Just in case you have lived under an educational rock for the last thirty years, here's a quick rundown of learning style theory. The idea was that each child is born with a particular predisposition for the method in which curriculum is presented. Visual learners would do better if the information was presented visually. Auditory learners did well by listening carefully but would find visual aids a distraction. Tactile and kinesthetic learners need to manipulate or perform labs in order to learn. Teachers have been trained for the past three decades to find the learning style of each student and try to reach them using that style. It sounded good. It sounded logical. It seemed virtuous to reach each student in the way their brain was designed.
Teachers always want to do what is best for kids, but we need to be careful that it is research-based, not just something that sounds good in a workshop. The idea of individual learning styles sounded right, and we taught kids to find theirs for two generations. The problem is that research doesn't back up what we have been telling them. In fact, there are multiple studies that show potential harm from buying too much into the concept.
MRI's have been quite instructive on the function of the brain, but it is taking time for the findings to make their way into instructional practice. Brain imagery has revealed that while the brains of different people will show activity differences based on academic disciplines (showing support for the theory of multiple intelligences), it does not behave differently if the same information is presented in different formats. The conclusion of these researchers is that the presentation style is a preference, in the same vein as a favorite color or preferred musical style.
It is difficult to let go of the "matching" approach to learning styles even when we know differently. So, what's a teacher to do? Instead of trying to match individual students, controlled experiments are now showing that it is best to match the style to the material being presented. If we think about it for a moment, this just makes sense. No geometry teacher would ever think that they should teach in an auditory only way, even if every student in the room was an "auditory learner." No one who teaches poetry would think that they needed a kinesthetic approach, no matter what the preference of the students because that just doesn't make sense with the material.
As a teacher, think deeply about the material you are presenting and the best method for presenting it rather than trying to work in circles around all your student preferences. Allow them to process according to their own preference. It may actually be helpful for a student who has heard you teach material in an auditory method to draw visualizations of what they have heard or summarize it to themselves out loud as their method of internalizing material may be useful, but that simply requires that you as a teacher give them a bit of time for individual reflection.
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