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The learning styles: VAK is dead (2009)

The learning styles: VAK is dead (2009)

Learning styles — the idea that each person learns best in one sensory channel, and that teaching should be matched to it — is one of education's most durable myths. The claim comes in many brands (VAK: visual, auditory, kinesthetic; VARK, which adds read/write; Honey and Mumford's activist–reflector–theorist–pragmatist), but they share one testable prediction: match the presentation to the learner's style and learning improves. When researchers actually ran that test, the prediction failed. It is worth stating the distinction precisely, because this is where the myth hides: preferences are real — people genuinely enjoy some formats more than others — but the meshing of instruction to a preferred style produces no measurable gain in how much anyone learns.

That gap between what feels true and what the evidence shows is the whole story here. Belief in learning styles is nearly universal among teachers and stubbornly common in language learning, yet the most careful reviews of the literature — including a 2009 essay co-authored by Robert Bjork — find that the core claim is unsupported. This article walks through what VAK was meant to be, how the meshing hypothesis was tested and rejected, why the myth refuses to die, and what genuinely moves the needle instead.

What VAK and VARK were supposed to be

The intuition behind learning styles is old. The idea that people fall into sensory "types" traces back to early-twentieth-century educational psychology, and by the 1970s it had hardened into inventories you could fill out. Neil Fleming's VARK questionnaire (1987) is the best-known: answer sixteen questions and you are told you are a Visual, Auditory, Reading/writing or Kinesthetic learner — or a mix. Barbe and Swassing's modality work and the older VAK triad said much the same thing in fewer categories. Honey and Mumford's 1986 model (activists, reflectors, theorists, pragmatists) sorted people along a different axis but made the same promise.

What every version shares is a two-part claim. First, a descriptive claim: people differ in how they prefer to take in information — some like diagrams, some like lectures, some like doing. Few would argue with that. Second, and this is the load-bearing part, a prescriptive claim: because those differences exist, instruction should be diagnosed and tailored to each learner's type, and doing so will make them learn more. Proponents built assessments, teacher training and whole classroom philosophies on the second claim. It is the second claim — known formally as the meshing hypothesis — that the evidence does not support.

Pashler et al. (2009): the meshing test and the verdict

In 2008, Harold Pashler, Mark McDaniel, Doug Rohrer and Robert Bjork published Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence in Psychological Science in the Public Interest (the article carries a 2009 issue date, which is why it is usually cited as 2009). Their contribution was not another opinion — it was a specification of what evidence would settle the question, and then an audit of whether that evidence exists.

The key move is defining the study design that could actually confirm the meshing hypothesis. It is a crossover interaction. You take learners already classified by style — say, "visual" and "auditory" — and randomly assign people within each group to either a visual or an auditory method. The learning-styles claim is supported if and only if the best method for one group is the worst for the other: visual learners should do better with visual instruction, auditory learners better with auditory instruction, producing an X-shaped crossover when you plot the results. A design that merely shows "visual learners score well with visual teaching" proves nothing, because visual teaching might simply be better for everyone. Only the crossover — where matching helps one group and mismatching hurts the other — isolates the effect the theory predicts.

Pashler and colleagues then searched the literature for studies using this design with adequate controls. They found almost none. The overwhelming majority of "evidence" for learning styles came from studies that never ran the crucial test. And of the few methodologically sound studies that did test a genuine crossover interaction, the results contradicted the meshing hypothesis rather than supporting it. Their conclusion was blunt: there is no adequate evidence base to justify incorporating learning-styles assessments into general educational practice, and the widespread use of them is not a wise use of resources. Later experiments designed specifically to catch a meshing effect — Rogowsky, Calhoun and Tallal (2015), for instance, which matched and mismatched learners' preferences to text versus audio presentation — came back with the same null result.

Why the myth refuses to die

If the science is this clear, why is belief in learning styles nearly universal? Dekker and colleagues (2012) surveyed teachers and found that 93% of those in the UK and 96% in the Netherlands agreed that people learn better when taught in their preferred style. Newton (2015) showed the myth is not just alive in classrooms but thriving in higher-education research papers, most of which still endorse it. Several forces keep it going.

  • There is a kernel of truth. People really do have preferences, and we really do differ — in prior knowledge, in ability, in interest. The myth borrows credibility from these true facts and smuggles in a false one: that catering to a sensory preference boosts learning.
  • It is intuitive and flattering. "I'm a visual person" is an appealing, tidy self-description. Telling a struggling student that they simply have a different style is kinder than confronting the harder truth that everyone finds durable learning effortful.
  • Confirmation bias does the rest. Once you believe you are an auditory learner, you notice the times a lecture clicked and forget the times it did not. Preference feels like evidence.
  • There is an industry. Questionnaires, workshops and teacher-training modules have been sold on the promise of learning styles for decades, which gives the idea institutional momentum long after the research has moved on.

What actually works instead

The good news is that debunking learning styles does not leave a void. The research points firmly at a handful of techniques that work — and, crucially, work for everyone, not for a chosen "type."

  • Dual coding. Presenting information as words and a relevant image helps memory, because the two are stored and retrieved through partly separate channels. Notice the reframe: the benefit is not that visual people get a picture — it is that everyone remembers more when a word is paired with a meaningful image.
  • Retrieval practice (the testing effect). Pulling information out of memory — quizzing yourself — strengthens it far more than re-reading or re-listening. Roediger and Karpicke's work made this one of the most robust findings in the science of learning.
  • Spacing. Distributing study across days and weeks beats cramming the same total time into one session. Spacing fights forgetting where it actually happens — over time.

There is also a better way to think about modality — the real replacement for "match the channel to the learner." The channel should match the content, not the person. A map is best learned by looking at it; the pronunciation of a word is best learned by hearing it; a dance step is best learned by doing it — and that is true for every learner regardless of their supposed style. As Daniel Willingham puts it, children are more alike than different in how they learn: teach the material in the way the material demands, and everyone benefits.

What this means for language learning

For language learners, the practical upshot is liberating: you do not need to diagnose your "style" or hunt for an app that matches it. You might genuinely enjoy matching pictures to words, and enjoyment is worth something for motivation — but liking a format is not the same as learning more from it. What improves your language skills is the same for everyone, and it lines up exactly with the techniques above.

  • Let the modality follow the content. Vocabulary and spelling live on the page; pronunciation and prosody live in the ear. Use images where they carry meaning and audio where sound is the point — not because you are a "visual" or "auditory" learner, but because that is where the information actually lives.
  • Test yourself rather than reviewing passively. Recalling a word from memory does more than reading it again. This is why active recall sits at the heart of Bjork's desirable difficulties — the effort of retrieval is what makes it stick.
  • Space your reviews. Distribute repetitions over time instead of massing them, the principle Cecil Alec Mace described in 1932 and the reason spaced repetition works, timed against the forgetting curve.
  • Learn with meaning, in full sentences. New words anchor better when tied to context and existing knowledge — meaningful learning in Ausubel's sense, and the reason Taalhammer's method is built around whole sentences rather than isolated flashcards.

The old article on this topic ended with a line worth keeping: what works, works on everybody, given enough effort. Learning styles offered a shortcut that let people off that hook. The evidence says there is no shortcut — only better and worse ways to spend the effort, and those are the same for all of us.

Frequently asked questions

Are learning styles real?

Preferences are real — people do enjoy some formats more than others. What is not real is the payoff the theory promises: there is no reliable evidence that teaching to someone's preferred visual, auditory or kinesthetic "style" makes them learn more. Pashler et al. (2009) showed that the studies needed to demonstrate that effect — using a crossover interaction design — almost never exist, and the few sound ones point the other way. So the label may describe a taste, but it does not predict how you learn best.

If I prefer visual learning, should I study that way?

Study in whatever way keeps you motivated, but don't expect a preferred channel to boost retention on its own. The more useful rule is to let the content pick the channel: learn spelling by seeing words, pronunciation by hearing them, and pair words with meaningful images because dual coding helps everyone. Matching the format to the material beats matching it to a self-diagnosed style.

If not learning styles, then what actually helps?

Three techniques with strong evidence, and they work for every learner: retrieval practice (test yourself instead of re-reading), spacing (spread reviews over days and weeks), and dual coding (combine words with relevant images). For language learning specifically, that means active recall of vocabulary, spaced repetition timed against forgetting, and studying words in meaningful full-sentence context.

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