Learning Styles And Theories

Overview

The term "learning styles" refers to a range of theories which indicate that people can be classified according to their style of learning. Each theory present different views on how the styles should be defined and categorised. A common belief is that individuals differ in how they learn.

This belief came about in the 1970s and had influenced education. Teachers are advised to assess the learning styles of their students and to adapt their classroom methods to best fit each student's learning style.

There are many different learning style models about. One of these will be described below:

VAK

Walter Burke Barbe and colleagues proposed 3 learning modalities.

1) Visualising Modality

2) Auditory Modality

3) Kinesthetic Modality

These three are often identified by the acronym VAK.  

Descriptions of learning modalities:

Barbe and colleagues reported that learning modality strengths can occur independently or in combination (although the most frequent modality strengths, according to their research, are visual or mixed), they can change over time, and they become integrated with age. They also pointed out that learning modality strengths are different from preferences; a person's self-reported modality preference may not correspond to their empirically measured modality strength.This disconnect between strengths and preferences was confirmed by a subsequent study. Nevertheless, some scholars have criticized the VAK model. Psychologist Scott Lilienfeld and colleagues have argued that much use of the VAK model is nothing more than pseudoscience or a psychological urban legend.

Table & Info Reference: Willingham, D., Hughes, E. and Dobolyi, D. (2015). The Scientific Status of Learning Styles Theories. Teaching of Psychology, 42(3), pp.266-271.

The video on this link describes each of these learning modalities in detail: http://www.virtualearninghub.com/teaching-strategies-learning-styles/