Investigating Grade Nine Students’ Preferred Learning Styles Using a Kolb’s Model

The purpose of this study was to investigate grade nine students’ preferred learning styles based on the Kolb’s model. A Learning Style Inventory adapted from the Kolb’s model of learning was administered to 201 students selected through maximum variation sampling method. The students’ preferred learning styles were categorized into four learning styles namely i) accommodator, ii) diverger, iii)assimilator and iv) converger by calculating their mean and standard deviation. An ANOVA test and Scheffe multiple comparisons were performed to examine the relationships between the students’ preferred learning styles and their grade as well as gender. The results indicated that a majority of male grade 9 students preferred assimilator learning style (M=3.37; SD=1.13) while the female students’ preferred diverger learning style (M=3.49; SD=1.18). An independent samples t-test revealed that there was a statistically significant mean difference between male (M=30.29: SD=4.99) and female (M=32.58; SD=5.16) students for only accommodator learning style (p=.002) at .05 significance level. An analysis of variance showed that there was a statistically significant difference between students’ preferred learning styles. A post-hoc analysis using Scheffe multiple comparison indicated that the mean score of accommodators was significantly different from diverger, assimilator and converger learning styles. However, the mean score of diverger did not differ significantly from assimilator and converger while the mean score of assimilators did not differ with converger learning style.