A relevância dos fatores motivacionais nos estilos de aprendizagem da Matemática no início do ensino secundário

Abstract

This paper presents a research project aimed at describing the learning styles in Mathematics of 10th grade students, and at analyzing how those learning styles relate to the students’ performance. For this quantitative, descriptive and correlational research, we used a questionnaire based on the Inventory of Learning Styles of Vermunt (1994), which we have adapted to the context of the learning of mathematics by the students at the Portuguese secondary schools. By means of a multi-stage method, the sample was composed by 579 students of 28 public schools. Among the conclusions of the research, we emphasize the detection of a learning style that is correlated with motivational factors of personal fulfillment and to self-regulated learning, being, however, undefined in what concerns cognitive processing strategies. This style, which we named personal fulfillment oriented learning style, may turn into a meaning oriented learning style, if the learning context is favorable to this evolution. We also detected the four styles reported by Vermunt: meaning oriented, reproduction oriented, application oriented and not oriented. The meaning oriented and the personal fulfilment oriented learning styles correlate positively with the scholar performance in mathematics, opposite to the effect of the reproduction oriented learning style.