Australian Educational Researcher Vol. 19. No. 2 1992

LEARNING STYLE PREFERENCES: V O C A T I O N A L STUDENTS

AND TEACHERS

R. T. Pithers and M. Mason

Abstract. This study investigates, using the Learning Style Questionnaire, the learning style preferences of a group of vocational tertiary students and their teachers. It seeks to identify learning style differences, if any, between students in various stages of their course, between sexes and between "high" and "low" achieving students and their teachers. Furthermore, it examines the similarities and differences between the preferred learning style of the chosen sample of students and other tertiary vocational students. The major findings for the students, relevant to the above variables, and the teachers are discussed. As well, with respect to teachers and students, the implications of attempting to match teaching and learning styles are examined.

Students of all types will be more likely to engage in successful educational behaviours if they have ability and if the educational environment has led to high motivation and allowed plenty of opportunity for practice and feedback. Recent research, however, has suggested that another factor may play a significant role in student attainment. Many students appear to approach learning in different yet reasonably consistent ways which have been termed thinking or learning styles. Most researchers define learning style in terms of a relatively consistent pattern of perception, interaction with and response to stimuli in a particular learning environment (Claxton and Ralston, 1978; Keefe, 1987). Given a particular subject matter and learning content therefore, the teaching methods and evaluation formats cater for different learning styles in such a way that the degree of similarity between teachers' and students' learning styles effect students perceptions of their teacher and vice versa.

The major notion here is that, given a particular subject matter which can be taught in a diversity of ways, students will seek out and perhaps, do better with learning activities that are compatible with their preferred styles. The same argument is used to explain why teachers will tend to teach in ways that are compatible with their own learning styles which of course, may or may not match the preferred styles of some of their students. Where students' and the teachers'

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preferred styles match students are likely to experience stronger motivation with, perhaps, corresponding improvements in learned performance; if there is a mismatch the opposite may be true and students may become disinterested or bored. If teachers fail to take the preferred learning style of their students into account they may end up confusing students' style with ability (Sternberg, 1990). If teachers and students have preferred learning styles then it follows that teachers need to develop flexibility in their teaching and evaluation in an attempt to suit the greatest number of students; learning style becomes yet another of those many individual differences that have to be considered by teachers. Many questions within this area still remain to be clearly answered, however, such as how many preferred styles do students' use in learning, d0"they differ in their ability to use them and whether a match between teaching style and learning style, other things being equal, really leads to significantly improved learning performance. The more basic problem is that learning style has been conceptualised theoretically in many ways by different researchers and this is reflected in the instruments they have devised to measure the concept.

Karrer (1988) examined learning style inventories in an effort to find the 'optimal' research instrument although the conclusion was that no one inventory can faithfully describe the totality of a student's experience. One learning style inventory which remains popular is that of Kolb (1976; 1984). Kolb described a four stage circular process of learning in which concrete experience leads to reflective observation on that experience followed by theory development via abstract conceptualization; the theory is tested by active experimentation thereby allowing the cycle to start once again. Kolb identified four main learning styles based on these processes (Converger, Diverger, Assimilator, Accommodator) and he developed the-learning style Inventory (LSI) to establish an individual's relative emphasis on each of these determined styles. Unfortunately, this instrument has been shown to have poor reliability (e.g. Freedman and Stumpf, 1978; Geller, 1979) and validity (e.g. Fox, 1984; Freedman and Stumpf, 1978; Wilson, 1986). A revised 1985 version of the LSI has been shown to offer no improvement as far as reliability is concerned and to still suffer from serious response bias problems in ways which may serious call into question the instruments utility (Atkinson, 1988; Atkinson, 1989).

Honey and Mumford (1986) have developed, using Kolb's basic idea of the four stage learning cycle (but not the underlying Jungian theoretical conception), a Learning Style Questionnaire (LSQ) based on statements of behaviour, about which learners either generally agree or disagree. The four styles identified and for which a score is obtained after the survey is completed are Activist (seeks new experience); Reflector (observes and reflects); theori~st (develops and integrates theory from observations) and Pragmatist (tests theory via practical opportunity).

Honey and Mumford (1986) argue that the LSQ has been refined and tested since 1975 and now shows high test-retest reliability for each of the four styles. The validity of the LSQ has recently been studied by Allinson and Hayes (1990) who found further evidence of its construct validity. Their studies, however, did

Learning Style Preferences 63

not provide evidence of the concurrent or predictive validity of the LSQ in that the scores obtained did not relate to teaching method preferences or to learning attainment. They also hypothesize that the constructs measured may not be learning style at all but some conglomerate of more general cognitive abilities.

Despite these problems, which are common to all questionnaire based attempts to measure learning styles, the LSQ was chosen as the instrument to be used in this study as it appeared to have greater reliability, internal consistency and construct validity than its next most widely used competitor- the LSI. The LSQ appears to have been used mainly with training, managerial and business groups in the United Kingdom and unfortunately, there is little published data reported where tertiary or vocational students have been used as subjects.

One such reported study using the LSQ, however, was carried out by Lovie- Kitchin, Conan, Sanderson and Thompson (1989) using health science students as subjects. The major hypothesis was that learning styles of students in different health science disciplines (e.g. nursing and optometry) would be different. The view tested was that people would be attracted into disciplines whose knowledge structure matched their preferences (Talbot, 1985). The investigation found, with one exception, that there were no significant differences between first and third year student results for any learning style, or course. The findings did not support Talbot's hypothesis at least with respect to discipline although it may be the case, as Lovie-Kitchin et al. point out that learning style differences will only influence students' preferences for broader areas of work. One way of testing this assumption would be to compare a group of tertiary students similar in at least some respects (e.g. age, sex) to those in the Lovie-Kitchin et al. sample but whose preference is for a very different vocational area.

This was one of the objectives of the present study as well as to assess the preferred learning styles, if any, of a particular group of vocational students in the area of technic~ and further education. Furthermore, to determine whether there are learning style differences between stages of the course or between sexes; it was also decided to ascertain learning style differences between students who attain "high" grades and those who achieve consistently "low" grades in their courses of study and to compare this data with the learning style preferences (which help determine teaching style) of their teachers. The assumption examined in the latter case is that the group of students who achieve the highest grades in the group would have learning style preferences which more closely matched those of their teachers than those students who were the poorest performers in the group.

Method

Subjects The student subjects were 260 Commercial Cookery students studying at a major Technical and Further Education College in Sydney. The course was of three year duration and Stage 1, 2 and 3 were coo.lposed of 89,98 and 73 students,

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respectively. Of the three stages 173 students were male and 87 were female ranging in age from 17 to about 22 years. There were 14 teachers used as subjects; they were the total complement used to teach the three stages of the course.

Research Instrument The Honey and Mumford (1986) Learning Style Questionnaire (LSQ) was employed. The LSQ is an 80 item self-report questionnaire Scored using a person's responses to a series of statements. The learning styles for which scores are obtained are Activist, Reflector, Theorist, and Pragmatist. Activists, according to Honey and Mumford, like to be involved in new experiences and change; Reflectors in a more cautions introverted manner, observe and think about the data they observe and collect before conclusions are developed; Theorists using analysis and synthesis integrate observations in theories; Pragmatists are concerned with what works in practice and, with some impatience, like to apply new ideas and skills to see if they are useful. There are limited norms available.

Procedure The students completed the LSQ during class time which guaranleed a high completion rate; the teachers completed their LSQ at about the same time as the students. Neither group were given any information about the nature of this research project.

R e s u l t s

The norms obtained for the trade students, compared with the norms obtained (shown in brackets) for a sample of the general population (N-1,302) by Honey and Mumford (1986) are shown in Table 1. The categories A,B,C,D, and E represent the following preferences: Very strong (the highest scoring 10% of people), Strong (the next 20%), Moderate (the middle 40%), Low (the next 20%) and Very Low (the lowest scoring 10%), respectively.

Table 1 indicates that the trade students have a "Strong" preference for the Activist and Reflector styles compared to Honey and Mumford's norms with a "Moderate" preference for the Theorist and Pragmatist styles. Subjects may, of course, have a preference for more than one learning style; in order to check student preferences for a second style the student data of those who scored "Very strong" or "Strong" were examined to check on preferences for other styles.

Learning Style Preferences 65

Table 1 Norms means and standard deviations (SD) for trade students (N=260) compared with

Hone), and Mumford (1986) norms (in brackets) for the four learning styles Preference Activist Reflector Theorist Pragmatist

A Very Strong 16 - 20 19 - 20 17 - 20 17 - 20 (13 - 20) (18 - 20) (16 - 20) (17 - 20)

B Strong 14- 15 17- 18 14- 16 15- 16 (11- 12) (15- 17) (14-15) (15- 16)

C Moderate 9 - 13 13- 16 10- 13 12- 14 (7- 10) (12- 14) (11 - 13) (12- 14)

DLow 7 - 8 11 - 12 7 - 9 9 -11 (4- 6) (9- 11) (8 - 10) (9- 11)

E Very Low 0-6 0- 10 0 - 6 0 -8 (0- 3) (0- 8) (0- 7) (0- 8)

Mean 10 .9 1 4 . 6 11 , 4 1 2 . 6 (9 .3) (13.6) (12.5) (13.7)

SD 3 . 4 3 . 3 3 . 5 3 . 2 (2 .9) (3. 1) (3 .2) (2 .9 )

For A, B, C, D, and E see Text

Of the 56% of students whose major preference was for the Activist style (i.e. scored in the "Very Strong" or "Strong" preference category) 27% had a second preference for the Reflector style; for the 57% of Reflectors in those categories, 28% had a preference for the Activist style; for the 31% who selected Theorists as the major style 23% went for Reflector as their next highest preference; of the 29% pragmatists the next highest preferred style was for Reflector. In other words those students who did not indicate that Reflector was their preferred style tend to prefer it as their second preference, whereas the "high" scoring Reflectors tend to prefer Activist as their second preference. The data suggest that there may be no one preferred learning style for this type of student.

A two-factor Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was applied to the data obtained for Stage and Sex for each of the learning styles. For Activists, Reflectors, Theorists and Pragmatists there were no significant differences due to Stage (F=.84; .94, 1.89, .09, respectively; p > .05; the .05 level of rejection is used in all cases that follow) or Sex (F =.31, .63,. 10, 3.37, respectively). No interaction effect was significant. The Analysis showed no significant differences between stages of the course or sex, for any learning style; although the men, on average, scored higher on the Pragmatist and Activist styles the differences were not statistically significant.

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In order to investigate whether the "high" scoring students in the course, compared to a group of "low" scoring students, would have different learning style preferences 20 students were selected from the sample who had consistently obtained total marks over 75% in all of the course modules in their stage. Those 20 students' learning style preferences were then compared with 20 students who had consistently needed to repeat trade course modules or had failed. These results were then compared to the learning style preferences of the teachers in an attempt to examine similarities or differences in terms of a match of learning and teaching style. The results are shown in Table 2

Table 2 Means and standard deviations (SD shown in brackets) for each of the four learning

• styles for "high" scoring students and "low" scoring students and their teachers. Group Activist Reflector Theorist Pragmatist

"High" scoring 9.75 (3.52) 16.1 (2.46) 14.3 (4.47) 14 (3.92) students (N=20)

"Low" Scoring 11.25 (2.62) 13.75 (2.77) 10.45 (3.10) 11.7 (3.02) students (N=20)

Teachers (N=14) 9.5 (2.59) 15.64 (3.43) 14.21 (2.94) 14.35 (2.97)

Table 2 shows that both the teachers and the "high" scoring students have a Strong preference for the Reflector and Theorist style and a Moderate preference for the Activist and Pragmatist style. This is in contrast to the "low" scoring students who had a Strong preference for the Activist style, moderate preferences for the Reflector and Pragmatist style and a Low preference for the Theorist style. Student t-tests computed to test the difference between mean scores for each of the four learning styles -Activist, Reflector, Theorist and Pragmatist - for the teachers and "high" scoring students found no significant differences (t = .24, .43, .07, .31, respectively). The differences between mean scores, for each of the four styles, for teachers and the "low" scoring students were found to be significant for three of the four style areas viz., Activist, Theorist and Pragmatist (t=2.36, 3.58 and 2.53 respectively); differences were not significant for the Reflector style (t = 1.70).

Mean scores, for each learning style for the females in this study also were compared with those obtained for the predominantly female subjects in the Lovie- Kitchin et al. study. T-tests for the Reflector, Theorist and Pragmatist style were not significant ( t - . l ; 1.07; .04, respectively). The comparison for the Activist style was significant (t = 4.2).

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Discuss ion

The vocational students used in this study had Strong Activist and Reflector learning style preferences. Nevertheless, the data indicated that students despite their strongest style preference also tended to demonstrate a second learning style preference. Although there appeared to be no one strongest learning style preference for most students, those students whose score showed a higher preference for the Reflector style tended to prefer the Activist style as their second preference, while those who showed the strongest preference for the Activist style tended to prefer the Reflector style as their second preference. In short, the data suggest that there is no one preferred learning style for this type of student. Comparisons with other studies, where tertiary students have been used as subjects, is difficult primarily because of the paucity of studies in this area using specifically the LSQ. Lovie-Kitchin et al.'s (1989) research using mostly female nursing/health science students as subjects found that these subjects also had a Strong preference for the Reflector style with Moderate preferences for the other styles. When these predominantly female health science students' preferences were compared to the preferences of the vocational students in this study few differences were apparent. Honey (1989) has recently released other norms based on new research showing data for a group of Royal Navy Engineering apprentices which indicated that these subjects had Moderate preferences for all four styles. It would be expected, however, that these subjects may have been closer (as vocational trade students) to those used in this study in terms of style preference than Lovie- Kitchin' et al.'s (1989) subjects but this was not the case. The basic similarity of the learning style preferences across these three groups of students weakens further the hypothesis that people are drawn to disciplines whose knowledge strocture matches their preferences (e.g., Talbot, 1985). This finding was even more strongly reinforced when the means for the female students in this study for each of the four learning styles were compared with the results for the predominantly female students in the Lovie-Kitchin et al. (1989) study. There were no significant differences found except for the Activist style. It may still be the case, however, that learning style differences only influence students' preferences for broad areas of study or disciplines although the evidence obtained so far makes even this assumption appear somewhat doubtful.

Another theme of the present study was to examine learning style preference differences, if any, between students in the three stages of the course and between the sexes. There were no significant differences between students in the three stages of course for each of the four learning styles Likewise, for each of the four styles, there were no significant sex differences, despite the fact that Hooey and Mumford (1986) have indicated a tendency for women, on average, to score lower than men on the Pragmatist s[yle. Lovie-Kitchin et al.'s data also showed no between group stage differences. It might be expected that as students are exposed to a range of other learning activities and teachers over a three year time span that their learning style preferences change but this does not appear to be the case at

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least with data obtained so far. Of course, longitudinal research would be best way of obtaining firmer evidence as to changes in learning style preference over time due to the greater control exercised for a range of social and environmental factors, rather than the cross-sectional method used in the present study and in others so far reported. Relevant to this argument although using the somewhat similar Kolb LSI inventory and not the LSQ, Pinto and Geiger (1991) found, using a longitudinal methodology, no significant change in students' preferred styles over the course of their college career; data which supports the sparse cross-sectional evidence available for learning style preferences in the area.

One further hypothesis advanced in the present study was that a group of "high" scoring students in the course would have a similar pattern of learning style preferences to their teachers, when compared to a group of "low" scoring students. Both the "high" scoring students and the teachers had a Strong preference for the Reflector and Theorist style and a Moderate preference for the Activist and Pragmatist style; no between group differences for each of the four styles in this case was significant. The "low" scoring students, by comparison, had a significantly stronger preference for the Activist and a significantly lower preferences for the Theorist and Pragmatist style, than did the teachers. It is not possible, without completing an experiment, to conclude that there is a direct causal relationship between the match between a group of students' learning style preferences and those of their teachers and their better educational attainment. Nevertheless, the results obtained do indicate that the match between the teacher and student learning style preference may be a factor in student attainment worthy of experimental consideration.

It may well be that the cognitively able student is able to switch or adapt their learning style whereas the student with poorer cognitive ability may be less able to adapt. In other words if an imperfect match exists between a teacher's teaching style and a student's learning style it may cause some students to use their other style preferences and become more flexible in learning situations. The student with poor cognitive ability would have less flexibility for change which may be disadvantageous in terms of learning performance. There appears to be some evidence for this sort of hypothesis although if not based on the sort of learning preferences envisaged by Honey and Mumford (e.g. Biggs, 1979; Goldman and Hudson, 1973). The view is that the student who strives for extrinsic rewards via manipulation of their learning styles in higher education may demonstrate little critical thinking and understanding to achieve these rewards (i.e. adopt a "surface" rather than a "deep" approach to learning) or develop the seen to be educationally desirable intrinsic motivation of the "deep" approach to learning (where presumably basic style preferences remain unchanged). The basic assumption is that cognitive ability influences students' flexibility in selecting appropriate styles to suit the learning situation and the teacher. Presumably there are more likely to be a larger number of these style chac~ge students in the "high" rather than the "low" achieving group in the present study where the students may be less able to adapt their preferred learning style/s to delivery and assessment methods favoured

Learning Style Preferences 69

by the teacher. If this is the case then Allison and Hayes's (1990) view that the construct measured by the LSQ may not be learning style at all but some conglomerate of more general cognitive ability is even more tenable.

It appears that the teachers and students in the present study have preferred styles and that students are capable of using more than one preferred style. The problem is that they vary in their ability to move from one to another; some appear to be more flexible than others in shifting styles. This is probably true for teachers as well as for students. The teachers' aim therefore, should not always be to use a method of teaching and evaluation that matches the students' preferred style, except as a point of entry (Steinberg, 1990), but to develop the ability to switch from one style to another to help all students to develop a similar style flexibility to situations they are likely to encounter during tertiary education and later on-the-job. The major problem is, of course, that teachers such as those in this study have a tendency to reward those student behaviours and styles which they use themselves; the able student flexibly adopts those styles and is rewarded but runs the risk of becoming "locked" into via practice and reinforcement certain "desirable" patterns of thinking, problem solving and behaviour in a particular educational context.

The implication for teachers, according to Sternberg (1990) is that teachers, at whatever level, must reward not only styles that pay off now but also those likely to pay off in the future, otherwise students may be being trained to develop styles that will sometimes in the future fail them. In this respect, without an understanding of learning styles teachers may continue to operate in ways that are educationally ineffective and counter productive. There is another major problem yet to be solved, however, and that is the valid and reliable measurement of learning styles.

To return to the theme of this study the LSQ may be one useful measuring instrument although as studies such as the present one indicate it needs to be used with great caution; especially in regard to its predictive validity both in respect of learning performance and discipline/field of study choice. The present study has further questioned the sensitivity of the LSQ to both changes in course stage and sex differences for each of the four style preferences; as well there is doubt about what it is that the LSQ may be actually measuring. The predictive status of the LSQ now awaits true experimental research where, perhaps, cognitive ability would be an important coindependent variable.

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