A Comparative Study Regarding the Learning Styles of Turkish Undergraduate Geography Students and Their Western Counterparts

Abstract

It has been argued that culture has a significant impact on learning styles. Turkey is one of the non-Western countries according to studies on the classification of countries based on cultural characteristics. Therefore, the primary objective of this study was to compare the learning styles of geography undergraduates in Turkey with the findings of a previous international study in which the learning styles of Western geography undergraduates were assessed. Kolb's Learning Styles Inventory was used as a measurement tool in order to facilitate this comparison, and 1275 Turkish geography undergraduates studying at eight universities in different geographical regions of Turkey responded to this inventory. The data obtained from the study were analyzed to compare the learning styles with those of Western geography undergraduates. According to the research findings, the assimilating and converging learning styles were favored between Turkish geography undergraduates, while the assimilating learning style was favored between Western geography undergraduates. Similar to Western counterparts, there are significant differences between demographic variables such as age and class of and predominant learning styles of Turkish geography undergraduates within 10 departments.

Learning Styles of the Students of Biology Department and Prospective Biology Teachers in Turkey and Their Relationship with Some Demographic Variables

“…For instance, one of the results indicates that the dominant learning style of the prospective teachers studying at departments relevant to certain fields such as science [45,47], biology [48], physics [49] and chemistry [50] is the diverging learning style. In some other studies, it has been detected that the converging learning style is the dominant learning style of the prospective science teachers [46], of the prospective mathematics teachers [51,52,53], of the prospective teachers studying at the department of computer education and instructional technologies [54,55,56], whereas; the dominant learning style of the prospective classroom teacher is either the assimilating or the converging learning style [57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65]; the dominant learning style of the prospective geography teachers is the converging and the assimilating learning styles [66,70]; the dominant learning style of the prospective social sciences teachers is also the assimilating and the converging learning styles [37]; that the dominant learning style of majority of the prospective physical education teachers is either the diverging or the assimilating [69]. In two studies examining the learning styles of prospective music teachers, it was found that the dominant learning style of the majority of the prospective music teachers is either the diverging and the accommodating [68] or the assimilating and the diverging learning style [67].…”

La Influencia de la Cultura sobre el Aprendizaje en el Instituto Tecnológico de San Luis Potosí

“…El aprendizaje comienza con la experiencia y se refuerza por la relación entre el alumno y los modelos que le gusta imitar, por lo tanto, el lugar donde vive una persona y con quién crece, identifica el impacto de la cultura y los factores que influyen en el aprendizaje (Kim y McLean, 2014). Se considera que las diferentes condiciones y actitudes deberían ser aún más marcadas en el aprendizaje, ya que este es en gran medida una actividad humana que transmite conocimientos y valores de una generación a otra, gran parte del conocimiento y los valores están obviamente ligados a la cultura organizacional teniendo un impacto significativo en los estilos de aprendizaje (Özdemir, 2015;Leung, 2021). Asimismo, los resultados escolares tienen un gran significado en el origen familiar y la composición étnica de las escuelas, ya que facilita el contacto intercultural y el aprendizaje en aulas para apoyar el ajuste escolar y el logro de los estudiantes (Phalet et al, 2004).…”

The Effects of Culture on Learning Styles: The Sample of Ondokuz Mayıs University

“…In another study, the Learning Style Inventory (LSI) (Dunn, Dunn, & Price, 1985) was used to compare the learning styles of primary-school-age American students from four different ethnicities (Dunn et al, 1990). However, it is noteworthy that the studies using the Learning Styles Inventory (LSI) developed by David Kolb were predominant among a series of studies focusing on cultural differences in learning styles by using different measurement tools such as these: for example, Auyeung and Sands (1996), Barmeyer (2004), Boland et al (2011), Budeva et al (2012, Çelikler (2020), Healey et al (2005), Jaju et al (2002), Maldonado-Torres (2011), Özdemir (2015, and Pokharel (2013).…”