Neil D. Fleming (1939-2022) was a teacher from
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
. He taught in universities, teacher education centers and high schools. Before working for eleven years in faculty development at
Lincoln University, he was for nine years a senior inspector for the over 100 high schools in the South Island of New Zealand.
This involved being a critical observer of over 9000 'lessons' in classrooms.
Learning styles: VARK Model
Fleming is best known worldwide for the design of the VARK model. which expanded upon earlier
Neuro-linguistic programming
Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is a pseudoscientific approach to communication, personal development and psychotherapy, that first appeared in Richard Bandler and John Grinder's 1975 book ''The Structure of Magic I''. NLP claims that th ...
(NLP) models.
[Thomas F. Hawk, Amit J. Shah (2007) "Using Learning Style Instruments to Enhance Student Learning" ''Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education'' ] His VARK model was launched in 1987 through work done at Lincoln University. Prior to Fleming's work, VAK was in common usage. Fleming split the Visual dimension (the V in VAK) into two parts—symbolic as Visual (V) and text as Read/write (R). This created a fourth mode, Read/write and brought about the word VARK for a new concept, a learning-preferences approach, a questionnaire and support materials.
Fleming came up with the idea for the VARK model while working as an inspector for the New Zealand education system; he noticed that some great teachers were not reaching some students while other poor teachers were. When he moved to Lincoln University he decided to investigate why this was. He created the VARK test based on prior experience and by working with students and teachers at Lincoln University.
Despite the popularity of learning styles and inventories such as the VARK, there is no evidence to support the idea that matching activities to one’s learning style improves learning. In 2009, Psychological Science in the Public Interest commissioned cognitive psychologists Harold Pashler, Mark McDaniel, Doug Rohrer, and Robert Bjork to evaluate the research on learning styles to determine whether there is credible evidence to support using learning styles in instruction. Their conclusion was: “Although the literature on learning styles is enormous,” they “found virtually no evidence” supporting the idea that “instruction is best provided in a format that matches the preference of the learner.” Many of those studies suffered from weak research design, rendering them far from convincing. Others with an effective experimental design “found results that flatly contradict the popular” assumptions about learning styles. In sum, “The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing”.
[Harold Pashler, Mark McDaniel, Doug Rohrer, Robert Bjork]
"Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence"
SAGE Publications, 2009.
References
External links
1
vark-learn.combr/>
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fleming, Neil D.
Living people
New Zealand educators
1939 births