Learning styles in counseling: a scoping review of the empirical evidence

ABSTRACT

The concept of learning styles is popular among educators and the general public; however, many have highlighted the lack of empirical evidence supporting its relevance. We conducted a systematic literature search to identify the scope of empirical studies on learning styles applied to counseling and counseling education. Only 17 empirical studies were identified, indicating a relative lack of research. Four studies reported on the application of learning styles in treatments (of either the client, the counselor, and/or the treatment), suggesting that matching learning styles of intervention and client might be beneficial. Thirteen studies reported on learning styles in training settings (of students and their supervisor/teacher or field instructor). Although students’ learning styles appeared flexible, social work students frequently reported an active experiential learning style and counseling students as well as more experienced clinicians appeared more abstract and reflective. The majority of studies were cross-sectional survey studies and many reported minimal psychometric data on the used self-report measures of learning styles, which appeared to conflate the concepts of learning preference and learning ability. At present, there is no adequate evidence to justify incorporating learning styles assessments into counseling practice or training.

KEYWORDS:

• Learning styles
• counseling
• education
• therapy training

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Role of funding source

This study was not funded by any grants.

Role of contributors

All authors contributed to and have approved the final manuscript. KA developed the original systematic search design, inclusion criteria, and quality assessments of methods and measures, wrote the majority of the manuscript and its revisions. KN initiated the topic and conducted the original systematic search and conducted the initial assessment under the supervision of KA. ZC conducted the systematic search update and double-checked inclusion criteria, write-up and references.

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. A helpful overarching framework is described in Curry’s onion model of cognitive style (1987), also applied to nursing training (Griggs et al., 1994) and medical education (Curry, 2002), that describes personality dimensions, social interaction models, and instructional preference models, as different from the information-processing model that addresses the individual’s preferred approach to assimilating information, as operationalized by Kolb’s LSs.

2. Most psychotherapies involve a certain element of psycho-education of psychopathology development (Lightburn & Beck Black, 2001), although different treatment modalities might emphasize different LSs. For example, in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy therapists might focus on teaching skills (Riess, 2002), whereas psychodynamic therapist might teach relationally by way of corrective emotional experiences or making transference interpretations (e.g. Stern et al., 1998)

3. We originally aimed to focus on the use of LS in mental health training specifically. However, given the very small n, we decided to not only include studies conducted within training settings but also include studies reporting on the use of LS in psychotherapy treatment settings.

4. We originally aimed to narrow our search to Kolb’s definition of LS only, but, we soon realized there were very few empirical studies on this conceptualization of LS, and therefore decided to include empirical studies that used different definitions of LS.

5. We decided not to specifically add terms for different mental health professions, such as social work, occupational therapy, and nursing, because these fields were already investigated with regards to their application of the LS literature (e.g. Andreou, Papastavrou, & Merkouris, 2014) and because we were interested in applications in the field of clinical psychology in particular. This means that we only included studies that included these professions if they used the term “psychology” or “psychotherapy” or “counseling” in their abstract.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Katie Aafjes-van Doorn

Dr. Katie Aafjes-van Doorn is Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology at the Clinical Psychology Program of the Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology. She received a MSc in Clinical Psychology from the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, as well as a MSc in Psychological Research and a doctorate in Clinical Psychology from University of Oxford, UK and completed a one-year postdoctoral research fellowship at the Gordon F. Derner School of Psychology, Adelphi University, New York. 

Kevin J. Nissen

Kevin J. Nissen is a third year doctoral candidate in the Derner School of Psychology at Adelphi University. His research focuses on integration, personality pathology, political opinion forming, and unconscious processing. Kevin obtained an MA in clinical psychology from the Derner School of Psychology in 2020. Prior to his doctoral studies, Kevin earned a MS in education from Dowling College and a BA in history from Stony Brook University.

Zhaoyi Chen

Zhaoyi Chen is a third-year student in the Clinical Psychology program at Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology. She grew up in Changsha, China, and received her B.A. in Psychology from Grinnell College in 2014, and M.A. in Counseling for Mental Health and Wellness from New York University in 2017. Zhaoyi’s research broadly pertains to psychotherapy process, telemental health, and cultural adaptation of psychotherapy. Her clinical experiences include providing individual and group therapy in person and via videoconferencing in English and Chinese.