The increasing relevance of Pask’s work to modern information seeking and use

Abstract

A series of seven empirical studies conducted in Sheffield lend support to the notion that learners do spontaneously display styles of information processing behaviour originally identified by Pask and Scott, that even versatile postgraduate students are susceptible to the effects of matching and mismatching of teaching and learning styles, and that the arena in which these learning styles may be observed extends beyond learning to information seeking activity including database searching. Much research is still to be done to resolve the enigma of learning styles. However, arguably Pask’s time has come in the sense that current computing software and educational infrastructure now allow with relative ease the testing of the potential of Pask’s constructs using large samples of students, and the realisation of this potential in the development and delivery of mainstream teaching and learning resources.