Kids told me I wasn’t smart. Teachers said I didn’t have what it takes to get the grades. Over and over I was labeled as “below average”, “unintelligent” and “bad test taker”. However, to me that sounded more like “dumbest kid in the room”, “stupid”, and “can’t retain information”. It wasn’t until I went through 6 years of school when my science teacher handed me a marker that I realized how to learn. For the past month, I was listening to constant word vomit about plants and photosynthesis. Reading paragraphs and worksheets about how it works and why it works.  What I was hearing went through one ear and out the other. What I was reading left my brain just as quickly as my eye scanning the pages. What changed the way I learned, was one marker. She told me draw what I knew, try to put all these words into pictures. It started with just drawing a simple flower, and it came to life when we brought color coordination, labels, connecting lines to relate things together, arrows, circles and t-charts. I watched the white board turn into this mural of my text book. Words turned to pictures, and this time they made sense. What began as a simple drawing of a flower, one even a preschooler could create, turned into something that would change the way I studied for the rest of my life. I went on continuing this method of picturing my thoughts to better understand information in school. I got the grades, graduated at the top of my class, and even became a tutor to help kids just like me. I went from below average, unintelligent and bad test taker, to above average, bright and successful all because I discovered my learning style.

Everyone learns at a different way and pace. The general goal of education is getting students to learn as much as possible and become the most successful. The question most educators face is how to achieve the most success in students, what can be done so they get the most out of their learning, and how can the system be fair and also effective? Many educational psychologists have broken up the different ways that students learn into different types of learning styles. Though they vary in name, the general idea behind these styles are: visual, auditory, kinesthetic and read-write learners. Each student will accommodate best to one type of learning style that makes them the most successful. Whether it is looking at graphs or images for visual learning, listening to someone speak for auditory learning, looking through a text book for read-write learning or doing more tactile tasks for kinesthetic, everyone thrives in different areas. The lack of focus on learning styles can put students at a disadvantage because they are unaware that they process information differently than others, leading them to fall behind. To avoid this learning inequality, I believe that if instructors can target student’s different capabilities at a young age and group them by styles of learning you can individualize their learning process. This allows them to develop skills to use when they are older and will no longer have information broken down for them. This gives students the best and most efficient path to success and must be addressed to make learning fair.

The interest in the psychology of learning styles (LS) dates all the way to the 1920’s, though teaching is still dominated by the classic lecture type teaching style. This type of teaching is effective mostly to auditory and read-write learners. In a study done in 2013, Poonam Kharb tested students most preferred LS through version 7.1 of the VARK questionnaire. The results showed that auditory and read-write ranked last in how students ordered their preferred teaching style. These results clearly show that the classic model of teaching most commonly found in schools is not the only way students should be taught. Teachers need to recognize the different styles in which students retain information to maximize the success of their students. Kharb concluded from her findings that “One single approach to teaching does not work for every student … awareness of the various learning styles … may help in creating an effective learning environment for all the students” (Kharb).  Therefore, moving away from the original way of teaching and incorporating LS into how students are taught can increase the success in students.

According to Harvard’s Dr. Howard Gardner, students will appeal to different LS because he believes people have “multiple intelligences”. Barbara M. Manner writes about Gardner’s theory on multiple intelligences in her article “Learning Styles and Multiple Intelligences in Student”. Gardner’s theory revolves around the eight different intelligences that students possesses: verbal-linguistic, musical, logic-mathematical, spatial, kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic. The theory explains that each student possesses all of these intelligences however to what degree will result in what LS fits the student best. Manner writes passionately about how these multiple intelligences can be addressed through field trips to maximize the way students learn. She argues that “Investing time and effort into planning and conducting field trips will result in an optimal educational outcome. Numerous instructional techniques can be employed, but we also need various ways in which we evaluate what the students have learned”. Field trips can have such a positive effect on how students learn, take for example a field trip Manner mentions in her article, going to an amusement park with students studying physics. Physics is the branch of science that studies the nature and properties of matter and energy. An amusement park is a place where students can apply their learning in physics because students can experience exactly what they are studying; energy. Students can receive a foundation for the topic prior to the trip, and the teacher can verbally explain how this phenomenon works, this part is important because it appeals to auditory learning. At the park, visual learners can watch as rollercoasters reach the top of a ride and experience potential energy and watch it then turns to kinetic as the cart rushes to the bottom of the drop. Kinesthetic learners can actually experience the energy for themselves as they ride the rides. Teachers can explain further as the trip proceeds. Trips can be followed by a written reflection incorporating those who learn best through writing.

This idea that field trips can accommodate to many LS to maximize success is also furthered by education psychologist Melanie West in her Ted talk “Visual and Auditory Learning and How to Teach it”. In her talk, she expresses her passion for the opportunity to “see learning” much like you would do on a field trip. She shows her scientific proof for how a student can recall information about something because your brain has seen it before. Her theory is that students learn differently and they can fall behind and be seen as unable to learn because they do not learn the same as everyone else. Her statistics show that “50-60% of all students will be perceived by schools to have average or below average learning potential … will test as being very strong at picture thinking with weaknesses in word thinking and 50- 60% of all words that a kindergarten child needs to learn how to read is taught to them using wrote memorization only” (West). These statistics show that students are clearly being put at a disadvantage if they are not read-write learners, which is the least preferred teaching method according to Kharbs study. This excludes the other three most preferred LS: visual, auditory and kinesthetic. 

Students styles of learning especially at the age of kindergarteners should be addressed in order to change the percent of students that fall behind and are labeled as unable to learn.  If students are tested to determine their LS at a young age then they will be more successful. Once they are labeled as one of the four styles of learning they should be placed with students of the same style of learning and educated on how to take information given and organize it in a way they learn best. In Chapter 10 of Psychology of Learning for Instruction, author Marcy P. Dricoll mentions the Robert M. Gagne theory on conditions of learning. Gagne believes that students need a clear specific goal, provided by instructors, to work toward. This makes expectations clear. The key to this concept is making the end goal clear but the path to get there open ended. By setting one goal the students can efficiently get there based off of their LS. For example, visual learners are proven to learn best with images, charts, and graphs; they could be taught to draw a picture of their vocabulary word to help them remember what the word means. Auditory learners retain information best when they hear or say information; their group could be taught to say the vocabulary word out loud followed with the definition. Kinetic learners memorize best through movements; they can be taught to correlate hand or body motions with the word and definition. Read-write learn best by writing out information and they can be taught to write out vocabulary words and definitions to remember. This is an example of all different kinds of LS being applied while teaching the same thing. This individualizes students learning and success. If these skills are discovered at a young age then they can grow up using them and applying them on their own. In Bhagat’s conclusion of her experiment she says “Thus, awareness of LSs motivated students to adapt other learning strategies”. Her data specifically showed that the awareness of students LS gave them more strategies to be successful. Therefore, being aware of how you learn can enhance students learning capability. 

Many people argue that teaching students by catering around their LS is a waste of time because it will not affect the way students retain information. Sarvenaz Hatami explores both sides of this controversy in his article “Learning Styles”.  Hatami mentions psychologists who believe in the value of teaching through LS such as Sternberg, Grigorenko, and Zhang. He states, “According to these scholars, by diagnosing students’ learning styles and matching them to teaching methods, learning can be greatly enhanced” (Hatami 488). On the other hand, other scholars such as Stahl and Willingham reject the value of LS in educational practice. Daniel Willingham is a professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Virginia. Sophie Gurtel writes about Willingham in her article “Is Teaching to a Student’s Learning Style a Bogus Idea?”. Gurtel brings up how Willingham thinks that LSs are a myth and student’s learning effectiveness has nothing to do with this idea. Instead he suggests keeping things simple, he states “It’s the material, not the differences among the students, that ought to be the determinant of how the teacher is going to present a lesson," (Guterl). From this you can conclude that he thinks that there is no benefit to accommodating to student’s individual LS because it should be based off of the topic being taught not how each student will perceive it. I understand his concept that directing the way you teach based off each student’s learning capability would be an obstacle, and you should teach it in a way that is going to help most students to keep it simple. However, having the instructor teach it one way that will help the majority of the class still leaves behind students who don’t grasp information well that way. Teachers who believe Willingham’s idea that there is only one best way to teach students, will result in some students retaining information well, but they won’t be beneficial to all. 

The reasoning behind Willingham’s idea is faulty because he believes that LS do not exist. However, Anumeha Bhagat proves LS do exist and can help enhance learning outcomes through her experiment done in 2015. The goal of this experiment was to determine the impact of awareness of LS among medical undergraduates and motivating students to use mixed methods of learning. The procedure involved students taking a Visual, Aural, Read/Write, and Kinesthetic (VARK) questionnaire to discover their individual LS. These students were then educated on the various LS, and how being aware of their LS can impact their performance. Bhagat discovered in her results that learning outcomes were increased after students were aware of their LS compared to before they took the VARK questionnaire. As seen in these results, if students are more aware of how they learn best and what style they excel most, then they can take those strategies and apply them to their learning, making them more successful.

In addition to that, a way to bring all LS taught to students together is called Project Based Learning [PBL]. PBL is a teaching method in which students gain knowledge and skills by working for an extended period of time to investigate and respond to an authentic, engaging and complex question, problem, or challenge. This provides a way that students can engage in their learning and is proven to be effective by research reviewed by Margaret Holm. Holm reviewed research that proved PBL is effective, she concluded that the studies conducted over the past ten years have positive findings of the efficacy of project-based instruction. She also mentions that “project-based instruction in prekindergarten through 12th grade has yielded improved content learning, higher levels of engagement, and more positive perceptions of the subject matter” (Holm). Based off the research Holm has reviewed it is clear that PBL can reach a broader range of students than traditional-based instruction. 

This theory will bring students LS together because students can apply strategies they excel in to the group as a whole. This activates team work and problem solving with their individual LS to solve challenging, real-life based problems. Watching other students solve a problem, like they would in PBL, is an example of modeling. Modeling, according to Janet Nelson, is a LS process by which a student develops a mental image of how to do something. She believes that mental models are really a mainstay of cognition. Students can experience modeling in PBL by experiencing other students with similar or different LS and approaches. This group work allows for individuals to grow, and maximize the way they learn along with helping others.

The awareness and understanding of learning styles is crucial to the developing mind and must be integrated into the way instructors teach their students. To avoid putting students at a disadvantage from the start, learning style should be one of the first things students are taught when they are in school. This develops skills early that they can utilize later in life and gives students the best and most efficient path to success.
