Contextualizing the Learning Styles Analysis of Adult ESL Learners

This study examines the effect of assessing the learning styles of adult ESL learners in the specific context of the ESL classroom. Currently used learning styles assessment instruments often ask learners to rate their agreement or disagreement with generalized statements about their learning preferences. In this study, a unit of contextualized activities was developed and used as the basis for surveying ESL learners on their learning styles preferences in the four specific contexts of Memorizing, Problem Solving, Creating, and Following Instructions. To produce the results of this study, the unit of contextualized activities and surveys was compared to Reid’s Perceptual Learning Styles Preference survey, which was developed specifically for ESL learners. One group of 52 subjects in the study completed Reid’s survey twice over a period of two weeks to obtain test-retest reliability correlations for this study (r=.648). Another group of 67 subjects completed Reid’s survey and then the unit of contextualized activities and surveys. Pearson Product-Moment correlations were calculated to compare the learning style profile results produced by each subject on the two types of surveys. Correlations for Reid’s survey and each of the four contexts of the contextualized unit, Memorizing (r=.357),Problem Solving (r=.413), Creating (r=.485), and Following Instructions (r=.375), were low, showing that there was a difference between the results produced by both instruments. Tallies were also made of category changes occurring across the three possible learning styles categories of major, minor, or negligible preference for each group of subjects. In the non-contextualized group, subjects changed learning style preference categories 32% of the time, while the contextualized subjects changed 68% of the time. Furthermore, the subjects in the contextualized group were 900 times more likely than the non~contextualized subjects to change their learning style preference two categories. It was determined from these results that context does effect learning styles self-report assessment outcomes and can produce different profile results for ESL learners. Test-retest correlation results were also calculated for the contextualized surveys (r=.666) and showed similar overall reliability to that of Reid’s survey (r=.648). However, some contexts and learning styles constructs resulted in higher or lower correlations between the two groups.

Thesis Author: Wolfersberger, Rebecca A.

Year Completed: 2001

Committee Members: Dee Gardner, Lynn Henrichsen

Thesis Chair: Neil J. Anderson

Thesis Award: Outstanding TESOL Thesis