Last post, we discussed how learning styles theory doesn’t actually have much evidence supporting it. But you might be thinking, “Okay, but does this really matter? Like, even if it’s not proven, what’s the harm in believing it’s valid or letting others believe it’s valid?”

To me, this conversation is an important one, because I believe that hanging on to and perpetuating unsupported theories (like learning styles) is actually causing real harm to learners. In this post, I’d like to share why.

We’re Working with Limited Resources

Every educational setting—whether it’s a private school, a public university, a hospital training program, or a corporate learning department—has limits. You eventually run out of time, staff, budget, and even your learners’ attention and motivation. So when resources are tight, should we invest in teaching strategies we know work or ones we know don’t work?

Sounds like an obvious answer, right? Of course we should choose what works! But this doesn’t always happen. Sometimes decision-makers knowingly choose the ineffective option anyway.

Take abstinence-only smoking cessation as an example. This approach pushes patients to quit nicotine entirely, often abruptly. Yet most people don’t succeed, and the strategy can cause harm by discouraging future attempts to quit. In contrast, harm-reduction approaches, like gradual reduction or switching to less harmful alternatives, often have much better long-term outcomes. Despite this evidence, some clinical guidelines continue to tell healthcare providers to teach abstinence-only methods to patients.

So, when we teach ineffective strategies, we’re not just wasting resources, we’re actively taking them away from strategies that actually help learners succeed. And in the process, we’re directly harming the people we’re supposed to be helping.

Leadership Teams Don’t Have Their Finger on the Pulse

When we let unsupported educational theories hang around and continue to be perceived as equal to evidence-based ones, we create a real problem for decision-makers. Hospital administrators, university leaders, or government officials are often not experts in learning science and educational psychology. They may rely on what they’ve heard or what seems credible, and as a result, allocate resources to strategies that don’t actually work.

They might turn to us, the educational experts in our organizations, and ask for advice. If we tell them to follow strategies that aren’t backed by evidence, not only are we wasting those limited resources, but we risk losing their trust when the training doesn’t produce the desired results. And once you lose credibility with leadership, it becomes much harder to advocate for what actually works later on down the road. Because later, you’ll be swimming upstream, countering public discourse that supports the myth you’re trying to dispel. It will take a lot more trust to get them to green-light the evidence-based but less well-known teaching strategy, and that trust may now be in short supply after the previous (failed) training experience.

Learners Lose Their Confidence

Another risk we face by teaching ineffective educational strategies is causing learners to lose confidence in their abilities. First, we know that a learner’s motivation and self-efficacy are closely related to their experience of being successful. In other words, they are motivated when they can see their improvements, and their belief that they can be successful at learning even more in the future improves, as well. If we use ineffective teaching strategies, we’re setting learners up to fail, and in turn they may lose both their motivation to keep learning and their belief that they can succeed at the given task.

Loss of confidence and motivation are big risks of the learning styles myth, too. When learners believe that learning styles are real and evidence-based, and then they encounter material that doesn’t match their supposed “style,” they might assume they won’t be successful because the learning material does not adhere to their preferences. As a result, they may not try to engage with the material in the first place and completely forgo this learning opportunity, even though it could have (and probably would have) been valuable.

In both cases, reduced motivation and self-efficacy can shape a learner’s future decisions. Learners may invest less effort in new learning, avoid professional development opportunities, or decide not to pursue graduate education or leadership roles. These choices can contribute to poorer job performance or career stagnation, which in turn can reinforce negative beliefs about their abilities. Over time, this cycle can erode the learner’s self-confidence, earning potential, and career and life satisfaction.

What begins as a seemingly harmless belief about learning styles ultimately has the potential to narrow a learner’s current and future opportunities.

Public Trust and Reputation

These effects don’t stay contained within classrooms either. They can affect how institutions are perceived externally, by learners, leaders, and the public.

Educational institutions, especially schools, universities, and health care organizations, don’t just deliver training. They make implicit promises. When they educate learners, they are committing to supporting them with instruction that is effective, defensible, and worth their time. When those programs are built on shaky theories, that promise is broken.

Imagine the press discovering that an institution has invested heavily in an educational approach that the research community has been questioning, or outright rejecting, for decades. It doesn’t matter whether the education team knew of the evidence-based practices or not. If they didn’t know, the institution looks uninformed or incompetent. If they did know, it looks like learner outcomes weren’t a priority. Either way, institutional credibility takes a hit because we all know that tax-payers have big feelings when they think their money is being wasted or poorly spent.

Now, you might assume the public won’t care about something as technical as instructional design. But history suggests otherwise. Debates over whole reading and balanced literacy, inquiry-based math instruction, standardized testing, and the use of screens in the classroom are all examples that show the public cares deeply about how learning happens, especially when learning outcomes are poor.

Over time, fumbling decisions about teaching erodes trust in the institution’s ability to make sound, evidence-based decisions about learning.

We Can Undervalue Educational Expertise

One underdiscussed reason why unsupported theories like learning styles persist is that education itself is often treated as a “soft” skill, something anyone can do if they know the content well enough.

You’ve probably heard the saying, “Those who can’t do, teach.” It reflects a common misunderstanding: that expertise in a subject automatically translates into expertise in teaching that subject.

In reality, designing effective learning experiences requires deep knowledge of educational theory, cognitive science, and assessment design, along with years of practical experience. These are specialized skills, no different from clinical, engineering, or legal expertise. This is why the Sesame Street curriculum has always been created in close collaboration with trained early education specialists—the creators wanted a product that was effective at teaching, so they invested in those who have deep background knowledge on learning science.

When institutions accept seemingly intuitive but unsupported theories, they unintentionally undermine that expertise, and educational professionals become implementers rather than subject-matter experts and advisors. I’ve seen this firsthand. When educational expertise is discounted, decisions about curriculum design get driven by personal preference, anecdotes, and intuition, rather than by what actually improves learning.

When education professionals aren’t empowered to insist on evidence-based practices, learner outcomes suffer, and it can reinforce the belief that education is guesswork rather than a research-driven discipline. Unsupported theories don’t just waste resources—they make it harder for educational professionals to do the work they were trained to do and to demonstrate the value of that work.

Takeaways

So what should we do with all of this?

First, we need to treat educational decisions with the same gravity we bring to clinical, policy, or operational decisions. When time, money, and learner effort are limited—and they always are—using strategies that feel right but aren’t supported by evidence can have real consequences for learners, institutions, and public trust.

Second, talk to your education professionals early and often. Ask what theories and frameworks are shaping your training programs and why. Many instructional designers, learning specialists, and professional development leaders are already aware of the limitations of popular pseudoscientific ideas like learning styles, but may lack the authority or institutional backing to challenge them. They need leadership support, especially if organizational change is needed to update the existing training methods.

Third, audit existing programs with a critical eye. Unsupported theories often persist not because anyone actively chose them, but because curricula get handed down, reused, and modified without ever being reassessed and rebuilt from the ground up. Identifying and removing low-value practices frees up resources to invest in strategies that actually improve learning.

Finally, remember that evidence-based education isn’t about chasing trends or perfection. It’s about intellectual honesty—being willing to let go of ideas when the evidence doesn’t support them, even if they’re familiar or intuitively appealing. That mindset protects learners, strengthens institutions, and reinforces education as the professional discipline it truly is.

If you liked this discussion and want to read more, David Didau posted his own take on this as I was finishing up my post. David is a prolific writer about evidenced-based educational best practices in literacy for K-12.

In the next newsletter, we’ll do a deep dive on another concept that’s become a bit of a pop phenomenon —“adult learning principles”—and what the evidence actually says about how adults learn best.