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

Year 2017, Volume: 6 Issue: 2, 155 - 161, 01.09.2017

Fatmir Mehmeti Qufli Osmani

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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