Pre-service Secondary teachers’ learning styles

Abstract

Every student copes with his own learning in a particular way and teaching style can determine learning style. This research is developed at a Faculty of Education Sciences where pre-service teachers are being trained. The aim is to analyze the different students’ learning styles in the Master for Secondary Teachers’ Training. We have used the VARK Questionnaire that includes 4 different learning styles (or sensory modalities): visual, aural, read/write, and kinesthetic. Participants, who were graduated in different degrees, studied in 9 different specialities of the master at Catholic University of Valencia. Results indicated that girls were more likely to prefer a read/write learning style than boys. Furthermore, the most important learning style was aural one, irrespectively of specialities. We conclude that our results can be caused by Master classes, in which students listen to the teacher and teacher explains without a feed-back. Differences among these findings and other researches are discussed.