The Association Between Learning Styles and Academic Difficulty

Abstract

This thesis examined students’ Jungian learning styles to determine if a significant association exists between dominant learning style and the occurrence and severity of academic difficulty. Learning style was put into four groups based upon learning-type theory; sensing-thinking, intuitive-thinking, sensing-feeling, and intuitive feeling. Thirty third and fourth grade students from a public elementary school in central New York aged 8-10 years old were given the Learning Preference Inventory (LPI) to determine their dominant, auxiliary, supporting, and least-used styles of learning. Amount and severity of academic difficulty was determined by the use of three academic support services available at the school. The results showed that sensing-feeling is the most common dominant learning style and that sensing thinking and intuitive thinking tied for the least common dominant style. While not a part of the study’s purpose, the results showed that boys have greater amount and degree of academic difficulty. The results show that dominant learning style wasn’t significantly associated with amount or severity of academic difficulty. Students’ least dominant learning style did not show a significant association with occurrence of academic difficulty, however results showed a significant trend suggesting that those students who have intuitive-feeling as least used learning styles had excessively more severe academic difficulties, and for a longer duration.