RESOURCE: Learning Styles: A Misguided Attempt to Highlight Individual Differences in Learners
In today’s blog post, I would like to give a summary of a review paper by An and Carr (2) that was recently published and that caught my attention. I find their review interesting because they highlight an important and new criticism of the learning styles approach: They state that “learning styles theories are a blend of borrowed constructs or measures from other, better-developed theories”. They further claim that within the learning styles framework, these borrowed constructs are misused and incorrectly interpreted leading to detrimental and useless recommendations. In this review, an attempt is made to connect existing learning styles concepts back to actual evidence-based concepts of human cognition and tie them to helpful recommendations for teachers. It acknowledges that there are individual differences between learners, but not as conceptualized by the learning styles approach.
Written by Brian S McGowan, PhD
Dr. McGowan has served in leadership positions in numerous medical educational organizations and commercial supporters and is a Fellow of the Alliance (FACEhp). He founded the Outcomes Standardization Project, launched and hosted the Alliance Podcast, and most recently launched and hosts the JCEHP Emerging Best Practices in CPD podcast. In 2012 he Co-Founded ArcheMedX, Inc, a healthcare informatics and e-learning company to apply his research in practice.
