Abstract
Learning styles and instruction have been reported to affect students’ academic performance and achievement in science. These reports, however, are too generalized for application to chemistry education specifically. The reports did not take into consideration the combined effects of the nature of chemistry and students learning styles on chemistry instructions and subsequently on students’ academic performance. This study was conducted on 167 grade 11 natural science students in two preparatory schools in Ethiopia. It was designed to predict the extent of variation in academic performance in some fundamental chemistry concepts in the topics: Atomic structure & periodic table, and chemical bonding and structure from variations in Felder-Silverman’s learning styles. Data were collected through Amharic version of Felder-Soloman’s Index of Learning Style (ILS) questionnaire and chemistry tests. The data showed that 1.2% variation in academic performance in the fundamental concepts in chemistry was linked to the variations in Felder-Silverman’s learning styles, and this variation was not statistically significant at α=0.05. This implies that the role of learning styles on academic performance on the fundamental concepts considered in this study was not statistically significant. Hence, from this study it is possible to conclude that the influence of learning styles on academic performance is less likely to be the same across fundamental concepts in chemistry. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n16p256
Highlights
Current trends in education in general and chemistry education in particular shows that there is emphasis on differentiated instruction that support individual differences such as learning styles (Timothy & Kimberly, 2010), philosophy and nature of chemistry (Scerri, 2001; Erduran, 2009) and pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1986; Park, Jang, Chen, & Jung, 2011)
This paper examines the role of learning styles on academic performance in some fundamental concepts of chemistry (Figure 1)
The mean (m) and standard deviation of academic performance of sensing learners (m = 11.90, std. = 3.01), intuitive learners (m = 11.7, std. = 3.15), visual learners ( m= 11.72, std. = 3.05), verbal learners (m = 12.06, std. = 3.02), active learners (m= 11.88, std. = 2.92 ), reflective learners (m= 11.83, std. = 3.17), sequential learners (m= 11.49, std. = 3.09 ) and global learners (m= 12.04, std. = 3.01) showed only slight difference. These comparisons of means of academic performances of students with different learning styles suggest that their academic performance on the same test constructed from some fundamental concepts in chemistry is approximately the same
Summary
Current trends in education in general and chemistry education in particular shows that there is emphasis on differentiated instruction that support individual differences such as learning styles (Timothy & Kimberly, 2010), philosophy and nature of chemistry (Scerri, 2001; Erduran, 2009) and pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1986; Park, Jang, Chen, & Jung, 2011). There have been reports on how learning styles and instruction affects students’ academic performance/achievement (Ross, Drysdale, & Schulz, 2001; Yeung, Read, Robert, & Schmid, 2006; Bell, 2007; Hargrove, Wheatland, Ding, & Brown, 2008;) These reports were too general to apply to chemistry education. At times the representational nature of fundamental chemical concepts mismatches to a particular learning style of students the chemistry teacher could fall in to the thrust of choices in instructional decisions. The current study was designed to show the link between Felder-Silverman learning styles and academic performance on some fundamental concepts in chemistry and give an insight that needs to be considered for more plausible and possible instructional actions. Research questions of this study were: How much variance in academic performance on some fundamental concepts in chemistry can be explained by variations in Felder-Silverman learning styles? Research questions of this study were: How much variance in academic performance on some fundamental concepts in chemistry can be explained by variations in Felder-Silverman learning styles? and How well do the learning styles predict academic performance on some fundamental concepts in chemistry among preparatory school natural science students?
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