steven a. stahl - critique on multiple intelligences
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Article 14
DIFFERENT STROKES FORDIFFERENT FOLKS?
A Critique of Learn ing Styles
BY STEVEN A. STAH L
IWORKWITH a lot of different schools and listen to a lotof teachers ta lk. Nowhere have I seen a greater conflictbetween craft knowledge or wh at teachers know (or at
least think they know ) and academic knowledge or
wh at researchers know (or at least think they know ) than
in the area of learning styles. Over th e years, my
experience has told m e to trust teachers; it has also tau ght
me th at teachers craft kn owledge is generally on tar get. I
don t mean to say that teachers are always right, but they
have learned a great d eal from th eir thousand s of obser-
vations of children learning in classrooms. So, when
teachers talk about th e need to take into account
childrens learning styles w hen teaching, and researchers
roll their eyes at the sou nd of the term learning styles,there is more to it than m eets the eye.
The whole notion seems fairly intuitive. People are
different. Certainly d ifferent people might learn d iffer-
ently from each other. It m akes sense. Consider the
following from the Web site of the N ational Reading
Styles Institute, a m ajor p ropon ent of the app lication of
learning styles to the teaching of reading:
We all have personal styles that influence the
way we work, play, and make decisions. Some
people are very analytical, and they think in a
logical, sequential way. Some stud ents are v isualor au ditory learners; they learn best by seeing or
hearing. These students are likely to conform
well to traditional method s of stud y.
Some people (we call them global learners)
need an idea of the wh ole picture before they can
un derstand it, while analytic learners p roceed
more easily from the par ts to the w hole. Global
learners also tend to learn best when they can
touch what they are learning or move around
wh ile they learn . We call these styles of learning
tactile and kinesthetic. In a strictly tradi-
tional classroom, these stud ents are often a p rob-
lem for the teacher. She has trouble keepingthem still or qu iet. They seem un able to learn to
read. (http:/ / www .nrsi.com/ about.html)
This all seems reasonable, but it isnt.
Research and Learning Styles
The reason researchers roll their eyes at learning styles is
the u tter failure to find that assessing childrens learning
styles and m atching to instructional methods ha s any
effect on their learning . The area with the most research
has been the global and an alytic styles referred to in theNRSI blurb above. Over the p ast 30 years, the nam es of
these styles have chan gedfrom visual to global and
from au ditory to analyticbut the r esearch results
have not changed.
In 1978, Tarver and Dawson reviewed 15 stud ies that
matched visual learners to sight wor d ap pr oaches and
aud itory learners to p honics. Thirteen of th e stud ies failed
to find an effect, and the tw o that found the effect used
unusual methodology. They concluded:
Modality preference has not been d emonstrated
to interact significantly with the method ofteaching read ing.1
One year later, Arter and Jenkins reviewed 14 stud ies
(some of these are overlap ping), all of which failed to find
that matching children to reading method s by preferred
mod alities did any good . They concluded :
[The assumption that one can improve instruc-
tion by m atching materials to childrens mod al-
ity strengths] appears to lack even minimal
empirical support.2
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Article 14. DIFFERENT STROKES FOR DIFFERENT FOLKS?
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Kampw irth and Bates, in 1980, foun d 24 stud ies that
looked at this issue. Again, they conclud ed:
Matching childrens mod ality strengths to read-
ing m aterials has n ot been foun d to be effective.3
In 1987, Kavale and Forness reviewed 39 stud ies
using a meta-analysis techniqu e that wou ld be more
sensitive to these effects. They foun d th at ma tching
children by read ing styles had n early no effect on
achievement. They concluded :
Although the presumption of matching instruc-
tion strategies to individual modality prefer-
ences has great intuitive appeal, little empiricalsupport for this proposition was found. Nei-
ther modality testing nor modality teaching
were show n to be [effective].4
A fifth r eview, in 1992, by Snider fou nd d ifficulties in
reliably assessing learn ing styles and a lack of convincing
research tha t such assessment lead s to improvem ent in
reading.
Recognition of ind ividuals strengths an d weak-
nesses is good practice; using this information,
however, to categorize children and prescribe
methods can be detrimental to low-performing
students. Although the idea of reading style is
superficially appealing, critical examination
should cause educators to be skeptical of this
current edu cational fad.5
These five research reviews, all published in well-
regarded journ als, found the same thing: One cannotreliably measur e children s reading styles and even if one
could, matching childr en to reading program s by
learning styles does not impr ove their learning. In other
word s, it is difficult to accur ately identify children w ho
are global and ana lytic. So-called global children d o
not do better in wh ole language program s than they
wou ld in m ore phon ics-based progr ams. And so-called
analytic children d o not do better in p honics programs
than th ey do in wh ole langu age program s. In short, time
after time, this notion of reading styles does not work.
This is an ar ea that h as been w ell researched. Many
other app roaches to matching teaching app roaches tolearning sty les have not been w ell researched, if at all. I
could not find stud ies in r efereed journals, for example,
documenting whether the use of Howard Gardners
Multip le Intelligences Mod el6 impr oved instru ction. This
does not m ean, of course, that the u se of the m odel does
not imp rove achievement, only that I could n ot find
studies validating its use. The same is true of other
learning style mod els.
One cann ot p rove a negative. Even if all of these
studies failed to find that matching children by learning
styles helps th em read better, it is always p ossible that
another study or another measure or another somethingwill find th at matching children to their p referred
learning mod ality w ill prod uce results. But in the
meantime, we have other things that we know will
impr ove children s reading a chievement. We should look
elsewhere for solutions to read ing p roblems.
Yet, the notion of read ing styles (or learning styles)
lingers on. This is true not on ly in m y talks with teachers,
but a lso in th e literature th at teachers read. The most
recent issue ofEducational Leadership includ ed, as part of a
themed issue on innov ations, several articles on learning
styles. Phi Delta Kappan also regu larly contains articles on
learning styles, as do other pu blications intend ed for
teachers.
Research into Learning Styles
Amon g others, Marie Carbo claims that h er learning
styles work is based on research. [I d iscuss Carbo becau se
she pu blishes extensively on h er mod el and is very
prom inent on the w orkshop circuit. In th e references for
this article, I cite a few examples of her numerous
writings on th e topic.7] But given the overw helmingly
negative findings in the p ublished research, I won dered
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wh at she was citing, and about a d ecade ago, I thought it
wou ld be interesting to take a look. Reviewing her
articles, I foun d that ou t of 17 stud ies she h ad cited, only
one was p ublished.8 Fifteen were doctoral dissertations
and 13 of these came ou t of one u niversitySt. John s
University in N ew York, Carbos alma m ater. None of
these had been in a p eer-refereed journal. When I looked
closely at the d issertations and other m aterials, I found
that 13 of the 17 stud ies that sup posedly sup port h erclaim had to do w ith learning styles based on something
other th an m odality. In 1997, I foun d 11 add itional
citations. None of these was pu blished, eight w ere disser-
tations, and six of these came from St. John s. In short, the
research cited wou ld not cause anyone to change his or
her mind about learning styles.
What Do People Mean by Learning Styles?
Modality refers to one of the m ain avenu es of sensation
such as vision and hearing. I have only talked ab out
mod ality-based read ing styles because th ese are both thebest researched and the most heavily prom oted. The
Na tional Reading Styles Institute claims that it has
worked with over 150,000 teachers, and its adver tise-
ments seem to be everywh ere. Furtherm ore, these notions
of visual and aud itory learners or global and
analytic learners have been aroun d for a long time and
have found th eir way into a num ber of different
program s, not just the N RSI program s.
There are other w ays of looking at learning styles.
People have prop osed that childr en vary not on ly in
perceptual styles, but on a h ost of different d imensions.
To name a few, people have suggested th at children a reeither two-dim ensional/ three-dimensional, simulta-
neous/ sequential, connecting/ comp artmentalizing,
inventing/ reprod ucing, reflective/ impu lsive, field
depend ent/ field independ ent, and so on.
Som e of these are learning preferences, or how a n
individu al chooses to work. These might includ e wh ether
a person p refers to wor k in silence or with m usic playing,
in bright light or d im light, with a par tner or alone, in a
warm room or a cool room, etc.
Som e of these are cognitive styles, such as wh ether a
person tend s to reflect before making a choice or makes it
impu lsively, or w hether a p erson tends to focus on detailsor sees the big p icture.
Som e of these arepersonality types, such as wh ether a
person is introverted or extroverted.
Som e of these are aptitudes, like many of How ard
Gardn ers m ultiple intelligences. Gardner suggests that
people vary along at least seven different d imensions
linguistic or the ability to use language, logico-mathematical
or th e ability to use reasoning especially in m athematics,
spatial or the ability to use images or pictures, bodily-kines-
thetic or the ability to control movem ent, musical, int erper-
sonal or the ability to w ork w ith people, and intrapersonal
or the thinking don e inside on eself. The last two are m ore
like personality types, rather than ap titud es or even
learning styles. The others are Gard ners attemp t to
expand the notion of wh at we th ink is intelligent behavior
to peop le who are skilled in mu sic, or dan ce, or even in
interpersonal relations. In contrast to th e trad itional
vision of learning styles as either/ or categories (either a
person is visual or h e or she is au ditory), multiple intelli-
gences are p ut forth by Gard ner as separate abilities. Achild may be strong in a few of these areas, or non e of
these areas.
What is a teacher to d o with all this? If there are
children wh o prefer to work w ith mu sic, then the teacher
might either provid e Walkmans for those who pr efer
mu sic or play mu sic openly and prov ide earplugs for
those who d ont. If there are children w ho p refer to w ork
in bright light, the teacher might seat those childr en over
by the wind ow. Children wh o like to snack wh ile reading
can be allowed to eat d uring class (healthy foods, of
course). It w ould be easy to see how accomm odating all
of these preferences in a class could lead to chaos. Howwould a teacher lectur e, give assignm ents, or even call to
order a class in w hich a sizable prop ortion of the students
was w earing earplugs? Or how d oes one regulate the
temp erature so part of the room is war m and part cool?
Others have u sed learning styles theory as a way of
making su re that all the needs of diverse learners are
being met. Marguerite Radenich u sed Gard ners mod el to
examine literature stud y guides.9 Her ideal was one that
incorporated all of these ways of knowing into an
integrated w hole to be used to stu dy adolescent liter-
ature. Thus, Gardners model was u sed here to create
more mu ltidimensional instruction. This is very d ifferent
from using these different styles to segregate children
into group s where they w ould receive fairly one-dimen -
sional instruction.
Thoughtful edu cators have tried to make this work,
and perhap s it is workable, but trying to meet all of the
preferences of a group of children w ould seem to take
energy that w ould be better spent on other things. This is
especially true since no one has pr oven that it w orks.
Learning Styles and Fortune Telling
Why d oes the notion of learning styles have su chendu ring pop ularitydespite the lack of sup porting
evidence? I believe that this ph enomenon has a lot in
common w ith fortun e telling.
You go to see a fortu ne teller at a circus. She looks
you over and makes some quick jud gmentshow young
or old you are, how n icely you are dressed, whether you
app ear anxious or sad or lonelyand based on these
jud gm ents, tells you r for tu ne. The fortune sh e tells may
be full of simp le and am biguous statementsyou w ill
be successful at you r n ext venture, you will be lucky at
love, or may be mor e complexyou are successful at
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Article 14. DIFFERENT STROKES FOR DIFFERENT FOLKS?
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home, but someone is jealous; make su re you wa tch
you rself. Either w ay, the statemen ts are specific enou gh
so that they sound pred ictive, but am biguous enou gh
that they could app ly to a num ber of situations.
When w e read th e statements on a Learning Style
Inventory, they sound enough like us that w e have a flash
of recognition. These inven tories typ ically consist of a
series of forced choices, such as th ese from Marie Carbos
Reading Style Inventory, Intermediate, 1995.10
a. I always like to be told exactly how I should d o my
reading work.
b. Sometimes I like to be told exactly how I shou ld do
my reading work.
c. I like to decide how to d o my reading work by myself.
Or
a. I like to read in the morning.
b. I dont like to read in the morning.
a. I like to read after lunch.
b. I dont like to read after lunch.
a. I like to read at night.
b. I dont like to read at night.
Or
a. I read best wh ere its quiet with no m usic playing.
b. I read best where there is music playing.
c. I read about the same wh ere its quiet or wh ere there
is mu sic playing.
Since all of us h ave som e preferences (my experience
is that adu lts have clear preferences about m usic during
read ing, especially), these items tend to r ing tru e. Like the
fortunes told b y the fortu ne teller, these statements at first
light seem specific enough to captu re real d istinctions
amon g p eople. But the p roblem w ith choices like these is
that p eople tend to m ake the same choices. Nearly
everybody w ould prefer a d emonstration in science class
to an un interrup ted lecture. This does not mean that such
individu als have a visual style, but that good science
teaching involves demonstrations. Similarly, nearly
everybody w ould agree that one learns more about
playing tennis from p laying than from w atching someone
else play. Again, this does not m ean that p eople are
tactile/ kinesthetic, but th at this is how on e learns to p lay
spor ts. Many of these learn ing styles are not really
choices, since comm on sense wou ld sug gest that therewou ld not be mu ch variance amon g peop le. In the class
sample prov ided w ith the Reading Style Inventory above,
for examp le, 96 percent of the fifth-grader s assessed
preferred quiet to working w hile other people were
talking, 88 percent p referred quiet to music, 79 percent
picked at least two times a day wh en they preferred to
work, 71 percent had no p reference about temperatu re,
and so on. Virtually all of the questions had on e answer
preferred by a m ajority of the students.
The questions are just specific enough to soun d like
they mean someth ing, but vagu e enough to allow
different interp retations. For example, does mu sic refer
to Mozart or Rap? Obviously, ones choices wou ld be
different for different types of music. A more serious
question wou ld arise over the teacher direction item.
Doesnt the amou nt of teacher d irection needed d epend
on th e d ifficulty of the assignment? There are some
assignm ents that are self evident and do not n eed mu ch
teacher d irection, but wh en w ork gets comp lex, stud ents
need more d irection. This is not a matter of preference.The other major problem with these inventories is
that th ere are no qu estions about a childs reading ability.
So children w ith reading p roblems are given the same
measure as children wh o are doing w ell in reading. This
has tw o effects. First, there is a bias on some item s for
children with different abilities. Consider th ese two
items, also from the Carbo inventory:
a. Its easy for me to remember rules about sound ing
out words.
b. Its hard for me to remember rules about sound ing
out words.
Or
a. When I write words, I sometimes mix up the letters.
b. When I write word s, I almost never mix up the let-
ters.
Children with r eading p roblems are more likely to
answer that they d o not remember ph onics rules and that
they sometimes mix up the letters. According to the
learning styles research reports, such children are likely
to be considered as hav ing a global (or visual)
preference.11 Actually, this may n ot be a preference at all,but a reflection of the childs cur rent level of reading
ability. The p otential for h arm occurs w hen children with
reading problems are classified as global (visual)
learners and thereby m iss out on impor tant instruction in
decoding, or are classified as analytic (auditory)
learners and m iss out on op portu nities to practice reading
in connected t ext.
Not including inform ation about read ing ability also
leads to some strange pr escriptions. Adults attending
learning styles workshops often get prescriptions for
beginning reading instruction method s, such as the
language experience app roach or ph onics/ linguisticapp roaches, certainly not needed by competent readers.
And for children, too, some of the app roaches may be
inapp ropr iate. The language experience approach, for
example, is best suited for childr en at th e emergent
literacy stage, when they need to learn about basic print
concepts, one-to-one matching, letter identification, and
so on.12 For a second -grader, or even a n ewly literate
adu lt, language experience may be app ropriate (if they
still have n ot m astered basic print concepts) or highly
inapp ropr iate (if they are already read ing fluently). It
dep ends on th e readers skill, not th eir learning styles.
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Reliability
If you are to u se a test, even an inventory like the one cited
above, it shou ld be reliable. If a test is reliable, tha t means
you a re going to get the sam e (or close to the same) results
every tim e you ad min ister it. If a test is 100 per cent
reliable (or has a reliability coefficient o f 1.0), then a
person w ill score exactly the same on Thursd ay as on
Tuesday. Perfection is tough to come by, so we generallywant a reliability coefficient to be .90 or h igher.13 If a test
is not reliable, or tru stworth y, then it is difficult to believe
the results. This is a problem, not on ly with inventories,
but w ith any m easure that asks subjects to report about
themselves.
Reliabilities of these measures are relatively low . The
self-reported reliabilities of Carbos Reading Style
Inventory and D unn and Dun ns Learning Style Inven-
tories are mod erate, especially for a measure of this
kindin the neighborhood of the .60s and the .70s.
Similar reliabilities are repor ted for the Myers-Briggs
Inventory, another learning styles assessment.14 Theseare lower than on e would w ant for a diagnostic measure.
And , these scores are inflated , since for many items there
is generally one answ er that n early everybody chooses.
This would tend to m ake the reliabilities higher.
The vagueness in the items may ten d to m ake the
reliabilities low. Again, how a child interp rets each item
will influence how it is answered, as w ith the teacher
direction an d mu sic examp les discussed earlier.
Test-retest reliabilities are particular ly importan t for
a measu re of learn ing styles. These moderate reliabilities
could be interpreted in tw o ways. The test itself may not
be a reliable measure of what it is supp osed to m easurethat is, a person h as a stable learning style, but th e test is
not gett ing at it. If the test is not reliable, then the infor-
mation it gives is not trustworth y.
The other possibility is that learn ing styles may
change, from mon th to mon th, or even w eek to week.
This is also problem atic. If we are talking abou t matching
a person to a situation using this instrum ent, this is a
relatively long-term (semester or academic year)
ma tching. If a persons style changes, then on e either
mu st measure learning styles frequently, or allow for
more flexible assignments.
How Reading D evelops
The Learning Style mod el assumes that different children
need d ifferent ap proaches to learn to read. Children are
different. They come to us with different p ersonalities,
preferences, ways of d oing things. H owever, the r esearch
so far shows that this has little to do with how successful
they w ill be as readers an d w riters. Children also come to
us w ith different amou nts of exposu re to written text,
with d ifferent skills and abilities, with d ifferent exposu re
to oral langu age. The research show s that th ese differ-
ences are important.
Rather than different m ethods being app ropr iate for
different children , we ough t to think abou t d ifferent
method s being ap prop riate for children at different
stages in their d evelopment. Children d iffer in their
phonemic abilities, in their ability to recognize words
autom atically, in their ability to comp rehend and learnfrom text, and in their motivation and app reciation of
literature.15 Different m ethods are ap prop riate for
different goals. For example, appr oaches that involve th e
children in reading books of their own choice are
important to develop motivated readers.16 But wh ole
language ap proaches, which rely largely on childr en to
choose the ma terials they read , tend not to be as effective
as more teacher-directed ap proaches for developing
childr ens word recognition or comp rehension.17
A language experience approach may be app ropriate
to help a kindergarten child learn basic print concepts.
The child m ay learn some w ords u sing visual cues, suchas might be taught through a w hole word method. With
some d egree of phon ological awareness, the child is
ready to learn letters and soun ds, as throu gh a ph onic
app roach. Learning about letters and sound s, in combi-
nation w ith p ractice with increasingly challenging texts,
will develop child rens ability to use ph onetic cues in
read ing, and to cross-check using context. With
add itional p ractice in w ide read ing, children w ill develop
fluent an d au tomatic word recognition. Non e of this has
anything to d o with learning styles; it has to do w ith the
childr ens current abilities and the d emand s of the task
they have to master n ext.
What Do Teachers Get out of Learning Styles
Workshops?
I have interviewed a n um ber of teachers who h ave
attended learning styles workshop s. These were
meetings of 200 to 300 teachers and p rinciples, who p aid
$129 or so to attend a one-day w orkshop or up to $500 to
attend a longer conference. They hav e found them to be
pleasant experiences with professional p resenters. The
teachers also feel that they learned something from the
worksh ops. After I pressed th em, what it seemed th atthey learned is a wide variety of reading m ethods, a
respect for ind ividual d ifferences among children, and a
sense of possibilities of how to teach read ing. This is no
small thing. However, the same information, and mu ch
more, can be gotten from a gra du ate class in the teaching
of reading.
These teachers have anoth er thing in common after
one year, they had all stopped trying to match children by
learning styles.
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REFERENCES
1. Tarver, Sara, and M. M. Dawson . 1978. Modality preference and the
teaching of reading.Journal of Learning Disabilities 11: 1729.
2. Arter, J. A., and Joseph A. Jenkins. 1979. Differential diagnosis-pre-
scriptive teaching: A critical appraisal.Review of Educational Re-
search 49: 517555.
3. Kamp wirth, T. J., and M. Bates. 1980. Modality preference and teach-
ing method . A review of the research.Academic Therapy 15: 597
605.4. Kavale, Kenneth A., and Steven R. Forness. 1987. Substan ce over
style: Assessing the efficacy of mod ality testing and teaching.Ex-
ceptional Children 54: 228239.
5. Snider, Vicki E. 1992. Learning styles and learning to read : A critique.
Remedial and S pecial Education 13: 618.
6. Gardner, Howard . 1993. Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelli-
gences. New York: Basic Books.
7. For example, Carbo, Marie. 1997. Reading styles times twen ty.Educa-
tional Leadership 54 (6): 3842; Carbo, Marie, Rita Dun n, an d Ken -
neth Du nn. 1986. Teaching students to read through their individual
learning styles. Englewo od C liffs, N.J.: Pren tice-Hall.
8. See Stahl, Steven A. 1988. Is there evidence to supp ort matching read -
ing styles and initial reading method s? A reply to Carbo. Phi Delta
Kappan 70 (4): 317322.
9. Radenich, Marguerite Cogorno. 1997. Separating the wheat from thechaff in midd le school literatur e study gu ides.Journal of Adolescent
and Adult Literacy 41 (1): 4657.
10. All examples are from Carbo, Marie. 1995.Reading Sty le Inventory In-
termediate (RSI-I); Author.
11. Carbo, M. 1988. Debunking the great phonics myth. Phi Delta Kappan
70: 226240.
12. Stahl, Steven A., and Patricia D. Miller. 1989. Whole langu age and
languag e experience appr oaches for beginning read ing: A quan ti-
tative research synthesis.Review of Educational Research 59 (1): 87
116.
13. Harr is, Albert J., and Ed ward Sipay. 1990.How to increase reading
ability. 10th ed. Wh ite Plains, N.Y.: Longm an.
14. Pittenger, David J. 1993. The utility of the Myers-Briggs Type Ind i-
cator.Review of Educational Research 63: 467488.
15. Stahl, Steven A. 1998. Und erstand ing shifts in read ing and its in-
struction, Peabody Journal of Education 73 (34): 3167.
16. Morrow , Lesley M., and Diane Tracey. 1998. Motivating contexts for
youn g childrens literacy developm ent: Imp lications for word r ec-
ognition development. In Word recognit ion in beginning literacy, ed-
ited by J. Metsala and L. Ehri. Mahw ah, N .J.: Erlbaum ; Turner,
Julianne, and Scott G. Paris. 1995. How literacy tasks influence
children s m otivation for literacy. The Reading Teacher48: 662673.
17. Stahl and Miller, op. cit., Stahl, Steven A., C. William Suttles, and
Joan R. Pagnucco. 1996. The effects of traditional and process liter-
acy instru ction on first-grad ers read ing and w riting achievemen t
and orientation toward reading.Journal of Educational Research. 89:
131144.
Steven A . Stahl is professor of reading education at the Un iversity of
Georgia and co-director of the Center for Improvement of Early Read-
ing A chievement. His research interests are in beginn ing reading and
vocabulary instruction.
FromAmerican Educator, Fall 1999, pp. 27-31. Reprinted with permission of the author and [&em]American Educator[&stop], the quarterly journal ofAmerican Federation of Teachers.