Multiple intelligences and learning styles

I'm fascinated by the way that ideas take hold and spread, and the huge power of herd thinking. The acceptance of the standard paradigm, in any field, can make it very difficult to move on. This is particularly true in fields with large numbers of practitioners and relatively few researchers and theorists, such as medicine and education, though economics is up there too. Medicine is, of course, supposed to be fully evidence based, but there is a serious lag between the research, NICE consideration, and practitioner acceptance.

Education is, I fear, even more susceptible to enduring myths, and I am as vulnerable to them as anyone. In the 1990s I was fascinated by Howard Gardner's work on multiple intelligences, and recall at the time being wholly convinced. His work led to a whole generation of teachers convinced that 'learning styles' were important and individual.

Looking back, it just seems wrong that I should have thought that some children had a specific type of intelligence and that we should focus on that to ensure they learned effectively. The reality is that we all learn in different ways all the time, and that an undue focus on learning in one way is unduly limiting and, even if it works, does not stretch the learner into new ways of learning and thinking.

But the 'learning styles' paradigm has proved amazingly enduring, with the large majority of independent schools following the approach.

Now, Professor Bruce Hood, chair of developmental psychology at the University of Bristol, has brought together a coalition of psychologists,  neuroscientists, and related specialists to debunk the whole notion.

I can only quote from the open letter signed by thirty eminent scientists:

"Teachers need to be armed with up-to-date evidence of what has been shown to be effective so that schools are not wasting time or money on unsubstantiated practice that does not help students. One concern is that learning styles lead to the belief that individual students are unable to learn because the material is inappropriate. Learning styles is just one of a number of common neuromyths that do nothing to enhance education."

All that seems obvious now, but why were we all so convinced, and why was I, personally, so taken in by what now seems clearly wrong?