Matching of Learning Styles and Teaching Styles: Advantage and Disadvantage on Ninth-Grade Students' Academic Achievements.

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to identify learning styles of ninth-grade students, to identify teaching styles of four subject teachers, and to compare four academic achievements between different matching conditions of students’ learning styles and teachers’ teaching styles. The research participants comprised of 3,382 ninth-grade students and, related with, 440 teachers obtained from multistage random sampling. The research instruments comprised of the four achievement tests, the Learning Style Questionnaire (LSQ), and the Teaching Style Inventory (TSI). The data analyses were employed by the descriptive statistics, One-way ANOVA, and post-hoc comparison by Scheffe method. The main results have showed the closely number of students between 23.74 to 26.11% in each learning style. The biggest groups of Mathematics, Sciences, English, and Thai Language subjects were congruently the Accommodator teachers. The matching types were almost statistically significant and the overall study showed the most advantageous learning style was the Theorist students matching with the Expert and the Facilitator teachers whereas the most disadvantageous learning style was the Realistic students matching with the Personal Model and the Facilitator teachers. Key words: Learning Styles, Teaching Styles, Academic Achievement, Matching of Learning Styles and Teaching Styles.