Learning Styles of University Students

Abstract

Individual differences exist in the way people learn at school. This is because day-in-day-out individuals experience the world in unique ways, and with that comes variations in the ways they learn best. Despite the abundance of learning styles research, however, there appears not much research on the characteristics and dominant learning styles of students enrolled in a degree in teaching and non-teaching programme at a public university in Ghana. This study, therefore, set out to investigate the learning styles of third-year students who are training to become teachers at the senior high schools and occupy non-teaching positions in any academic institution in a Ghanaian university. Descriptive survey research design was employed, and 94 students were randomly sampled. The findings revealed that the most dominant learning style of the students was kinaesthetic style followed by reading/writing style, the auditory style and the visual style. It was therefore recommended that lecturers in the department where the study was conducted should design their instructions and activities in ways that would engage their students more in hands-on and practical and or experiential learning (kinaesthetic).