The "Learning Styles" Trap: Why You Don't Need All the Answers Before You Start

Were you ever told as a newbie to figure out your child's learning style before choosing a curriculum or deciding how to homeschool?

What if I told you that you didn't need to? That you can successfully, confidently homeschool without ever knowing exactly how your child learns best?

I know that might sound strange. After all, I see it all the time online: homeschool moms are constantly told that if they can just identify how their child learns best (ie. whether their child is a visual learner, auditory learner or kinesthetic learner), everything else will fall into place. Curriculum choices will become obvious. Teaching will become easier. Learning will happen more naturally and homeschooling will be happier.

It sounds logical.

The problem is that it isn't true.

In fact, the pressure to figure out your child's learning style before you begin homeschooling can become a trap. A needless one. It convinces moms that there's yet another step they need to take: They need more information. More research. More certainty. More answers. All before they can even make the decision to homeschool or choose the "right" curriculum.

Meanwhile, their child is right there, already learning things each and every day with or without a curriculum and without Mom knowing their learning style.

Here's the thing though:

Identifying how they learn best doesn't really matter.

If that's got you reeling a bit, keep reading. 

Research has repeatedly failed to find evidence that matching teaching to a child's preferred learning style improves learning outcomes. What does help is encountering ideas in multiple ways and engaging with them deeply. No person is going to to learn everything best by doing it in the same way every time anyhow. While we may have tendencies or preferences, the reality is we may more easily remember something we read on one topic, yet remember some other topic better by doing a hands-on activity than simply reading about it.

What does this mean in terms of choosing an approach or curriculum? Basically, don't get caught up in learning styles when choosing. Think in terms of what you think you would enjoy, your kids might enjoy, knowing that you can add in other things -- videos, hands-on activities, discussions, pictures, etc. -- as needed where anybody's struggling to understand or just for the pure enjoyment of it. I still remember doing high school social studies with one of the kids and, surprisingly, thoroughly enjoying myself despite social studies having been my least favourite subject in school. Why was social studies better this way? Because we added in movies and interesting nonfiction books and research to answer questions that came up. Not because of finding the right curriculum or because "learning through movies" was the student's style, but by exploring and going deeper in a variety of ways.