Learning Styles Don't Exist

In conversations about teaching and learning, how often do you hear phrases like. . . "Everyone learns differently," "Everyone has a unique learning style," "Teachers should try to teach to different learning styles." The belief that people have unique learning styles is widely accepted. It just seems like common sense. But . .

Daniel Willingham, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia, contends that there is little evidence that learning styles exist, and little evidence for the claims made about the educational importance of learning styles. Watch his video, Learning Styles Don't Exist. 

Professor Willingham clarifies what he means by good instruction in this short follow up video

Readers interested in the research on which Willingham has based his claim that learning styles do not exist can refer to http://www.danielwillingham.com/blog--learningstyles  

Comments

[Keith]

Interesting critique of learning styles, but now we need to define what we mean by teaching or learning "meanings" apart from visual/auditory signals, apart from language, etc.