Learning style and secondary school students' commerce achievement / Saudhath Ali

Abstract

Educational psychologists were keen to find out the best method that will enhance learning in any education system. However, it is difficult to identify the learning style based on discipline. The main aim of identifying learning style of the students and finding relationship between learning style and achievement is to accommodate best teaching strategy to enhance effective learning of the students. When students are aware about the type of learning style they have, they will use different techniques in attaining knowledge. Moreover, Commerce is one of the mainstream subject taught in commerce stream. When comparing performance in relation to the science stream subjects, the performance from commerce stream subjects were low. Hence, it is important to identify the some of the reason which may affect the performance of the students. From the numerous reasons, importance is given to the learning style of the students and its relation on their achievement. In addition to this, relationship between students' ability and learning style was also compared. Therefore a quantitative research was conducted to identify whether there is any relationship between learning style and students' achievement. To collect data, a secondary school was selected. The target population is 89 (N=89) and sample selected was 72 students (N=72) under stratified random sampling. A survey method was used and information was obtained through VARK questionnaire (designed to collect data regarding learning styles Visual, Auditory, Read and Kinesthetic). In addition to this, last semester's commerce results was analyzed for their achievement. All the relationships tested found that there was no significant relationship between the selected variables.