Prevalent beliefs in learning styles myths: Indonesian research trends on learning styles

Abstract

This study investigates Indonesian research trends on learning styles and searches for evidence verifying or refuting the learning styles matching hypothesis. This hypothesis, considered a myth in learning styles theory by some scholars, claims that a learner will learn better when taught according to his or her learning style, but there has been no strong empirical evidence to support it. We also attempted to analyse researchers' judgments concerning the matching hypothesis by identifying epistemic modality markers in the manuscripts. The data were research articles written in English by Indonesian authors that have been published in journals indexed by Google Scholar, Scopus, or Web of Science. After sifting through abundant research articles discussing learning styles, we obtained 33 articles that matched the criteria of this study. Based on the data analysis, we discovered the 33 articles comprised 19 descriptive studies, 2 correlational studies, 9 causal-comparative studies, and 3 experimental studies. In addition, we found that only one piece of evidence refuted the matching hypothesis, while the majority showed that the researchers were likely to believe in the matching hypothesis.