In This Article
Nearly 9 in 10 educators believe in learning styles. Decades of research say matching teaching to a 'style' doesn't improve learning. Here's what does.
In 1987, a school inspector in New Zealand named Neil Fleming had spent years sitting at the back of classrooms watching teachers work. He noticed something that puzzled him: some excellent teachers reached almost every student, and some reached only a few. So he built a short questionnaire to help students and teachers talk about how people like to take in information. He called it VARK, and he described it as a catalyst for reflection.
Then the world got hold of it.
Within a couple of decades, that gentle reflection tool had hardened into a rule millions of people now treat as fact: that each of us has a fixed learning “style,” and that we learn best when teaching is matched to it. Today about 89% of educators believe1 some version of that idea.
There’s just one problem. When scientists test it carefully, it doesn’t hold up.
This post walks through what learning styles actually claim, why the science says matching doesn’t work, why the myth is so hard to shake, and what genuinely helps you learn faster. Because learning is a skill you can get better at, and it’s worth building on something that’s true.
What “Learning Styles” Actually Claim
What is a learning style? A learning style is the idea that each person has a preferred channel for taking in new information, and that using that channel makes learning easier and more effective.
The most famous version is the VARK model2, an acronym for four preferences:
- Visual: you like diagrams, charts, and maps.
- Auditory: you’d rather listen to a lecture or podcast.
- Read/write: you reach for the manual or the article.
- Kinesthetic: you want to get your hands on it and try.
Read those and one probably feels like you, right? That instant flash of recognition is a big part of why the idea spread so fast. Most of us genuinely do prefer some formats over others.
Here’s the important distinction. VARK reliably measures what you say you prefer. What it does not do is predict the channel you’ll actually learn the most from. And that gap between preference and performance is the whole ballgame.
The “Matching” Idea Has Never Held Up
The specific claim under the microscope has a name among researchers: the meshing hypothesis. It says that when you match the teaching method to a learner’s style, that learner performs better.
To test it honestly, you need a particular kind of study. You take people with different preferences, teach some of them in their preferred mode and some in a non-preferred mode, and check whether the match actually produced better results. Preference and method have to cross over.
A landmark 2008 review3 in Psychological Science in the Public Interest went looking for studies built that way. The researchers found almost none. And among the few rigorous enough to count, the results ran against the meshing idea. Their conclusion was blunt: there is “no adequate evidence base to justify incorporating learning-styles assessments into general educational practice.”
Later work only sharpened the point. In a 2015 experiment4, adults were sorted into auditory and visual learners, then taught the same material by audiobook or by on-screen text. If the myth were true, the auditory folks should have aced the listening version and the visual folks the reading version. They didn’t. Matching produced no meaningful advantage.
The Association for Psychological Science summarized5 the state of the evidence in a headline that pulls no punches: learning styles, as a teaching prescription, are not supported.
Notice what’s not being claimed here. Nobody’s saying your preferences are fake, or that all teaching methods are equal for all material. The narrow, testable claim, that matching the method to the person makes them learn more, is the part that keeps coming up empty.
Pro Tip: When someone tells you a self-typing quiz reveals how you “should” learn, ask the one question that cuts through it: where’s the study showing people taught that way actually learned more? For learning styles, that study keeps not showing up.
Why This Myth Is So Hard to Kill
If the evidence is this clear, why do nearly nine in ten educators still believe? Because the idea is almost perfectly designed to feel true.
It matches something real. You do have preferences. Watching a YouTube tutorial genuinely feels nicer to you than slogging through a manual. The myth takes that true feeling and quietly smuggles in a false conclusion: that what feels easier must teach you more. Often it’s the opposite.
Self-typing is fun. We enjoy knowing what kind of person we are, whether it’s a personality test, a horoscope, or a learning style. Labels give us a tidy story about ourselves. There’s nothing wrong with that on its own. The trouble starts when we treat a preference as a limit.
There’s money in it. A whole cottage industry sells learning-style assessments, workshops, and training packages. A label you can measure is a label you can charge for, and commercial momentum keeps an idea alive long after the science has moved on.
Sound familiar? A lot of pop psychology survives on exactly this recipe: a grain of truth, a satisfying label, and someone with something to sell.
The Hidden Cost of Believing It
A harmless myth would be one thing. This one carries a real price.
The first cost is the box it puts you in. Decide you’re “a visual learner” and you may start ducking the reading, the practice, the messy hands-on reps that a subject actually demands. A student told she’s not “an auditory learner” might tune out of every lecture she’ll ever sit through. The label becomes a permission slip to avoid the very modes you most need to strengthen.
The second cost is what gets crowded out. Every hour a teacher spends building four parallel versions of a lesson is an hour not spent on methods that genuinely work. The 2008 review made this the heart of its recommendation: limited resources should go toward practices with strong evidence behind them.
That’s the good news buried in all this. There are practices with strong evidence behind them. Let’s talk about those.
What Actually Makes Learning Stick
Cognitive scientists have spent decades testing study techniques head-to-head. A comprehensive 2013 review6 rated ten common ones by how well they hold up. The winners came down to how you practice, whatever format you happen to enjoy. Two techniques earned the top rating.
Test yourself (don’t just reread)
The single most powerful move is also the one most people skip: pulling information out of your head instead of pushing it back in.
In a now-classic study7, students who read a passage once and then tested themselves on it remembered far more a week later than students who simply reread it several times. Rereading felt more productive in the moment. It just didn’t last.
The act of struggling to recall something is what carves it into memory. Flashcards, a blank sheet where you dump everything you remember, a practice quiz, explaining the idea out loud to an empty room — all of it counts.
Action Step: After you read or watch something you want to keep, close it and spend two minutes writing down everything you remember. Then check what you missed. That two minutes beats a second read.
Space it out
Cramming works beautifully for about a day and then evaporates. Spreading the same total study time across days or weeks produces dramatically better long-term memory. This one also earned the top rating in that 2013 review.
Try this: Instead of one 3-hour session, run three 1-hour sessions across a week. It’s the same total time, and you’ll remember far more of it. Your calendar does the work your memory can’t.
A few more worth your time
The next tier of techniques earned solid, if slightly more modest, support:
- Explain the “why” to yourself. As you learn a fact, ask why it’s true and how it connects to what you already know. Wrestling with the reasoning makes it stick.
- Mix up your practice. Rather than drilling one type of problem to death before moving on, interleave different types. It feels harder, and that difficulty is exactly the point.
And the techniques most students lean on hardest? Rereading, highlighting, and summarizing landed near the bottom. They feel like studying without doing much of the work of learning.
Pro Tip, remember R.S.V.P.: Retrieve what you learned, Space it across days, Verify the reasoning behind it, and Practice mixed problems. Four habits, backed by research, that work no matter which format you happen to enjoy.
So What Do You Do With Your Preferences?
Toss VARK in the bin? Not quite. Your preferences are real information, they’re just answering a different question than you thought.
The smarter move is to let the material pick the format. Directions to a new place work best as a map because space is visual, whatever your “style.” A song lives in sound. Assembling furniture is hands-on because you have to physically do it. Great learners flex across all four channels and let the content decide.
And keep enjoying what you enjoy. If a video keeps you engaged long enough to then go test yourself on the material, wonderful. The preference gets you in the door. The retrieval and the spacing are what build the skill.
You don’t need to discover your one true learning style. You need a handful of habits that work for everyone, including you.
Frequently Asked Questions About Learning Styles
Are learning styles real?
Preferences are real: most people genuinely enjoy some formats more than others. What research does not support is the “meshing” claim that matching teaching to a preferred style improves how much you learn. Careful studies keep finding no such benefit.
If learning styles are a myth, why do so many teachers believe in them?
A 2020 systematic review found about 89% of educators believe in learning styles. The idea persists because it feels intuitive, it lines up with our real preferences, self-typing is satisfying, and there’s a commercial industry built around selling assessments and training.
What actually helps me learn faster?
The best-supported techniques are testing yourself (retrieval practice) and spacing your study out over time rather than cramming. Explaining the reasoning behind what you learn and mixing up your practice also help. Rereading and highlighting are popular but weak.
Should I still take a VARK or learning-style quiz?
It can be a fun way to reflect on what you enjoy, as long as you hold the result loosely. Treat it as a note about your preferences, not a rule about how you must learn. Don’t let a label talk you out of practicing the modes a subject actually requires.
The Takeaway
Neil Fleming built VARK to start a conversation, and it’s worth honoring that spirit: be curious about how you learn, just don’t let a four-letter label decide it for you.
Here’s what the evidence supports:
Your preferences are real and worth noticing.
Matching instruction to a “style” doesn’t improve learning.
Testing yourself and spacing your practice do.
Match the method to the material, and stay willing to learn in every mode.
Get those habits right and you’ll learn faster than any style quiz ever promised. Curious what to point all that new learning power at next? Check out our guide to building a learning bucket list and pick something worth mastering.
