Checking the sources- Articles Specifically About VARK

Thus far, when I have reviewed papers in my “Take a look at the sources” series, I have focused on articles that are listed in the “Research Bibliography” portion of the VARK website. Although I have not read through all of them (or even most of them), I have been disappointed with the few that I have examined. Much of the information provided in these sources has little to nothing to do with VARK and the ties between these sources and VARK theory is unclear.

On the VARK website, there is a list of “Other Articles Specifically About VARK.” Click here for the link. I wonder if these will give me something more to work with in terms of evidence either for or against VARK theory. The following articles are listed on their website:

Leite, W. L., Svinicki, M. & Shi, Y. (2010). Attempted Validation of the Scores of the VARK: Learning Styles Inventory With Multitrait-Multimethod Confirmatory Factor Analysis Models. Educational and Psychological Measurement. 70, 323-339.

Fernandez Eugenia, The Effectiveness Of Web-Based Tutorials; Department of Computer Technology, Purdue School of Engineering and Technology, Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S.A..

Fleming, N.D. & Mills, C. (1992). Helping Students Understand How They Learn. The Teaching Professor, Vol. 7 No. 4, Magma Publications, Madison, Wisconsin, USA.

Fleming, N.D. & Mills, C. (1992). Not Another Inventory, Rather a Catalyst for Reflection. To Improve the Academy, 11, 137-155.

Fleming, N.D. (1995), I'm different; not dumb. Modes of presentation (VARK) in the tertiary classroom, in Zelmer, A., (Ed.) Research and Development in Higher Education, Proceedings of the 1995 Annual Conference of the Higher Education and Research Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA), HERDSA, Volume 18, pp. 308 - 313

Gardner, H., & Hatch, T. (1989). Multiple intelligences go to school: Educational implications of the theory of multiple intelligences. Educational Researcher, 18(8), 4-9.

Nooriafshar, M. and St Hill, R., (1998) Adopting The Technologies Associated With Modern Computing To Incorporate Studentsà Modal Preferences Into Course Design. Available from the authors at Faculty of Business. University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Qld, 4350, Australia.

Pedersen, C. and St Hill, R (1997) Meeting the Challenge of ÎMassificationà: Taking Learner Diversity Seriously.,Available from the authors at Faculty of Business, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Qld, 4350, Australia.

St Hill, R. (1999) Some thoughts on a Whole-of-Department Approach to Teaching and Learning, Unpublished discussion paper for Department of Economics and Resources Management, University of Southern Queensland.

This seems like a decent list of “articles” to review. So, I began to look around for the above articles. I have found some rather disappointing things. First, take a close look at the list above. There are nine articles listed above. Three of them are written by Fleming or Fleming and Mills. The two papers that I reviewed before written by these authors did not provide any data, but rather theory about VARK itself. An article on theory is nice, but does not help us in our search of evidence in favor of a theory (though it should not be taken as evidence against a theory either).

The last three “articles” (Nooriafshar and St Hill, 1998; Pedersen and St Hill, 1997; St Hill, 1999) on this list are not published in any journal. Where is the scientific peer review process at work here?  This is not to say that there is anything wrong with these articles, but I don’t think they would provide good evidence one way or the other with VARK. If they are not published in peer reviewed journals, their evidence would be questionable.

The second “article” listed above (by E. Fernandez) is not published either. From what I can tell, this is a website presentation that is available here:

http://www.engr.iupui.edu/~fernande/projects/icte99/

Again, I have to point out that this is not in a scientific journal. Without a peer review process before publication, the results and theories can and should be drawn into question. This is not to say that this presentation isn’t useful or top notch. It very well might be. But if I am on a search for scientific evidence about VARK (either in favor of it or against it), this source is not very useful to me. (If you read through the presentation above, you will find that their conclusion is that there is "insufficient data to measure the impact of learning styles" anyway.)

So that leaves Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences work cited above and a paper claiming to have validated the VARK questionnaire (Leite, Svinicki, & Shi, 2010). I am working on a review of these sources for the next few posts.

NOTE: The purpose of this post is not to discredit these “articles” or the authors of these articles. In search of evidence about VARK, I thought that a good place to look for this evidence would be with the list of articles that is provided on the VARK website. I should note that the VARK website does not claim that any of these articles provide evidence about VARK. That was something that I was hoping to find (but that I am still in search of).