Learning Styles Inventory - Results

Learning Styles Inventory - Results

A learning style inventory questionnaire was given to the twenty-six seventh grade students at St. Anthony School.  This questionnaire consisted of sixteen questions with three choices each.  Each student completed the form and then calculated the total number of a’s (visual), b’s (auditory) and c’s (kinesthetic) to determine the learning style that best fit him or her.  The results varied greatly, and some students “tied” between different styles.  Therefore, I struggled with deciding how to interpret, analyze, and display the results.  The figure below displays the results in a Venn diagram, which allows for the overlapping part or “ties” between more than one learning style to be shown.  When counting the “ties” as results for both learning styles, the visual learning style was the most popular with fourteen students favoring that style.   Next, the auditory style had twelve students favoring it.  Lastly, the kinesthetic style only had seven students favoring this style. 

When examining the sheets, I realized that many students’ numbers were very close together and maybe only one or two away from a different style.  Since the results from the students did not clearly point to any one learning style, I wanted to analyze the results in a different way.  I examined the numbers questions that were answered with a, b, or c from the class as a whole.  This would give me a better idea of the dominance of one or more learning styles from the class as whole.  The figure below shows the percentage of questions from all the students that were answered as a, b, or c. 

The results from the learning styles inventory showed me that the seventh grade students at St. Anthony’s School learn in many different ways.  There is no one learning style that dominates any of the other learning styles.  It would be best to teach these students in ways that can address all three different learning styles examined here.  Not only do the students vary from each other in their learning styles, but the learning styles also vary within the students themselves.  Overall, these students can benefit from teaching using different modalities.