INVESTIGATION OF THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN THE LEARNING STYLES OF PRESERVICE ELEMENTARY TEACHERS AND SOME VARIABLES

The purpose of this descriptive study carried out through survey method is to elicit the learning styles of pre-service elementary school teachers and investigate the relationships between these learning styles and gender, grade level, age and learning type. The Kolb Learning Style Inventory was used to obtain data. The present study was carried out with 409 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th year students from the classroom teacher education department of the education faculty at Mugla University in the spring term of 2008-2009 academic year. The sampling of the study was randomly constructed. In the analysis of the data, some descriptive statistics; frequencies and percentages, and a non-parametric test, Chi-square, were used. As a result of the analyses, a significant relationship was found between the learning styles of the students and their grade levels; but no significant relationships were found for age, gender, and learning type.