AN INVESTIGATION ON ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT AND LEARNING STYLES AS TO BRANCHES AND GENDER FROM FACULTY OF EDUCATION STUDENTS

This study aimed to determine students" preferred learning styles, academic achievement and to investigate whether there was a significant difference in students" preferred learning style and academic achievement level according to their program and gender. This study involved in 433 students from Erzincan Faculty of Education in the 2006-2007 academic year. Turkish version of Kolb Learning Style Inventory (LSI) was used to collect the data about student"s learning style. The data about students" academic achievement were collected from Faculty records. The data that was obtained from LSI and Faculty records was analyzed using by t-test, ANOVA and chi-square techniques. The results show that academic achievement of female students was significantly higher than male students" and learning style do not differ significantly in relation to the gender. In addition, the level of academic achievement and learning style was found significantly different according to the enrolling teacher education program. The other findings showed that 43.6 % of the students were converger, 29.3 % of students were assimilator, 16.3 % of the students were accommodator, and 10.8 % of the students were diverger. There was not any difference between students" grade point average as to learning style.