Learning Styles and Academic Achievement among Form Three Living Integrated Skills Students

Abstract

Learning styles indicate a students’ preference for learning methods and therefore are necessary information to guide teachers’ instruction. This study is aimed to determine the relationship between learning styles and academic achievement of Form Three students in their Living Integrated Skills subject. This study was participated by 372 respondents selected using purposive sampling from six secondary schools in Sabah, Malaysia. Data was collected using a research questionnaire in survey research and analyzed with IBM SPSS 23.0 using both descriptive and inferential statistical analyses. Findings of the study showed that pragmatist and theorist learning styles are the dominant learning styles while activist is the least preferred learning style. It was found that learning styles i.e. activist (t = -0.412; p = 0.681), reflective (t = -1.457; p = 0.146), theorist (t = 0.890; p = 0.374) and pragmatist (t = -0.537; p = 0.592) did not differ significantly based on gender but learning styles i.e activist (t = 7.412, p = 0.000), reflective (t = 9.461, p = 0.000), theorist (t = 9.080, p = 0.000) and pragmatist (t = 8.615, p = 0.000) was significantly different between high and low academic achievers. The higher achievers were pragmatic and activist while the lower achievers were reflective and theorists. This study also showed that learning styles i.e. activist (r = 0.395, p = 0.000), reflective (r = 0.476, p = 0.000), theorist (r = 0.492, p = 0.000) and pragmatist (r = 0.471, p = 0.000) were significantly correlated with academic achievement. Theorist learning style has the strongest correlation with academic achievement followed by reflective and pragmatist and the weakest learning style is activist. This study implied that other factors like a classroom environment, instructional delivery, and students’ self-efficacy should be investigated in future studies to explain the academic achievement of the students. This study supported the notion that learning styles are important to facilitate teachers in planning and implementing the lesson and for students to develop meta-cognitive ability to learn with the best style suited to them.

Keywords

• learning styles
• academic achievement
• education
• malaysia
• form 3 students