Matching teaching styles to learner aptitudes within the structure-of-intellect model

Abstract

This research attempted to examine the interaction between a student's learning style and the mode (figural, symbolic, or semantic) of the content presentation. I t was hypothesized that a student uniquely high in one of the aptitudes would benefit more from a presentation emphasizing that mode than he would from a presentation emphasizing either of the other two modes. Additionally, it was hypothesized that a student would perform better on the lesson posttest questions, that were framed in a mode congruent with his preferred aptitude, than he would on either of the other two types of questions, regardless of the lesson. The study also sought to identify the nature of the aptitudes with reference to their distribution in the total sample, among sex and ethnic groups, and to establish intercorrelations among the aptitudes and correlations between the aptitude measures and lesson posttest scores. Over a two-day period, 175 eighth grade students were administered three aptitude assessment devices (Reconstructing Figures, a specially constructed test sampling the figural dimension; Letter Number, sampling the symbolic dimension; Ordering I, sampling the semantic dimension). During the succeeding three days, these same students were exposed to three self-instructional science lessons, one stressing figural, one symbolic and one semantic content. At the conclusion of each lesson, a posttest was administered which measured the students' comprehension of the lesson. Each posttest consisted of three types of items, one phrased in figural, one in symbolic, and one in semantic terms, which sampled the informational content of the lesson. ...