Individual Differences in Cognitive Style, Learning Style and Instructional Preference in Medical Education

Abstract

In medical education the debate about the utility and application of learning styles has gone on with considerable acrimony for some decades. Beginning in the 1970s there have been two principal areas of interest about learning styles within medical education: to improve educational efficiency at undergraduate, post-graduate and continuing professional education levels, and secondly, to predict career or specialty choice. Two theoretical and investigative tracks have become established. The North American work comes from the traditions of individual differences in cognition, while the European and Australian investigators have pursued consistent differences in studying style as indicative of motivational differences. The first approach has direct bearing on specialty selection and student mentoring; the second on course structure and reward articulation. This chapter will review the theoretical positions and findings of both streams as applied to mastery in medical education.