Critical Thinking About Learning Styles: Challenging Literature Reviews

Abstract

As educators, we encourage students to think critically and to question what we read in research findings. Should we not take the same perspective when reviewing literature for our own purposes? For example, learning styles is a ubiquitous concept that is bandied about by everyone from educators to legislators, but a myriad of controversy and criticism surrounds the operationalization of learning styles and its application to effective teaching and learning.

 This paper discusses a variety of issues concerning the concept of learning styles and includes diverse conceptualizations; questions concerning validity and reliability of instruments used to identify learning styles; construction of instructional designs; and reports the charges of bias that researchers make against each other’s work. The authors suggest that these topics and issues be used to form guiding questions when reviewing learning styles literature.