How Common Is Belief in the Learning Styles Neuromyth, and Does It Matter? A Pragmatic Systematic Review

89.1% of Participants Believe in Matching Instruction to Learning Styles

34/37 samples reported the percentage of participants who stated agreement with an incorrect statement that individuals learn better when they receive information in their preferred learning style. The simple average of these 34 data points is 86.2%. To calculate a weighted percentage, these percentages were converted to raw numbers using the stated “N.” The sum of these raw numbers was then divided by the sum of “N” from the 34 samples to create a percentage. This calculation returned a figure of 89.1%. A distribution of the individual studies is shown in Figure 1.

No Evidence of a Decrease in Belief Over Time

As described in the methods we undertook three separate analyses to test for evidence that belief in Learning Styles has decreased over time. (1) A Spearman Rank correlation analysis was conducted to test for a relationship between the year a study was conducted and the percentage who reported that they believed in matching instruction to Learning Styles. No significant relationship was found (r = −0.290, P = 0.102). (2) Belief in matching instruction to Learning Styles was compared in samples of qualified teachers (N = 16) vs. pre-service teachers (N = 12) using a Mann-Whitney U test. No significant difference was found (Figure 2). A Mann Whitney U test returned a P value of 0.529 (U = 82). When calculating the weighted percentage from each group, belief in matching was 95.4% for pre-service teachers and 87.8% for qualified teachers. The weighted percentage for participants from Higher Education was 63.6%, although this was not analyzed statistically since these data were calculated from only three studies and these were different to the others in additional ways (see Discussion). (3) A Spearman Rank correlation analysis was conducted to test for a relationship between the mean years of experience reported by a participant group (qualified teachers) and the percentage who reported that the believed in matching instruction to Learning Styles. No significant relationship was found (r = −0.158, P = 0.642).

Effect of Interventions

Four studies utilized some form of training for participants, to explain the lack of current evidence for matching instruction to Learning Styles. A pre-post test analysis was used in these studies to evaluate participants belief in the efficacy of matching instruction to Learning Styles both before and after the training. Calculating a weighted percentage revealed that, in these four studies, belief went from 78.4 to 37.1%. The effect size for this intervention effect was large (Cohens d = 3.6). Comparing these four studies using a paired t-test revealed that the difference between pre and post was significant (P = 0.012). Results from the individual studies are shown in Figure 3.

Use of Learning Styles vs. Belief

Seven studies measured self-report of use, or planned use, of matching instruction to Learning Styles. Calculating the weighted average revealed that 79.7% of participants said they used, or intended to use, the matching of instruction to Learning Styles. This was compared to the percentage who reported that they believed in the efficacy of matching instruction. A Mann-Whitney U test was used since four of the seven studies did not measure belief in matching to instruction and so a paired test was not possible. No significant difference was found between the percentage of participants who reported believing that matching instruction to Learning Styles is effective (89.1%), and the percentage who used, or planned to use, it as a teaching method (79.7%) (P = 0.146, U = 76.5). Data are shown in Figure 4.

No Difference in Belief in Preferences vs. Belief in Matching Instruction to Learning Styles

As described in the introduction, many studies compared belief in matching instruction to Learning Styles (a “neuromyth”) with a correct statement that individuals show preferences for the mode in which they receive information. Twenty-one studies questioned participants on both their belief in matching instruction to Learning Styles, and their belief that individual learners have preferences for the ways in which they receive information. A Wilcoxon matched-pairs test showed no significant difference between these two datasets (P = 0.262, W = 57). A difference score was calculated by subtracting the percentage who believe in matching instruction from the percentage who believe that learners show preferences. The mean of these scores was 2.66, with a Standard Deviation of 8.97. A one sample t-test showed that the distribution of these scores was not significantly different from zero (P = 0.189). The distribution of these scores is shown in Figure 5 and reveals many negative scores, i.e., where belief in matching instruction to Learning Styles is higher than a belief that individuals have preferences for how they receive information.

Risk of Bias and Validity Measures

A summary table of the individual studies is shown in Table 1. (The full dataset is available in Appendix 1).

Of the 34 samples which measured belief in matching instruction to Learning Styles, 30 of them used the same question as used in Howard-Jones et al. (2009) (see Introduction). The four which used different questions were “Does Teaching to a Student's Learning Style Enhance Learning?” (Dandy and Bendersky, 2014), “Students learn best when taught in a manner consistent with their learning styles” (Kilpatrick, 2012), “How much do you agree with the thesis that there are different learning styles (e.g., auditory, visual or kinesthetic) that enable more effective learning?” (Menz et al., 2020) and “A pedagogical approach based on such a distinction favors learning” (participants had been previously been asked to rate their agreement with the statement “Some individuals are visual, others are auditory”) (Tardif et al., 2015).

Sampling

Thirty of the 37 samples included used convenience sampling. Three of the studies used snowballing from convenience sampling, while the remaining 4 were unclassifiable; these were all from one study whose participants were recruited “at various events related to education (e.g., book fair, pedagogy training sessions, etc.), by word of mouth, and via email invitations to databases of people who had previously enquired about information/courses on neuroscience and education” (Gleichgerrcht et al., 2015). Thus, no studies used a rigorous, representative, random sample and so no further analysis was undertaken on the basis of sampling method. Some studies considered representativeness in their methodology, for example Dekker et al. (2012) reported that the local schools they approached “could be considered a random selection of schools in the UK and NL” but the participants were then “Teachers who were interested in this topic and chose to participate.” No information is given about the size of the population or the number of individuals to whom the survey was sent, and no demographic characteristics are given regarding the population.

Response Rate

Only five samples reported the size of the population from which the sample was drawn, and so no meaningful analysis of response rate can be drawn across the 37 samples. In one case (Betts et al., 2019) the inability to calculate a response rate was due to our design rather than the study from which the data were extracted; Betts et al. (2019) reported distributing their survey to a Listserv of 65,780, but the respondents included many non-educators whose data were not relevant for our research question. It is perhaps worth noting however that their total final participant number was 929 and so their total response rate across all participant groups was 1.4%

Neutral Invitation

Nine of the 37 studies presented evidence of using a neutral invitation. None of the remaining studies provided evidence of a biased invitation; the information was simply not provided.

Briefing on Learning Styles and Matching

Two of the 37 studies reported giving participants additional information regarding Learning Styles, sufficient (in our view) for participants to be clear that they were being asked specifically about Learning Styles as defined by Coffield et al., and the matching on instruction to Learning Styles.