Learning styles of the students of biology department and prospective biology teachers in Turkey and their relationship with some demographic variables

Abstract

This study has been carried out with the aim of researching dominant learning styles of the students studying at the biology departments of the faculty of science or the faculty of arts and sciences as well as the dominant learning styles of the prospective biology teachers studying at the faculty of education of universities in Turkey, by taking certain demographics (department, faculty, gender and grade) as basis. In this context, the sample of this study consists of the students studying at the biology teaching departments of faculties of education from 5 universities in Turkey and the students studying at the biology department of science faculties or sciences and arts faculties from 8 universities. In this study, 1255 students in total volunteered to answer Kolb's Learning Styles Inventory (KLSI-3), which has been used as an assessment tool. Evaluating the findings of the study in a general sense, it has been detected that the learning style of most students is absorbing and discriminating and that the percentage distribution of the students whose learning styles are reviewing or reflecting is much lower. It has been understood that the difference between the learning styles of the prospective biology teachers and the learning styles of the biology department students in Turkey is not statistically significant. There is not a significant relationship among the learning styles of the students studying at the biology department based on their class levels, however, such a significant relationship is observed among the prospective biology teachers based on their class levels. It is observed that the relationship among learning styles and other demographics is not significant. © 2018 by authors, all rights reserved.