LEARNING STYLES AND STRATEGIES OF SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN LEARNING MATHEMATICS: THE CASE OF WEST HARARGHE ZONE HABRO WEREDA

Abstract

This thesis aimed to identify types of learning styles and strategies secondary school students prefer to use when they learn mathematics, to assess relationship between learning style preferences (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, tactile, individual, and group) and learning strategies ( memory, cognitive, compensation, meta cognitive, and social). In addition, the study aimed to check whether there was a significant difference in gender, age, and self rating proficiency on both learning style preferences and learning strategies. To conduct this study, descriptive survey design was applied with both qualitative and quantitative approaches. This study was conducted in three secondary schools in Habro Woreda. The sample comprised of 275 secondary school students. Simple random technique was used to select the sample students. The data collection instruments were (1) Perceptual Learning Style Preference Questionnaire for assessing learning style preferences and (2) Learning Strategy Preference inventory Questionnaire for assessing learning strategies developed by chi’s. Descriptive statistics, independent t-test and Pearson correlation were used to analyze data by Spss software. Results of the first questionnaire revealed that the participants favored kinesthetic and tactile learning styles and disfavored group learning. Furthermore, significant difference was found in the preference of group learning between males and females. The most preferred strategy category was Meta cognitive and the least preferred strategy category was Affective. No significant difference in the preferences of learning strategies between gender and ages. But, the participants’ self-rated proficiency level had a significant difference on strategy use. And finally, all learning style was found to be strongly correlated with all learning strategy categories. At the last, summary, conclusions and possible recommendations have been drawn