THE SECONDARY/HIGHER EDUCATION ENVIRONMENT AND THE ACADEMIC EXPERIENCE AS AN ARTICULATION OF DOMINANT LEARNING STYLES OF STUDENTS

Abstract

The research course is perceived as an effort to examine the learning styles under the prism of development stage, the transition between the adolescence and early mature. The methodology used in this article represents a combination between the quantitative and qualitative methods. Not less important is either the determination of learning styles distribution between two transitional stages.

The research was conducted through a planned sample comprising of 793 respondents, 324 males and 469 females of secondary schools (356 students) and 437 faculty students. The research was implemented during 2016-2017. The learning styles have been measured through the learning style assessment tool (Learning Styles Questionnaire – Honey & Mumford, 1986). The credibility of Kronbah alpha=0.79 and Gutman α=0.82, resulting positive.

The descriptive analyze confirmed that the reflective learning was perceived as a dominant learning style (44.30%), followed by theorist style (29.90%), pragmatist style (8.20%), and at the end by the activists learning style (6.40%). About 11.20% of students use the combined style. The reflective style (34.8%) is dominant at secondary school students, same but slightly emphasized at faculty students (51.0%), whereas the reflective style is dominant at postgraduate students in rate of 60%. The reflective style is also dominant for both sexes; males (39.5%) and females (47.5%).

The correlative analyze proved a significant link between the theorist, activist and reflective style on one hand and educational/academic achievement on the other hand. Furthermore, the correlative analyze proved the existence of correlation between the theorist and reflective style with educational level. The educational profile correlates significantly with reflective style. Post hoc analyze proved that students with more emphasized reflective style at the same time are distinguished for higher educational/academic achievements, unlike other activist, theorist and combined style students.

Keywords

• educational levels,academic experience,learning styles,pragmatist,reflective,activists and theorist

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