EFFECTS OF TEACHING APPROACH ON ACHIEVEMENT OF AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION STUDENTS WITH VARYING LEARNING STYLES

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of the problem solving approach to the subject matter approach in teaching given units of instructions to students of varying learning styles. Results indicated that three distinct learning styles were present in high school agriculture classes (field-independent, field-dependent, field-neutral). The majority of students was field-independent. As the treatment, neither the problem solving nor subject matter approach produced significantly higher achievement scores in classes taught by the respective approach. Likewise, the learning style of the student did not result in significantly higher scores. However, when teaching approach was analyzed across learning styles, field-neutral learners were found to score significantly higher on achievement tests when taught in classes using the problem solving approach.