Neil D. Fleming

Neil Donald Fleming (19 October 1939 – 16 June 2022) was a New Zealand educationalist. He taught in universities, teacher education centres and high schools.

Biography Fleming was born on 19 October 1939, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Canterbury in 1962. 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.

Fleming died in Christchurch on 16 June 2022, at the age of 82 years.

Learning styles: VARK Model

Fleming is best known worldwide for the design of the VARK model. which expanded upon earlier Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) models. 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.