Learning Styles: Academic Fact or Urban Myth? A Recent Review of the Literature

While advocates of learning styles have suggested postsecondary educators and learning support programs match instruction to students’ learning styles to enhance learning, past decades of research criticize educator’s co-option of and disprove researchers’ efforts to prove learning styles’ existence and worth as a valid construct. The author examines numerous research articles that have challenged the efficacy of learning styles based on empirically provable evidence. The author also cites how the learning styles paradigm continues to be used in the field of postsecondary learning assistance. The author concludes that instead of promoting learning styles, educators should instruct learners on the intentional use of learning strategies.