Tracing the Relationship Between Pre-service Teachers’ Learning Styles and Attitudes Toward Online Learning

Year 2023, Volume: 8 Issue: 2, 330 - 342, 24.03.2023

Serkan Düzgün Alper Kaşkaya

https://doi.org/10.24331/ijere.1252058

Abstract

The present study attempted to uncover pre-service teachers’ attitudes toward online learning and investigate the relationship between these attitudes and their learning styles, year of study, gender, enrolled program, and grade points average (GPA). In this descriptive survey study, we recruited 337 pre-service teachers enrolled in a state university in Türkiye and having had to attend the emergency remote learning process during the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring semester of the 2020-2021 academic year. The findings revealed the participating pre-service teachers overall held positive attitudes toward online learning. Besides, while they had a high general acceptance of online learning, their attitudes toward its usefulness were relatively low. Most of the participants often adopted a multimodal learning style, and the kinesthetic learning style was highly preferred among unimodal learners. Those adopting the kinesthetic learning style had a more positive view of online learning than their peers adopting the visual and read/write learning styles. In addition, the male participants had more positive attitudes toward online learning than their female counterparts. However, the pre-service classroom teachers had lower attitudes toward online learning than their peers in the other programs. Finally, it is surprising that the participants with lower GPAs had higher attitudes toward online learning.

Keywords

Pre-service teachers, online learning, learning styles, distance education.

References

• Zapalska, A., & Brozik, D. (2006). Learning styles and online education. Campus-Wide Information Systems, 23(5), 325-335. https://doi.org/10.1108/10650740610714080