Debunking the Fads That Shortchange Our Learners
Michael Zwaagstra, author of A Sage on the Stage, argues that teachers should use their expertise and content knowledge rather than step aside, and challenges popular fads.
Learning styles debunked? A 2024 meta-analysis found a small benefit that does not justify the cost. What teachers can do instead.
This 2020 video interview with Michael Zwaagstra, author of A Sage on the Stage, questions popular classroom fads such as learning styles. A new section below, added in 2026, sets out what the research since then shows and what teachers and school leaders can do with it.
In this interview with Michael Zwaagstra, author of A Sage on the Stage: Common Sense Reflections on Teaching and Learning (John Catt Educational), you’ll hear about some of the fads that are shortchanging students, and the evidence that debunks them. Zwaagstra challenges the notion that teachers should “get out of the way” and let students learn things for themselves, instead, advocating for an approach where teachers exercise their expertise and share their substantial content knowledge with students. He doesn’t argue that teachers should do all the talking in classrooms, but does state that teachers should be in charge of leading the learning process, and describes a thriving classroom environment as one that is orderly, structured, and where students understand the expectations.
As you listen to the interview, consider Zwaagstra’s perspectives, along with the reflection questions below, and think about how they match up with your own experience:
• Were you surprised to hear that there’s no evidence to support the existence of different “learning styles?” With this in mind, how might you adjust the teaching strategies in your school?
• “Is there evidence that this is going to improve learning?” This is the number one question leaders should ask themselves when deciding whether or not to purchase a new technology, according to Zwaagstra. Have you consistently applied this question to your purchasing decisions? What other questions should leaders be asking?
• Are there any other education beliefs, not mentioned in the interview, that you believe are myths that should be debunked? Based on your experience, why have you come to view these ideas as myths?
Learn more about Michael Zwaagstra’s book, A Sage on the Stage, and more great John Catt Educational publications, by visiting us.johncattbookshop.com
Learning styles debunked: what the evidence says in 2026 and what to do instead
Michael Zwaagstra told viewers in 2020 that there is no evidence to support the existence of different learning styles. The idea that each student has a preferred style, such as visual, auditory or hands-on, and learns best when lessons match it, is a familiar one in schools. Learning styles debunked is a claim that deserves a careful reading, because the research since 2020 is more detailed than a simple yes or no, and the practical advice for teachers follows from the details.
What the most recent research found
In July 2024, Virginia Clinton-Lisell of the University of North Dakota and Christine Litzinger published Is it really a neuromyth? A meta-analysis of the learning styles matching hypothesis in Frontiers in Psychology. A meta-analysis is a study that combines the results of many earlier studies. This one gathered 21 studies with 1,712 participants, ranging from elementary school students to adults in college courses. Students whose instruction was matched to their learning style scored slightly better on tests. Clinton-Lisell, writing about the work in The Conversation in January 2025, concluded that the benefit was not enough to justify the time and money needed to assess each student and personalize lessons, and noted that most of the individual studies found no benefit at all.
That finding is worth stating exactly. It does not say that matching never helps anyone. It says that the gain, where it appears, is small, and that the cost of identifying every student’s style and rebuilding lessons around it is large. Clinton-Lisell raised a possible explanation for the small gains: students may do better with matched instruction because they have more skill in that particular modality, not because of a fixed learning style. Clinton-Lisell plans to examine how skills in a particular modality relate to learning styles, so the question remains open.
Preferences are real, and they are not the same as styles
Students do have preferences. Some say they like diagrams, others like to talk a problem through. Nothing in the research above suggests that teachers should ignore those preferences or that students should be told they are mistaken about themselves. The finding is narrower: designing instruction around a single style per student has not been shown to produce learning gains large enough to be worth the effort. A student who prefers pictures still needs to learn to read a dense paragraph, and a student who prefers listening still needs to read a graph.
For this reason, Clinton-Lisell writes that researchers tend to discourage matching instruction to learning styles, and says multimodal instruction, in which students are exposed to a variety of modalities and learn to engage with all of them, may be more efficient. The same piece adds that the research on its benefits is not fully clear yet. A reasonable reading for a school leader is that mixing modes costs little and carries little risk, while the strong claims made for it have not been tested thoroughly.
What the evidence supports instead
Zwaagstra argues in the interview above that teachers should lead the learning process using their content knowledge, in a classroom that is orderly and structured. That position has support in a well-known summary of instructional research. In Principles of Instruction, published in American Educator in Spring 2012, Barak Rosenshine drew on three sources: cognitive science, studies of master teachers (teachers whose classes made the highest gains on achievement tests), and research on cognitive supports for complex tasks. The ten principles include beginning a lesson with a short review of previous learning, presenting new material in small steps with student practice after each step, asking many questions and checking the responses of all students, providing models, guiding student practice, obtaining a high success rate, providing scaffolds for difficult tasks, and engaging students in weekly and monthly review.
None of these practices depends on a student’s supposed style. All of them can be done with words, pictures, diagrams, worked examples and hands-on tasks, which fits Zwaagstra’s point that teachers should not do all the talking while still being in charge of the learning. A teacher who checks the understanding of all students and adjusts is responding to what each student actually knows, which is a more reliable guide than a style label.
Asking whether there is evidence before buying
The second reflection question above, on the question leaders should ask before purchasing technology, applies to this topic directly, because any assessment, software or training that sorts students by style can be asked for studies that compared matched and unmatched instruction. The same question is being asked at the district level today. In a June 2026 GovTech report, Marguerite Roza of Georgetown’s Edunomics Lab said that districts do not necessarily have strong data on how much the tech is being used, and that they also lack data on whether tools overlap, whether teachers like them and whether they accelerate learning. A leader who asks for evidence before a purchase, and again a year afterward, is applying the question Zwaagstra describes.
What a school can do this year
- Tell teachers plainly that student preferences are worth listening to and that learning styles are not a basis for grouping or planning. Staff who were trained in styles earlier in their careers deserve a respectful explanation, not a correction.
- Check any professional development, curriculum or software that sorts students into styles, and ask the provider for studies that compared matched and unmatched instruction.
- Build the habits Rosenshine describes into planning and observation: review, small steps, frequent checks of every student’s understanding, and a high success rate before independent work.
- Vary the way content is presented because the content calls for it. A map belongs in a geography lesson for every student, and a spoken explanation belongs in a lesson on pronunciation for every student.
Readers interested in how schools plan and evaluate staff learning can follow the edCircuit professional development guide.
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