Learning Styles (AQA GCSE Psychology): Revision Note

Verbalisers

• Learning styles describe the different ways in which people learn best, according to their individual needs, skills and attributes

• The approach claims that learning should improve if teaching is matched to a student's preferred style

• Verbal learners are those people who process and recall information according to how it sounds and how it reads

• Verbalisers may use repetition, mnemonics (e.g. Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain = the colours of the rainbow: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet), discussion, note-making

• Verbalisers would prefer a description in text rather than a graph or diagram

Visualisers

• Visual learners are those people who process and recall information according to how it looks i.e. its shape, colour, layout, size, appearance generally

• Visualisers may use mind maps and mind palaces to process and store information 

• Visualisers would prefer a graph or diagram rather than a description in text

• Visualisers have good spatial sense and like to ‘see’ places and characters in their mind when reading

Evaluation of learning styles

Strengths 

• Moved teaching away from verbal-only methods: the learning styles approach encouraged teachers to use a more varied mix of words, diagrams and activities, which benefits all learners whether or not 'matching' works

Weaknesses 

• No supporting evidence: Pashler et al. (2008) reviewed the research and found no properly controlled study showing that matching teaching to a student's style improves performance. Massa & Mayer (2006) tested verbalisers and visualisers directly and found no benefit from matched instruction

• Too many styles: Coffield et al. (2004) identified 71 different learning-style theories. With so little agreement on what the styles even are, it is unworkable for a teacher to identify and cater for them

• Impractical: tailoring every lesson to every style would take enormous time and could make lessons unfocused – and since the evidence says it doesn't help, that effort is wasted