Preferencias de estilos de aprendizaje en el alumnado español de entre 11 y 15 años

Abstract

Learning styles are personal preferences for receiving, collecting, processing, and interpreting information. To assess this construct, various instruments have been designed, including the Index of Learning Styles (ILS), which is used in this study. The aim of this paper was to analyze the learning style preferences of Spanish students aged 11 to 15 years according to some sociodemographic variables, using a non-experimental cross-sectional design. The results indicate that the students have a primarily active, sensitive, visual, and sequential style; the preferred channel for receiving information is visual versus verbal. The prevalence of reflective learning styles is higher in female students than in male students. Those who study in public schools tend to be more visual, intuitive, and global in their learning processes than those who attend subsidized schools. Those in larger localities (urban areas) tend to have more sensitive, verbal and sequential learning styles, while in rural areas, the process of learning is slightly more intuitive, visual and global. The effect size is small regarding gender, school ownership and environment. However, in terms of school year, the effect size is moderate: students in higher grades tend to be more sensitive and visual than those in lower grades, who are more intuitive and, above all, more verbal. Knowing about learning styles is useful to design and adapt the training processes to the classroom differences. Los estilos de aprendizaje constituyen las preferencias de una persona para recibir, recopilar, procesar e interpretar información. Para medir este constructo se han diseñado diversos instrumentos, entre ellos el Index of Learning Styles (ILS), que es utilizado en este trabajo. El objetivo fue analizar las preferencias de estilos de aprendizaje en el estudiantado español de 11 a 15 años respecto a algunas variables sociodemográficas partiendo de un diseño no experimental-transversal. Los resultados muestran que el alumnado tiene un estilo predominantemente activo, sensitivo, visual y secuencial; siendo el canal preferido para recibir la información el visual frente al verbal. La tendencia de las alumnas al estilo reflexivo es mayor que la de los alumnos. Quienes estudian en centros públicos tienden a ser más visuales, intuitivos y globales en su aprendizaje que quienes asisten a centros concertados. Aquellos pertenecientes a localidades de mayor tamaño (zonas urbanas) tienden a tener estilos de aprendizaje más sensitivos, verbales y secuenciales, mientras que en las zonas rurales los aprendizajes son de carácter ligeramente más intuitivo, visual y global. El tamaño del efecto es pequeño en la comparativa por sexo, por titularidad del centro y por entorno. Sin embargo, en cuanto al curso escolar el tamaño del efecto es moderado, el estudiantado de cursos superiores tiende a ser más sensitivo y visual y el de cursos inferiores más intuitivo y, sobre todo, más verbal. El conocimiento sobre los estilos de aprendizaje permite diseñar y adaptar los procesos formativos a las diferencias existentes en el aula.

An experiment for a quality education using business materials tailored to learning profiles

“…The main problem is that in many cases, the student is often unaware of how he or she learns best and especially the strategies associated with his or her preferred learning style. This is not entirely surprising since the physiological bases by which a brain learns have not been identified to date (Egaña et al, 2022).…”

“…The construct "learning style" was first coined by Gibson (1969) and it was considered "how a person prefers to be presented with information to carry out learning" (Egaña et al, 2022). Kolb (1984) described learning strategies as "the way students prefer to process new information including strategies that are consistently adopted to learn".…”

“…There are different conceptual models of learning styles, such as Kolb's learning model, Felder and Soloman's model or VARK (Egaña et al, 2022;Alarcón, 2023) (Table 1). Most models of learning styles include cognitive traits, and intellectual and personality characteristics (Freiber et al, 2017).…”

“…In fact, VARK is not consider a learning style by Flemming himself (Fleming, 2012), but "the identification of modalities that they might prefer when learning" (Fleming, 2012). Egaña et al (2022) also highlight this when they consider that learning styles are "a preference for receiving, collecting, processing and interpreting information". This implies that there may be a distinction between a learner's preference (they may prefer or be attracted to a particular format or strategy that perhaps works for them in another context), but they may not be good at it, which is related to their competencies or skills.…”

Bibliometric Analysis on Recent Topics in ILS Research

“…Several learning style models have been developed to model individual differences in the classroom. According to Diago et al (2018), the learning style preference detection instruments that are most prevalent in various search engines are the VAK/VARK questionnaires (Google Scholar in any language), CHAEA (Google Scholar in Spanish), and ILS (Felder & Soloman, 1997) (Web of Science and ScienceDirect). Additionally, when only Spanish works are considered, the most relevant questionnaire is CHAEA (Spanish adaptation of Honey & Mumford's LSQ, 1982), followed by VAK/VARK.…”