Psaltou-Joycey, A., & Kantaridou, Z., (2011) “Major, minor, and negative learning style preferences of university students”. (Journal article)
In this study Psaltou-Joycey and Kantaridou attempt to link learning styles to the disciplines of the participants. Specifically, they intend to describe statistically the preferred learning styles of language students enrolled in different disciplines, namely, Humanities, Foreign Languages, Engineering, Sciences, Medicine, Economics, Education, and Computer Science.
Again, the participants were undergraduate Greek students (N= 1616) of two universities in Greece, attending foreign language courses in English, French, German and Italian. The instrument was the Style Analysis Survey (SAS), a 110 item questionnaire that assesses individuals’ general approaches to learning, grouping them in five dimensions: 1) visual, auditory, hands-on; 2) extraversion vs. introversion; 3) intuitive-random vs. concrete-sequential; 4) closure-oriented vs. open; and 5) global vs. Analytic (p.105).
The researchers also adopted “Reid’s (1987) distinction into major, minor and negative learning styles preferences” to enrich the description of statistical results. Major preference refers to “any learning method that comes natural, ‘normal’ to the learner”. Minor preference “signifies any learning method in which the learner can function adequately according to the demand of the tasks”. Negative preference “indicates a learning method that may cause the learner difficulty, so they will not opt for it spontaneously” (p.107). The authors use this classification to describe the flexibility of the students, that is, their ability to use a larger number of learning methods.
This study recommends teachers to prepare lessons plans that respond to the attested learning preferences of the students, and includes a guide of learning strategies and teaching activities suggested for each learning style mentioned in the report.
