Oi! Learning Style! Noooo!

I recently saw this post on LinkedIn, from a well known UK recruitment and training company:

Your learning style is your personal ‘comfort zone’ for learning. Individuals, educators, and organisations are becoming increasingly aware of the advantage in catering to learning styles. Download our free guide to learn more:

Each person has a unique way to absorb and process experiences and information. Using Kolb's learning style inventory you can:

Maximise learning potential of yourself and others
Support training design
Analyse and develop team effectiveness
Develope communication and manage conflict

I replied:

Learning cycle yes. Learning styles no, no, no.

Allow me to explain (Thanks Victor!) Kolb's Experiential Learning Theory is a valid and readily observable summary of the natural process that we all go through when we have a new experience and integrate that experience into decisions about future behaviour - a process that we call 'learning'.

We all learn in all ways. However, as soon as we turn a process into a set of categories, we get stuck in a labelling system which is restrictive and doesn't actually support the learning process. So why create the categories? So that a profiling tool can be created and licensed and protected, and training can be sold alongside it.

The commercialisation of Intellectual Property kills it, prevents it from evolving. The only way that this kind of IP evolves is to be killed by a younger, more relevant successor. Witness the heavy handed IP protection of SPIN selling, only for it now to be usurped by The Challenger Sale.

Training and associated companies are under pressure to produce content - ebooks, buyer's guides, website content and of course, training course content. They simply can't create all of this content from scratch, and why would they? The problem comes when their content writers - or any of us - start to believe that, just because something's on the internet, it must be true. Learning Styles must be true, because they have a Wikipedia page and have been around for ages.

Learning theories and models are regularly peddled by anyone wanting to make a quick bit of cash from profiling tests. High volume, low price, and the promise to increase ROI on training budgets, what could go wrong? Honestly, how often do you refer to or think about all those psychometrics you've completed over the years? You probably spend more time on tests that tell you which Star Wars character you are.

We must always remember that learning, and knowledge, are living, evolving, changing, moving processes that are innate to us all. Arbitrary categories are not.