels personal and explains things.
• It's sold. Pashler's review noted a thriving industry of learning-styles tests, guidebooks, and teacher workshops.
• It's everywhere in schools. In Dekker's survey, 98% of the UK teachers had come across learning-styles approaches in their own school.

Does believing in learning styles cause harm?

The research doesn't show dramatic harm, but there are real costs:

• Wasted time. Testing students for styles and preparing parallel materials takes time away from methods that work. Rogowsky's team concluded that teachers who do this may be doing students a disservice.
• Limiting beliefs. Students who decide "I'm not a reading person" may avoid reading, which they'll still need on every exam.
• Picking methods by comfort. A self-described auditory learner who relistens to recorded lectures is doing passive review. In Dunlosky and colleagues' 2013 review of study techniques, rereading was rated low utility, far behind self-testing. More on why in active recall vs passive reading.

What to do instead of learning styles

Choose the format based on the material and the exam, not on a label. Then use the strategies that work for everyone. Find your row below and try the right-hand column in your next study session.

The strategies behind that right-hand column:

• Active recall. Test yourself instead of rereading. It works across subjects and ages. Start with what active recall is.
• Spacing. Review the same material over several days rather than in one block. The spaced repetition guide explains the schedule.
• Dual coding. Combine words with visuals, such as a labeled diagram plus a written explanation. The idea is that words and a picture give you two routes back to the same idea, and that doesn't depend on calling yourself a visual learner. The dual coding guide covers the evidence and its limits.
• Concrete examples and mixed practice. Tie abstract ideas to specific cases, and mix problem types once you know the basics, as in interleaving.

For teachers

If your school uses learning styles, a few swaps keep what's useful and drop what isn't:

• Use multiple representations for everyone when the content benefits: a diagram and an explanation together, not separate versions by style.
• Tailor by prior knowledge, not style. Give beginners worked examples and more structure; give advanced students harder problems just beyond their current level.
• When a student says "I'm a visual learner," agree that diagrams can help, then ask them to draw the diagram from memory. That keeps the preference and adds retrieval.