Predicting academic success and technological literacy in secondary education: a learning styles perspective

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the predictive validity of learning styles on academic achievement and technological literacy (TL). For this purpose, secondary school students were recruited (n = 150). An empirical research design was followed where the TL test was used with a learning style inventory measuring learning orientation, processing information, thinking, perceiving information, physical and time learning preferences, and sociological, emotional, and environmental learning preferences. Student performance was measured with grade point average (GPA) and TL level. Results show that 69 and 65 % of the variance in GPA and TL, respectively, can be explained by learning style predictors. Responsible and visual learning styles are the best positive predictors of GPA, while a reflective learner is the best negative predictor. Self-motivated and global learners are the best positive predictors of TL, while the need for authority figures and a theorist learning orientation are the best negative predictors of TL. The practical implications are that secondary schools should collect learning style data before helping students accordingly to be successful and more technologically literate. Highly conforming, global, and visual theorists might be offered more challenging tasks and special commendations on their projects, whereas more reflective and kinaesthetic students could receive more unstructured instruction in a busy environment with learning objects that incorporate innovative experiences, personalised information, and many associations. Assimilators need more textual material, more criterion-referenced instructions to achieve higher-order thinking learning objectives, more time to complete activities or assignments, more abstract problems, and unconstrained design conditions to improve their TL.