Learning Styles Preferences of Spanish Students between 11 and 15 years of age

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.