MYTH: "Matching teaching to a student's preferred learning style improves learning." Verdict?

DEBUNKED. People have modality preferences, but matching instruction to them does not improve learning — the "meshing hypothesis" has no adequate evidence base.

The strong claim is meshing: teach visual learners visually, auditory learners aurally, and each will learn more. Testing it properly needs a specific design — assign a learning style, cross it with teaching mode, and check that matches beat mismatches.

Pashler, McDaniel, Rohrer & Bjork (2008) reviewed the literature and found almost no studies used that meshing design — and the few that did contradicted it. Their conclusion: "no adequate evidence base." Having a preference is real; the payoff for catering to it is not.