My thanks to Francis Bell and Karyn Romeis for pointing to this work, an exhaustive (book-length) review of learning styles. While on the one hand it offers a sceptical look learning styles, the analysis also refrains from such blanket statements as "there are no learning styles" and, indeed, even identifies one approach (Allinson and Hayes) that satisfies all four evaluative criteria (consistency, reliability, construct validity, predictive validity) and several others that come close. Do take the time to read this. Should the study of learning styles form the core of education policy? Probably not. But not because it is 'false', not because 'there are no learning styles', only because other matters are more urgent. The study authors write, "as Lave and Wenger (1991, 100) have argued, the most fundamental problems of education are not pedagogical. Above all, they have to do with the ways in which the community of adults reproduces itself, with the places that newcomers can or cannot find in such communities, and with relations that can or cannot be established between these newcomers and the cultural and political life of the community." So many things comes into play when we are looking at learning. It is arguable that many learning styles theorists - and their critics - do not have a sound understanding of what constitutes learning itself, much less what constitutes the imparting of learning and the measurement of learning.
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