The Biggest Myth In Education

this is some real interesting shit

I'm not making any sweeping generalizations based on the evidence but

experimentation has shown very little conclusive evidence

that things like "visual learners" and "auditory learners"

exist, as a distinction

and that it turns out that regardless of what students seem to prefer, they learn about equally well from all kinds of education

So probably the biggest reason the learning styles myth persists is that even though it's wrong, it accidentally leads to solid pedagogy.

it turns out what works really well

Like, it's not true that everyone has one way of learning that applies across different domains

is using a combination of multiple modes

that's just true for everyone

but it is true that different approaches will work better for some people when teaching certain topics than other people

Unless you go whole-hog on VARK and start testing students and tailoring instruction to each of them individually based on the results, the way teachers respond to the concept of learning styles is generally to include different types of learning activities

So that no matter what your students' style is, you're covered

which, by accident, is actually a pretty decent pedagogical standard.

Also, for some reason people seem more willing to accept things like "oh I'm a visual learner, having a diagram just helps it make way more sense" than "I have auditory processing issues, and when you have someone lecture at me for thirty minutes I will absorb maybe five minutes worth of knowledge".