VAK or VAK‐uous? Towards the trivialisation of learning and the death of scholarship

Abstract

Developments within education, psychology and the neurosciences have shed a great deal of light on how we learn while, at the same time, confirming for us all that learning is a profoundly complex process and far from understood. Against this background, and in this position article, we consider the recent rise in interest in the concept of learning styles as VAK (visual, auditory, kinaesthetic) in primary schools in England and Wales and begin to identify and interrogate some of the more unorthodox claims frequently used to legitimise and lend support to its validity. Through the casual acceptance and promotion of VAK, and its often wider association with the notions of accelerated and brain‐based learning, it is our assertion that the complexity of learning is becoming increasingly trivialised and scholarship at all levels within certain sectors of the education community compromised.

Keywords:

• VAK
• learning styles
• accelerated learning
• brain‐based learning