Learning styles of candidates of geography teaching

Abstract

The aim of this study is to find out answers to the question how the learning styles of the candidates of geography teaching are. Learning styles can be defined as "each student's using different ways while preparing, learning and recalling a new and difficult information." It is quite important to know these styles and to do activities which are proper to them for increasing success in educational proceedings. in this research, scanning model of quantitative research type is used. 229 students from Marmara and Karadeniz Technical University Geography Teaching Department and Ondokuz Mayis University Geography Department constitute the paradigm of this research. Data for the research is obtained via Kolb Learning Style Inventory-3 which is adopted to Turkish by Evin Gencel in 2007. Data which is obtained according to the aim of the research is analyzed with Chi-Square test in SPSS-17 program package. Obtained data can be summarized as: "It is seen that the most dominant style is assimilator learning style (38,4%) and it is followed by converger learning style (26,2%). Any significant statistical difference was not found between teaching candidates' gender (male/female), years (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), and faculty type (education or letters and science faculty) and learning styles. Significant difference was only seen between university types X2(sd=6, n=229)=20,54, p<,05). Among the students of Marmara University assimilator and converger, in Ondokuz Mayis University assimilator and diverger, and among Karadeniz Technical University students diverger and assimilator learning styles are more commonly seen. (C) 2013 the Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.