How do learning styles affect learning

The student-centered approach creates more equanimity between the teacher and student, with each playing a role in the learning process. While the teacher still holds authority, he or she is more likely to act as a facilitator, coaching students and assisting them in their learning. This approach champions student choice and facilitates connections among students.

A couple of styles within the student-centered approach to teaching are:. Inquiry-Based Style This student-centered learning style encourages independence, autonomy and hands-on learning, with students leading the way and receiving guidance from their teachers. Cooperative Style Cooperative learning is a student-centered approach that focuses on group work and social growth.

Much like the inquiry-based style, the cooperative style encourages independence and hands-on learning but puts special importance on peer-to-peer work and community. Question : How many teaching styles are there? Lecturer or Authoritative Style The authoritative teaching style follows the traditional teacher-centered approach, often characterized by lecture sessions or one-way presentations.

A student-centered approach, it involves creating learning plans and classes that require students to explore and discover the course content in creative and original ways. Delegator or Group Style Well-suited for curriculums that include or emphasize group activities, the delegator style of teaching shifts much of the responsibility for learning onto the students, who are encouraged to work together in projects connected to the lesson themes think science labs, debates, etc.

In this style, the teacher is an active observer working to guide students in the right direction. While this method is considered inclusive, enabling teachers to tailor their styles to student needs within the subject matter, some educators believe it risks diluting the learning process by placing less emphasis on in-depth study than when following a single, focused approach.

What it boils down to is getting to know your students and using your skills and instincts to discover the most effective ways to engage both the individual student and entire classes with your curriculum. However, it could be argued that using the same text-based format for the assessment favored those students who had a stronger visual learning style and, thus, masked evidence supporting the learning styles hypothesis. Indeed, visual learners performed significantly better than auditory learners on both the listening and reading comprehension tests.

However, it should also be recalled that both learning style groups performed better on the listening comprehension test than the reading comprehension test, even though both were assessed with text-based questions. Irrespective of this potential limitation, it should be kept in mind that the critical test of the learning styles hypothesis rests in finding a significant correlation between learning style and learning achievement based on instruction.

This was not found. Future studies may want to investigate the effect of the assessment format. Additionally, the extent to which the results of this study can be generalized to other learning styles, forms of instruction, durations of instruction, and other types of material cannot be established. It makes sense that visual learners would perform better when instruction is presented visually rather than auditorily. Likewise, it makes sense that auditory learners would perform better when instruction is presented in an auditory format rather than visually.

This hypothesis had never been tested with K students, making this study with 5th graders the first of its kind. The results of this study add to the mounting evidence that does not support the widespread use of learning styles in the classroom. For the ones who do, receiving instruction in their preferred style did not equate with better learning. Contrary to the expectations predicted by the learning styles hypothesis, we found 1 no significant positive relationship between auditory learning style and listening comprehension, 2 no significant positive relationship between visual learning style and reading comprehension, and 3 no differential effect of learning style on performance on a listening as compared to a reading comprehension test.

Teachers and schools should not devote time and resources to learning styles-based instruction. Not only were we unable to support the learning styles hypothesis, we replicated a result with important implications for education. A main effect found that 5th graders with a preferred visual learning style performed significantly better than those with an auditory learning style on both listening and reading comprehension measures.

This is similar to the results reported in a previous study with adults Rogowsky et al. That is, both 5th graders and adults with a visual learning style had superior comprehension, regardless of instruction, while those with an auditory learning style scored significantly below their peers on both comprehension measures, regardless of instruction.

This would suggest that to achieve superior comprehension, which is vital for classroom learning, all students need as much opportunity as possible to build strong reading skills.

Thus, contrary to the learning style hypothesis, it may be particularly important to focus on strengthening reading skills in all students, especially for auditory learners. That is, auditory learners may actually benefit more from additional instruction in their non-preferred modality. Learning styles-based instruction was based on a theory that gained acceptance despite evidence.

With the growing focus on the science of learning, current educational psychology journals and textbooks are making strides in drawing attention to the lack of evidence supporting learning styles-based instruction Woolfolk, Unfortunately, many education textbooks continue to advocate for learning styles-based instruction and for teachers to use learning styles inventories and tests before planning instruction Lynch, The datasets used in this study are available upon request to the corresponding author.

BR, the Principal Investigator, conducted literature review, wrote IRB, led meetings with school district administration and teachers where the research was conducted, oversaw onsite data collection over multiple visits, and worked closely with BC to analyze data, interpret and write-up the results for publication. BC led analysis of the data and writing up results for publication.

PT provided expertise and ongoing consultation of study design, methodology, and analysis and reviewed and edited the final paper.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. Arbuthnott, K. Effective teaching: sensory learning styles versus general memory processes.

Innovative Teach. Aslaksen, K. The modality-specific learning style hypothesis: a mini review. Constantinidou, F. Stimulus modality and verbal learning in normal aging. Brain Lang. Cuevas, J. Is learning styles-based instruction effective? A comprehensive analysis of recent research on learning styles.

Theory Res. Dekker, S. Neuromyths in education: prevalence and predictors of misconceptions among teachers. Dunn, R. Learning style the clue to you LSCY : research and implementation manual. Google Scholar. Hansen, L. Honey, P. The manual of learning styles. Maidenhead: Peter Honey. Howard-Jones, P. Neuroscience and education: myths and messages. Kassaian, Z. Kirschner, P. Stop propagating the learning styles myth. Knoll, A.

Learning style, judgements of learning, and learning of verbal and visual information. Kolb, D. The Kolb learning style inventory — Version 3. London: Hay Resources Direct. Kolloffel, B. Exploring the relation between visualizer-verbalizer cognitive style and performance with visual or verbal learning material.

Kratzig, G. Perceptual learning style and learning proficiency: a test of the hypothesis. Learning Styles Learning styles: online learning style assessments and community. Dunn and Dunn learning styles online. Lynch, M. The call to teach: An introduction to teaching. The study author, Dr. This means while roughly half of employees do prefer ILT, relying solely on classroom training leaves half of your workplace without their preferred learning method.

Between coaching, online learning, and instructor-led training, using multiple modalities to deliver training has a strong correlation to increased training effectiveness.

We already understand that not everyone has identical learning preferences. Blending two popular modalities such as elearning and ILT is proven to have increased results. Blended learning is a powerful way to transfer information. It delivers information through multiple modalities, meaning learners are more likely to be instructed through their preferred modality. One of the questions we asked Dr.