Examining Learning Styles, Creative Thinking Skills, and Academic Success of Eighth-Grade Students in Middle School

Year 2023, Issue: 48, 42 - 58, 04.04.2023

Özge Yükcü Öztürk Memet Karakuş

https://doi.org/10.5152/AUJKKEF.2023.1036120

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to investigate learning styles, creative thinking skills, and academic achievement of students. The participants were 71 students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and studying in the eighth grade of a secondary school in a central district of Gaziantep. In this study, Grasha–Reichmann Learning Style Scale, Torrance Test of Creative Thinking, and the lecture notes of the students were used as data collection tools. The data collected from the participants were transferred to the Statistical Package for Social Sciences 22 program and analyzed using descriptive analysis, analysis of variance, and Pearson correlation analysis. It was observed that the students mostly had participant learning style, it was followed by competitive and dependent learning styles. It was also found that the highest of the students’ arithmetic means of creative thinking aspects belonged to fluency, followed by originality, and the lowest belonged to flexibility. It was determined that there was a significant difference among the students’ academic achievements in terms of learning styles. According to this, the students with participant learning style had significantly higher grades than the students with dependent learning style. It was also found that there are significant, positive correlations between creative thinking scores and academic achievement of students.

Keywords

Academic achievement, creative thinking, learning styles