Students’ Perceptual Learning Style Preferences, Their Achievement, and Teachers’ Teaching Styles (With Particular Reference to Tana Beles Girls’ Boarding School, Pawe Woreda)

Abstract

This study aimed to identify the dominant students’ learning styles preferences, their achievement, and teachers’ teaching style preferences in Tana Beles Girls’ Boarding School. Comparison was made between (i) students’ perceptual learning style preferences’ and their achievement. (ii) students’ learning style preferences with respect to their teachers’ teaching style preferences. The teaching styles and learning styles mentioned are based upon Reid (1987) consisting of visual, auditory, tactile, group, and individual. This study is a survey method using 4-point Likert Scale questionnaire as the instrument. The obtained Cronbach alpha coefficients were 0.78 and 0.75 for teachers’ and students’ questionnaires respectively. Comprehensive sample technique was employed in the study. The data were analyzed using SPSS. Mean, standard deviation, ANOVA, Chi-square were used to detect the significances of the data. The result indicated that both students’ learning styles and teacher’s teaching styles did not match. The majority of students are group learners but the teachers preferred tactile teaching style.. Based on the findings, there were also the relationship between students’ learning style preferences and their academic performances. This indicated that teaching styles can make students to promote their own learning success, which include a vast number of teaching techniques so as to make learning easier, fast, more enjoyable, effective, and to increase the performance. In the finding, students whose learning style was tactile scored good result since the teachers also preferred tactile teaching style. In all academic classrooms, no matter what the subject is, there are students with multiple learning styles. Everyday teachers thus should make instructional decisions before, during, and after meeting the students and these decisions should lead the teachers to adapted learning/teaching styles to accommodate all students in the classroom. Keywords: learning styles, teaching styles, achievement DOI: 10.7176/JEP/11-10-05 Publication date: April 30 th 2020