Teaching Styles of Science and Technology Teachers and Learning Styles of Second Year Students From Selected Public Secondary Schools

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

This study aimed to identify the teaching styles of science teachers and learning styles of high school students using the Felder-Soloman model. The second purpose was to evaluate the relationship utilizing questionnaires to understand their merits and deficiencies in the implementation of the Secondary Science Education Curriculum.For Teaching-Learning Style, the following etymology Dimensions were utilized: Active-(try something out, social-oriented), Reflective -(think about material, impersonal oriented), Sensing -(existing ways, Concrete materials, Careful with details), Intuitive -(New ways, Abstractmaterials, Not careful with details), Visual -(Pictures), Verbal -(Spoken words, Written words, Difficulty with visual style), Sequential -(Detail oriented, Sequential progress, From parts to the whole), Global -Overall picture, Non-sequential progress, Relations/connections)

METHODS

The descriptive method of research was utilized in the conduct of this study with the 2-tiered questionnaire as the main tool in the gathering of the data. The simple stratified random sampling technique was used to determine the respondents from Year 2 science high school teachers and students in Santa Cruz, Laguna District. 16 teachers and 196 students responded. Chi-square analysis was used to determine the relationship of the teaching-learning styles to students' performance from 1st to 3rd grading periods.

RESULTS

Chi-square revealed only one significant relationship within the four teaching style dimensions between visual-verbal and level of performance of students (14.93, 3, 7.82). This result suggests that visual teachers influenced the level of performance of students. Other computed chi-square values of 4.96 for active-reflective, 5.06 for sensing-intuitive and 4.64 for sequential-global, do not exceed the critical chi-square value of 7.82 at 5% level of significance

DISCUSSIONS

The study showed the existence of parity in teacher-student learning styles. Both teachers and students had a strong preference for the sensing, visual, and sequential learning styles. While certainly only empirical, irrespective of the preferred learning style, students preferred instruction with active participation as the primary mode of teaching. Not all learning styles are able to establish a significant relationship with students' performance. Though it yielded limited statistically significant results, it should help to provide insights into how learning styles may affect student performance in science.