Comparison of Learning and Teaching Styles of Successful and Unsuccessful Students in Physics Lessons
Abstract
There is a general complaint about the low achievement level in physics lessons in many countries of the world. Differences among the students require different educational environments which consider the individual differences. Indeed, while some students prefer crowded classes, some prefer to study in less crowded ones. Yet, some students learn better when the audio materials are presented while some others are better when visual materials are presented. These cases present the ways of learning which the individuals prefer. In other words, these are their learning styles. Another individual difference which has an impact on the success of individuals is thinking styles. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the learning and thinking styles of students taking General Physics lesson at education faculty differ according to success in General Physics lessons or not. The study has been conducted with a total number of 159 students, 89 (56%) female and 70 (44%) male, studying at education faculty and taking General Physics – I lesson. In order to determine the success of students in General Physics – I lessons, the final grades of the students has been obtained from the administration. In an attempt to obtain information about learning style of these students, 12 -point Kolb Learning Style Inventory (KLSI) which was developed by Kolb (1985) and adapted into Turkish by Askar and Akkoyunlu (1993) has been used. To determine the thinking style of students, Thinking Styles Scale which was developed by Sternberg and Wagner (1992) and revised by Sunbul (2004) has been used. Independent t-test has been used to analyze the data obtained.
Keywords
Kaynakça
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