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The impact of learning styles on achievement in principles of microeconomics: a natural experiment.

Article Excerpt
This study investigates how a natural experiment occurring in the teaching of principles of microeconomics allows a test of the Dunn and Dunn learning styles model (Dunn & Griggs, 2000). The material for the first exam, based on essential definitions and theoretical foundations, was taught in a conventional, inductive style, more compatible with analytic learners. The second and third examinations were based on applications of those foundations and rely on a more deductive teaching method, more with compatible global learners. This dichotomy provides an opportunity to measure the relative productivity of two alternative teaching methods to student achievement while accounting for variables representing students' different learning style preferences.

Separate OLS regressions were estimated to measure the influence of student learning style preference variables for the segments of the course utilizing presumptively inductive and deductive teaching methods. Although there was little evidence that students with analytic learning style preferences performed better in the more inductive segment of the course, there was persuasive evidence that students with global learning style preferences performed better in the deductive segment of the course. The authors consider how these results reflect on validity of the Dunn and Dunn learning style model and possible adjustments in teaching strategies.

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This study examines the extent to which student achievement in undergraduate, introductory microeconomics courses is influenced by students' learning styles. According to the principles of education, the optimal method of teaching is the method that most closely matches students' learning styles. Although there are several models of learning styles (many of which are reviewed by Coffield et. al. (2004) and Hawk and Shah (2007)), we utilize the multidimensional Dunn and Dunn learning style model (Dunn & Griggs, 2000) which hypothesizes that each student possess an optimal, diversified learning style to address, process, absorb, and remember new and difficult information. Learning styles are hypothesized to be inductive (analytic) or deductive (global), and that these styles correlate with a number of environmental, emotional, sociological, physiological and psychological variables. In this study, students were given a Productivity Environmental Preference Survey (PEPS) (Dunn, Dunn & Price, 1998) to identify their learning style profiles. The sample consists of seventy-four students in three sections, taught by three instructors in two universities, all taking an introductory microeconomics course. Each instructor utilized the same syllabus, textbook, readings, exams, and other basic parameters. We statistically examine the relationship between student achievement, student learning styles, and the dichotomous nature (analytic versus global) of the method of instruction.

This study takes advantage of a natural experiment that occurs in the teaching of the course. All three instructors relied on the applications/social issues emphasis offered by the Sharp, Register and Grimes (2006) textbook, The Economics of Social Issues. The deductive nature of such a pedagogical approach, and the greater opportunity for class discussion and interaction that such an applications emphasis promotes, makes the course more compatible with global learners. To provide a better foundation for the applications/social problems material, the first third of the course (including essential definitions, production possibility frontier material and the supply and demand material), is taught in a conventional, chalk and talk style which is more compatible with analytic learners. The course material being covered is more abstract and the presentation is relatively more structured, allowing for fewer opportunities for class discussion. Hence, the first of the three exams was based on an analytic teaching approach, and the material for the second and third exams was based on a global teaching approach, focusing on economic dimensions of such issues as education, crime, pollution, discrimination, and the social desirability of "big business." That...

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