Why is the myth of ‘learning styles’ so hard to slay?

There barely seems to be a day that passes when another example of the myth of learning styles still holding strong in education emerges - from 'what's your learning style' quizzes to training sessions, it's an idea that seems to have remarkable longevity. And perhaps that's unsurprising; while much has been done to tackle belief in this and other neuromyths in recent years, we have to remember that these kinds of quizzes were popular in schools - and even teacher CPD programmes - for decades, and are still commonly used in training in the corporate world. Teachers are less likely than the general population to believe neuromyths. And yet even when looking at teachers specifically, Newton and Salvi’s systematic review found that across 37 studies from 18 countries around the world between 2009 and 2020, the proportion reporting belief in the value of matching instruction to learning styles ranged from 58% to as high as 97.6% in some studies. So why, given that many attempts hav