This blog is dedicated to everyone who’s ever been told:

“If you would just listen you would understand.”

“Just look at the diagram, it makes sense.”

Or “Stop moving around, sit still and just study already.”

Were you never able to just listen? Look? Stop moving? Well, I’m here to validate you, using science (fancy, I know), so the next time that someone tells you to just  _____. You can respond:  “That’s just not my learning style!”

What? Learning style? That’s right. The theory of learning styles was developed by  psychologist, David Kolb, in the 1980’s to explain how and why different people acquired knowledge differently.  Kolb outlined four different potential learning styles based on how learners engage with material by feeling, doing, thinking and/or watching. I won’t delve too deeply into the theory here, but if you’re interested you can find a more detailed explanation here.

Instead, I’m going to focus on the three most popular learning styles categories^{1, 2}: Continue reading →