The term 'learning style' refers to a learner's preferred method of sensing, processing, and incorporating information. The fundamental idea is that people learn very differently from one another, and that if an individual's learning style is identified, he or she can be taught in a way that favors his or her strengths, enabling many more students to be successful in school or in the workplace.

Some proponents divide learners into visual, auditory and kinesthetic categories. Other systems, like Howard Gardner's model of Multiple Intelligences, target broader categories, including linguistic, musical, mathematical, spatial, kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal intelligences. The Myers Briggs Type Indicator, which is similar to a learning styles classification, identifies sixteen separate preference configurations. The model developed by Rita and Kenneth Dunn in the 1970's outlines 384 different possible combinations. To date some 75 different systems have been proposed for describing and classifying a person's learning style.