Grades 1-12 Thai students’ learning styles according to Kolb’s model

Abstract

© 2015, Canadian Center of Science and Education. All rights reserved. This survey research aims to explore grades 1-12 students’ learning styles according to Kolb’s model. The data was collected from 9,600 students in 120 schools, which located in 20 provinces in six regions of Thailand. The Learning Styles Questionnaire (LSQ) adapted from Kolb’s model of learning styles were sent to the sample by post and 77.5% of them were returned. The respondents were 7,444 students (59.3% female, 40.7% male) aged from 7 to 19 years old. In data analysis, the respondents’ preferred learning styles were categorized into: Concrete Experience (CE), Reflective Observation (RO), Abstract Conceptualization (AC) and Active Experiment (AE). These learning styles were calculated for mean and standard deviation. The relationships between the respondents’ learning styles and their genders, grade levels, school sizes and regions were examined by using the One-way Analysis of Variance and Sheffe multiple comparisons. After that, the combination of learning styles’ scores was plotted and interpreted into four types of learners including Diverging, Accommodating, Assimilating and Converging and counted for their frequencies. The results revealed that the students’ learning styles were significantly different regarding their genders, grade levels, school sizes and regions. That is, the female students, the grade level 1 students and the students from large-size schools significantly had mean scores in CE, RO, AC and AE higher than the male students, the students in other grade levels and the students from small-size and medium-size schools, respectively. However, the regions that schools located did not show a strong pattern of relationship with students’ learning styles. In addition, most of the students preferred to be the Diverging learners, followed by the Accommodating, Assimilating and Converging learners. The implications from these findings were also discussed.