For better or worse, the educational theory that seems to have permeated American education more than any other has been the notion of learning styles. Although the definition can vary, the most popular version of the idea argues that people can be categorized as visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learners.

From its earliest origins, though, critics have underscored the very thin and tangled research line that supported the learning styles framework, and in recent years cognitive psychologists have tried to toll the death knell of this approach—without much success. Something about the broader idea of learning styles seems so appealing or persuasive that it continues to shape the thinking of many classroom teachers and parents as well as our own self-descriptions.

Thomas Fallace of William Paterson University has written a book titled You Are Not a Kinesthetic Learner: The Troubled History of the Learning Style Idea, tracing the theory from its early origins through a half-century of teaching and thinking about education.

He talks with us about whether learning styles actually exist, whether the concept has helped or harmed students, and—if learning styles don’t exist—whether we should just abandon the idea once and for all.

Key Topics Discussed:

Cold War psychologist Herman Witkin’s experiments to test whether people could tell they were seated upright in a tilted room and the unlikely link between those studies and the idea of learning styles
The problematic application of the learning styles idea over time, often emerging out of the efforts of well-intentioned people trying to improve educational outcomes—and in fact succeeding in some cases
The vagaries of the “kinesthetic learner” label and how it’s been applied disproportionately to Black and Hispanic students, those with special needs, and English-language learners
Why the idea of learning styles has been so popular and persistent
Why the danger comes from labelling students as one kind of learner or another, not from varying the modalities in which they engage with course content
Drawing on the history of research on learning styles as we think about the role of AI-assisted learning

Guest Bio: Thomas Fallace is a professor of education and director of the master’s in secondary education program at William Paterson University. His research focuses largely on curriculum history and the history of ideas in schools, and he is the author of five books, most recently You Are Not a Kinesthetic Learner: The Troubled History of the Learning Style Idea.

Resources Mentioned:

Thomas’s Book: You Are Not a Kinesthetic Learner: The Troubled History of the Learning Style Idea (The University of Chicago Press)
Episode Transcript

Designed for Learning is hosted by Jim Lang, a professor of the practice in Notre Dame Learning’s Kaneb Center for Teaching Excellence and the author of several influential books on teaching. The podcast is produced by Notre Dame Learning’s Office of Digital Learning. For more, visit learning.nd.edu/podcast. You can also follow Notre Dame Learning on LinkedIn.