I did a session tonight as part of a staff meeting on Learning Styles. It does seem to me that it has become a little unfashionable recently to look at VAKD and learning styles and accept its' validity as a model. I have to say that I still like the model and genuinely believes that it goes a long way towards explaining how each of us processes information, learns and remembers.
I have quite happily nailed my colours to the mast of NLP a long time ago and VAKD is a core part of NLP. It certainly explains how I think - I am predominantly a visual and digital learner. I think in pictures. I plan lessons by visualising what I see happening in the room, what the work the kids will do will look like, the images I will use on the board, what they will look like when they are working. I remember in pictures. My memory works like a film and I remember what things looked like. I make sense of information in my own head and need space to work things through. I am very aware of the voice in my head and talk to myself a lot. I rarely use sound, voices and discussion to make sense of things - I am not a strong auditory learner.
I think part of the problem is that VAKD was hijacked by companies and people who wanted to simplify it to make it easier to market and sell. So we get lots of simple questionnaires, charts and labels which mean nothing. One of the keypoints I push with students is to take more notice of your weakest learning style and not your strongest. If the teacher is predominantly using your weakest learning style you will struggle to understand what is going on.
I think Learning Styles strengthens students and builds confidence. It helps students to be aware of what they are best of and understand why they find some things more difficult - it's not because they are thick, they just need to approach it in a different way and be encouraged to by their teachers.
VAKD is a model - as such it is not intended to be perfect and all-encompassing. It has it's faults but also lots of strengths too and I will stick with it for a while until a better model comes along
