An experimental study of perceptions of lectures attuned to different learning styles.

An experimental study into the attunement of lectures to students' learning styles, in which analysis was undertaken on 77 students, from the degree disciplines of Physiotherapy, Statistics, Nursing and Psychology. The aim of the study was to discover if students perceived that they had learnt more effectively in lectures attuned to their learning styles, as predicted on the basis of Kolb (1984). The students were presented with four lectures each attuned to a different learning style, at the end of each lecture they were asked to assess their perceptions of the lecture and learning within the lecture via a questionnaire. The results indicated that there were no significant differences in the students' perceived learning within attuned lectures when compared to the non-attuned lectures. This contradicts the connection Kolb claims between approach and learning style.Close examination of Kolb's learning style theory revealed a number of serious anomalies and internal inconsistencies within his work (Claimed negative correlations between dialectic pairs, mixed learning styles and questionnable support for learning styles from split brain research). These theoretical anomalies were suplemented by experimental results that indicated that learning styles were not stable over time. The implications of this analysis are discussed in detail. Finally speculative further investigations were carried out to in an attempt to provide a more appropriate interpretation of Kolb's work. This further work yielded interesting results that are reported and would merit further study.