Tailoring Education to Learning Styles: Enhancing Student Engagement

Every student who walks into a classroom brings a unique set of preferences about how they best receive, process, and retain information. Some naturally gravitate toward diagrams and charts, while others need to hear an explanation out loud or physically work through a problem to truly understand it. These differences are what educators broadly refer to as learning styles – and understanding them is one of the most practical steps a teacher can take to improve student engagement, comprehension, and academic outcomes. While the science around fixed learning styles has its nuances, the core idea remains valuable: students are not all the same, and neither should teaching be.

What are learning styles? 🔗

Learning styles describe the diverse ways in which individuals prefer to engage with and process information. According to the American Psychological Association, the concept holds that everyone has a style of learning through which they learn best, and that material presented in one’s preferred style will be learned more efficiently and effectively. It is worth noting that the term overlaps with related concepts such as cognitive styles, learner preferences, and thinking styles – all of which describe how people habitually approach learning tasks. Rather than treating these styles as rigid boxes, educators are better served by viewing them as flexible tendencies that can inform – but not limit – instructional choices.

The VAK model: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners 🔗

The most widely known framework is the VAK model (sometimes expanded to VARK, which adds Reading/Writing). Research traced by the APA shows that this typology originated from the psychology of mental imagery and word recall in the early 20th century, later gaining broad popularity in classrooms from the 1980s onward. While the model is frequently discussed in teacher education, it provides a practical starting point for understanding learner preferences.

Visual learners 🔗

Visual learners prefer to take in information through diagrams, charts, graphs, patterns, and other visual representations. As described by the University of Arkansas, these students learn best when they can see relationships between ideas – they tend to take notes, make illustrations, and visualize problems on paper. Importantly, they do not necessarily learn well from photographs or videos alone; they respond better to structured visual frameworks that show how concepts connect.

Auditory learners 🔗

Auditory learners understand information best when they hear it. According to Whitby School, these learners remember and understand new concepts better when they are explained out loud – even if they are doing the speaking themselves. They can retain knowledge more effectively when new ideas are paired with sound, rhythm, or discussion. In practice, they benefit from lectures, group conversations, recorded explanations, and oral recitation of content.

Kinesthetic learners 🔗

Kinesthetic learners learn through physical engagement and direct experience. Research on learning styles indicates that the best way to present new information to a kinesthetic learner is through personal experience, practice, examples, or simulations – for instance, they can better remember a scientific experiment by actually performing it rather than reading about it. These learners tend to be physically active, preferring to handle materials, carry out tasks, and learn by doing.

Reading/writing learners 🔗

The expanded VARK model adds a fourth category: reading/writing learners, who consume information best through text. These students perform strongly on written assignments and prefer to convert charts, diagrams, and discussions into written statements they can review and study from. To a reading/writing learner, the written word carries more meaning than any visual or spoken alternative.

How personality influences learning approaches 🔗

Beyond sensory preferences, a student’s personality plays a significant role in shaping how they approach learning. Introverted students often prefer solitary study and individual tasks, while extroverted students thrive in collaborative, discussion-based settings. Research on learner types confirms this distinction, noting that social learners favor peer interaction and role-playing activities, while solitary learners excel when given space for independent problem-solving. Motivation, self-esteem, emotional resilience, and tolerance for ambiguity all further shape how students engage with content. These personality-driven learning preferences do not override cognitive abilities, but they do influence how consistently a student engages with learning tasks across different environments.

Deep learning vs. surface learning 🔗

One of the most educationally significant distinctions in learning style research is the difference between deep and surface learning approaches. These terms were first introduced by researchers Marton and Säljö in 1976 and have since become central to how educators think about instructional quality.

Surface learning 🔗

Surface learning is primarily driven by memorization and reproduction of content. A review published in PMC defines it as an intention and strategy mainly aimed at rote learning and studying to pass the test. Students who use surface approaches focus on getting through assessments rather than genuinely understanding the subject. While surface learning has its place – particularly for foundational facts, key terminology, and essential formulas – heavy reliance on it at higher levels is associated with lower academic achievement and poor long-term retention.

Deep learning 🔗

Deep learning, by contrast, involves actively engaging with subject material to seek understanding and meaning. According to the Distance Learning Institute, deep learners read and think widely, connecting new information to what they already know, driven by curiosity and a genuine desire to understand rather than simply pass assessments. A 2025 study published in the European Journal of Educational Research found that high-performing students tended to prefer deep learning strategies, while low-performing students relied more heavily on surface approaches. Deep learners extend ideas, detect patterns, and apply knowledge in new contexts – skills that educational researcher John Hattie identifies as essential for genuine intellectual development.

Crucially, surface and deep learning are not entirely opposed. Hattie’s research suggests they exist on a continuum – students need surface knowledge as a foundation before they can engage in deeper processing. Effective teaching moves students progressively from one level to the other, using strategies like higher-order questioning, authentic assessments, and problem-based tasks.

Field dependence vs. field independence 🔗

Another important dimension of cognitive style is the distinction between field-dependent and field-independent learners – a concept introduced by Witkin and colleagues in 1971 and described as one of the most extensively studied cognitive style dimensions in education.

Research on this dimension characterizes field-independent learners as analytical, structured, detail-oriented, and internally motivated. They tend to work well independently and are more comfortable in subjects requiring logical, systematic analysis – such as mathematics and science. Field-dependent learners, on the other hand, are described as more globally-oriented and socially sensitive. They prefer learning activities embedded in a social context and rely more on external cues and group interaction to make sense of content.

Educational psychology research from Lumen Learning also points out that field-dependent students may struggle in large group settings where lessons lack structure, and tend to underperform on open-ended questions compared to their field-independent peers. However, these are tendencies rather than fixed rules – and both styles carry genuine strengths. Field-independent learners benefit from tasks requiring independent analysis, while field-dependent learners thrive in collaborative, context-rich environments. Effective classrooms include both.

The impulsivity-reflectivity continuum 🔗

A third cognitive style dimension that significantly affects classroom learning is the impulsivity-reflectivity continuum, first studied systematically by psychologist Jerome Kagan in the early 1960s. This style describes how quickly a learner responds to tasks and the degree to which they pause to consider options before acting.

According to Encyclopedia.com, students who score as reflective take more time than the median on tasks but produce more accurate work. Those who score as impulsive respond quickly but with less accuracy – they tend to rush through assignments, miss correct answers, and have greater difficulty with open-ended questions. Studies have also found that the classroom environment itself shapes this style: students placed with reflective teachers became more reflective over the course of the year, while those with impulsive teachers showed increased impulsivity – highlighting the powerful influence of teaching behavior on learner tendencies.

Importantly, impulsivity is not always a disadvantage. Research cited in educational psychology shows that spontaneous, impulsive responses can actually benefit students in cooperative learning tasks and team-based activities, where quick engagement is an asset. The goal for educators is not to make all students reflective, but to build environments where both tendencies can be productively channeled.

Why accommodating diverse learning styles matters 🔗

No student enters a classroom with only one learning style operating in isolation. Most people are a combination of learning preferences, with one or two tending to dominate depending on the subject, context, and stage of learning. This reality has a direct implication for teaching: a single instructional method will never fully serve all learners in a room.

When teachers diversify their instructional strategies – using visual aids for visual learners, discussion and verbal explanation for auditory learners, and hands-on activities for kinesthetic learners – they increase the likelihood that all students can access the content meaningfully. Similarly, designing assessments that reward both deep processing and strategic thinking, offering tasks for both field-independent and field-dependent learners, and pacing activities to accommodate both reflective and impulsive students, creates a classroom where no student is systematically disadvantaged by the mismatch between their cognitive style and the teaching approach.

Research from Marian College emphasizes that relevance, higher-order objectives, and student choice are among the most powerful levers for encouraging deeper engagement – strategies that naturally benefit learners across all style dimensions. When students are given appropriate autonomy, challenged to think critically, and supported through varied instructional formats, engagement and comprehension improve across the board.

What do you think? How much do you consciously adapt your teaching methods to accommodate different learning styles in a single lesson – and do you find that students who seem “disengaged” often just need a different entry point into the content? If you were to redesign one of your existing lessons with field-dependent, field-independent, reflective, and impulsive learners all in mind, what would you change first?

References

1. https://www.apa.org/pubs/highlights/spotlight/issue-277
2. https://success.uark.edu/get-help/student-resources/learning-styles-characteristics.php
3. https://www.whitbyschool.org/passionforlearning/auditory-visual-and-kinesthetic-helping-children-succeed-through-different-learning-styles
4. https://bau.edu/blog/types-of-learning-styles/
5. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5119847/
6. https://distancelearning.institute/instructional-design/deep-vs-surface-learning-approach/
7. https://www.eu-jer.com/comparing-surface-and-deep-learning-strategies-and-their-relationship-to-high-school-students-academic-performance-in-science
8. https://www.saskoer.ca/teachingdiverselearners/chapter/surface-and-deep-learning-2/
9. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1081668.pdf
10. https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-educationalpsychology/chapter/individual-styles-of-learning-and-thinking/
11. https://www.encyclopedia.com/children/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/cognitive-style
12. https://social.jrank.org/pages/148/Cognitive-Style-Reflectivity-Impulsivity.html
13. https://www.mariancollege.org/miitle/assets/downloads/mitle/resources/Deep-Surface-and-Strategic-Learning.pdf