Ah, learning styles: that most hopeful of doctrines embedded in the soul of every caring teacher who wants to believe that each student who struggles in math will turn out to be a Picasso and every student who wrestles with reading will one day become a titan of the business world. Teachers are, by nature, a unique and caring breed with high hopes for all children, so it is only natural for them to be drawn--like Care Bears to rainbows--to a theory of intelligence and learning that explains away the difficulties of struggling learners as a) not being the fault of the child, b) not being the fault of the teacher, c) maintaining the integrity of students' innate skills and confidence, and d) offering a "commonsense" and easy-to-implement solution.
I can't remember the first time that I was introduced to the theory of learning styles, but its impact upon my own learning and teaching goes all the way back to my high school years at least. My dad and brothers were all good at math, but my mom had always said she "just wasn't a math person." When my first ever B came at the hands of Algebra 1, my mom apologized to me for my getting her genes, which just weren't good at math. I plugged along through Geometry, Algebra 2, and Trigonometry--my grade point average hovered near 4.0, which always depended entirely upon whether I could squeeze out an A from that particular semester. I didn't naturally dislike math, but with the pressure to always get As, and the fact that I had already completed all the math credits required to graduate by my junior year, I opted out of Calculus my senior year. I thought, well, I just got the "not good at math" genes, so why force it.
Upon becoming a college student, I weaseled my way out of any difficult math credits by taking "Mathematics in the Social Sciences," befriended the TA, and skated by with an A, never to take another math class! At the same time I was avoiding anything math-related, I began taking education courses, where I was taught that perhaps my learned aversion to math was due to my being a "verbal learner," and therefore, I was born to struggle in higher math courses since they were so abstract and visual in nature. I felt vindicated for having avoided math for the past few years, now knowing that I wasn't to blame: It was, indeed, those damn "not good at math" genes and probably math teachers not knowing how to tap into my verbalness.
Upon becoming a teacher--not a math teacher, mind you--I made it a goal to ascertain students' learning styles to give them the best shot at really learning the information. When a student still struggled, despite my presenting the information in every possible format available, I just chalked it up to their not having "the good at English gene." Ironically, my being misled by a belief in learning styles led me to think of multiple modes of instruction for each lesson, which more recent empirical literature has shown to be beneficial for all learners. I did the right thing for the wrong reasons--all because I believed in the unicorn called learning styles!
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