Learning Styles or Learning Stratergies?

I am keen on planning to produce the best opportunities for student learning although when planning lessons I do not consider 'learning styles' and activities that appeal to these styles. It is my opinion that pupils do not have learning 'styles', instead they have learning 'preferences'. If a student has been labeled as an auditory learner I am confident that this student will still have the same learning benefit from an activity that involves visuals - as long as that activity is stimulating and engaging.  Claxton (1996) makes a suggestion that pupils make a "cost/benefit analysis" of each classroom activity, therefore, if they feel the task is not beneficial they will be unengaged and as a result they will not learn. There is no concrete evidence to suggest that learning styles exsist, in the words of James Atherton (2011) 'students choose to learn in different ways depending on their motivation, the nature of the course and subject-matter, and a host of other variables.' Therefore, as teachers; we should not be planning lessons for the varying learning styles of individuals in our class, instead we should be planning engaging tasks which encourage intrinsic motivation of the whole class.