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Article Excerpt
I. Introduction
Much of the literature on economics education in the past decade has questioned the effectiveness of introductory economics courses (Becker 1997). Economics instructors, these authors argue, must move beyond the traditional lecture approach to more "active" teaching strategies such as cooperative learning if they are to successfully engage today's students. Without such changes, they warn, students will be less likely to take economics courses, and/or to continue in their economics studies beyond required courses. The need for a variety of teaching methods is supported, in many cases, by differences in student learning styles. If students absorb and process information differently, then shouldn't instructors present the material in different ways in order to maximize learning outcomes?
Several recent papers have focused on the impact of student learning styles and personality types on the ability to learn economic concepts. This paper contributes to the literature in two ways. First, unlike much of the existing research that relies on personality type as a proxy for learning style, we use the VARK (Visual, Aural, Read/ write and Kinesthetic) inventory as our learning style indicator (2). We believe the learning style modalities identified in the VARK inventory lend themselves well to an analysis of how students prefer to learn economics. Second, while our study confirms some reported results from similar research, it contradicts prior research results in important areas. We hope that discussion of both the similarities and differences will contribute to the academic community's understanding of critical success factors in the learning of economics.
The paper is organized as follows. Section II summarizes the relevant literature and describes how our research contributes to this literature. In Section III, we describe the VARK learning styles questionnaire and our rationale for using it in our study. Section IV presents our model and analysis. We discuss our conclusions and suggestions for further research in Section V.
II. Literature Review
Much of the literature on performance in introductory economics classes identifies standardized test scores, prior academic performance and previous experience in the subject as significant predictors of student success. In addition, researchers in other fields have studied the impact of learning styles on student performance in introductory courses (see, for example Bartlett, Hallock, Kellogg et al 1996, and Thomas et al 2002). Their results are mixed; some conclude that learning style can impact student success, while others find no significant relationship. We focus here on the literature that introduces student learning style as an additional "input" into models of economics learning "output."
Charkins et al (1985) search for a link between teaching styles and learning styles, and try to identify any impact of such a link on student learning. These authors use a questionnaire that classifies teacher and student learning as dependent, independent or collaborative. They include the SAT score as a measure of aptitude, the TUCE (Test of Understanding of College Economics) pre-test as a measure of the stock of knowledge, and the percentage change in the pre- versus the post-test TUCE score as a measure of achievement in introductory economics courses. They find that the greater the divergence between teaching style and student-preferred learning styles, the lower is student achievement.
Borg and Shapiro (1996) use the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MTBI) to evaluate macroeconomic principles students and professors to see if personality type affects student grades and if students with personality types similar to those of their professor perform better. They conclude that students whose personality type suggests a preference for a structured learning environment perform significantly better in macroeconomic principles courses than those whose personality type suggests a preference for either independent learning or extensive interaction during class. In addition, consistent with Charkins et al, these authors find that students who share a personality type with their professor perform significantly better.
Ziegert (2000) tests the hypothesis that faculty and student personality types affect student abilities to understand economics, as measured by the TUCE and course grade. Like Borg and Shapiro, she uses the Myers-Briggs personality type indicator and finds that "thinking" students (those that make objective judgments) outperform feeling "students" (those that make decisions based on personal values). Her research also suggests that "intuitive" students (those that focus on the larger picture prior to details and learn from insight) outperform "sensing" students (those that prefer experience-based learning). Ziegert finds no evidence of a gender gap in her study; once personality differences have been accounted for, gender is not a statistically significant predictor of success in economics. Finally, contrary to Borg and Shapiro and Charkins et al, Ziegert's research does not suggest that commonality between instructor and student personality type improves student performance.
Our study extends this literature in several ways. First, we rely on the VARK inventory to assess learning styles. In our view, this inventory provides a valuable measure of learning style because it directly assesses how students prefer to learn, rather than indirectly predicting their learning strengths through a personality assessment. Second, we pursue the still unresolved issue of commonality between professor and student learning preferences, and whether such commonality significantly improves student performance. Finally, comparison of our results with those in previous studies will, we hope,...
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