Let’s throw Learning Styles AND Multiple Intelligences out the window!

Logical-mathematical, musical, analytical, practical, tactile, olfactory, poetic, faith-based, monochromatic—everyone has their own best way of learning and we should cater to each individual’s fundamental learning needs. Maybe some people learn best when surrounded by abstractions in navy, turquoise and yellow. They should all carry this artwork around with them everywhere. 

Right? Nonsense! Learning styles and multiple intelligences are related concepts and stem from related literatures. Some of these concepts that have emerged are reasonable, while others are not. 

• Reasonable: Gardner’s fundamental argument that people can access learning through multiple avenues—for example, through reading a book, watching a video, and practicing in the field—and learners should engage a variety of avenues in order to optimize learning. 
• Unreasonable: The way in which the idea of learning styles has taken root in our collective psyche is not so reasonable. Individuals do not have an innate learning style that needs to be identified and continuously indulged.
• Reasonable: Different types or areas of “intelligence” exist—being skilled at reading people’s emotions is not the same thing as being skilled at mathematical argumentation. Some people have strengths in some areas, while others have strengths in other areas. 
• Unreasonable: Identifying individual strengths and weaknesses and pigeon-holing people toward only their natural “intelligences” would be a really bad way to use the idea of multiple intelligences!

Related, I remain unconvinced by Sternberg’s tripartite categorization of intelligence, or by his research in Kenya. Apparently, Sternberg conducted research that concluded that youth who performed best on tests of practical indigenous knowledge about herbal medicines performed worst on tests of analytic school-based knowledge of traditional academic subjects (and vice-versa). Sternberg concluded that the observed differences stemmed from differences in the priorities of the students’ parents: the students who did well on the practical tests had parents who valued practical knowledge, while the students who did well on the school tests had parents who valued school-based knowledge. 

• Problem #1: The hypothesis about the influence of the students’ environment (i.e. their parents’ values) sounds reasonable enough. But that is a testable hypothesis. Did Sternberg actually gather evidence to support his claim? Or did he just pull it out of his head? The Make It Stick authors do not tell us. 
• Problem #2: Even if the environments hypothesis can be supported with evidence, it seems to me that what it tells us is something about the social component of learning, not anything about the potential existence of multiple intelligences! The hypothesis suggests that their parents’ priorities influenced their own learning—that is primarily social and environmental, not genetic or neurological. We are not focusing on the right thing. 
• Problem #3: For both Sternberg’s study in Kenya and the other referenced study that took place in Brazil, I am unconvinced about the distinction between “practical” and “analytic” knowledge. The authors do not tell us what Sternberg’s school-based tests covered. But it seems entirely possible that it was “practical” knowledge, just as the youth in Brazil were being tested on “practical” math skills. The more salient difference, it seems, is the extent to which the information is framed and contextualized in a way that is relevant and meaningful to the students. Here, too, we are not necessarily seeing the manifestation of different types of intelligence, but rather, the manifestation of different types of motivation. 
• Problem #4: Beyond the Kenyan study in particular, it seems self-evident that there are more ways of knowing than simply “analytical”, “creative” and “practical”. What purpose do these categories serve anyway? And what are we losing by focusing too narrowly? 

To the extent that learning styles and multiple intelligences have been used to constrain learning opportunities more than expand them—or to divert our attention from what's important rather than focus it on what matters—let’s abandon both. In contrast, if we can find ways to expand the evidence-base around multiple intelligences and use that information to optimize and expand learning opportunities for individuals, by all means, let’s move forward.