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At some point of time, you must have attended a teaching seminar and heard all about styles of learning. The speaker would have outlined different types of student learners including kinaesthetic learners, auditory learners and visual learners.

Most of the teaching seminars stipulate that the style of teaching must match the style of learning. For instance, if a student is a kinaesthetic learner which means adept at hands on activities, then he or she may do well in course that feature physical experiments as compared to a visual learner.
In a recent revelation, four psychologists say that this concept is totally wrong and is not based on any strong supporting evidence. They also say that it is not really practical for professors to adopt this in their classrooms.

According to University of California’s psychology professor Harold E. Pashler, it was highly surprising that so many research papers were being published on different learning styles and how they must be matched with teaching styles and yet there were no potentially decisive evidence or experimental designs offered by them.

He also said that there is a great effort to customize education with the help of various tests and programs that however do not offer any kind of evidence based on experiments. Without really saying there are no differences in learning styles, Pasher’s study reiterates the fact that there is no actual proof that points out that a particular type of learning helps a particular group of students and harms those who have a different style of learning.

Students have not been assigned in a random manner into a particular type of classroom. Any definite results can be arrived at only through that type of experiment, according to Mr. Pashler. Very few studies have been conducted along these lines and they do not actually suggest any connection between the student’s style of learning and styles of teaching.

Mr. Pashler says that if students are to be taught something about complex molecular structure. Kinesthetic learners and verbal learners both are found to average to the same percentage in a verbal environment and with a difference of around ten to fifteen percent in a kinaesthetic environment according to a study conducted.

Mr. Pashler says there is a strong similarity in the results with every single study that is well designed and gives almost accurate results. For instance, even though half the number students do not actually enjoy a particular teaching style, the technique of instruction is found to be optimal for a particular lesson taught. 

Mr. Pashler thus says it is a waste of time for instructors to try and determine the learning style composition in classrooms. They must actually focus on matching the content that is being taught with their instruction. It is best for teachers to decide which content is apt for group discussions, which are best taught through hands-on work and which through lectures.

Richard Mayer, psychology professor at the University of California says that even though matching the learning styles may not actually be necessary, doing this may set teachers thinking about the content and analyzing which teaching method is suitable for a particular lesson. Therefore, in a broader perspective it may be beneficial for both teachers and students if teachers are trained in different learning styles.