Rita Dunn

Learning style: State of the science

Since that time, many professional journals have published articles by various practitioners who reported dramatic successes with learning style based instruction (Ballinger & Ballinger, 1982; Cavanaugh, 1981; K. Dunn, 1981; Fiske, 1981; Hodges, 1982, 1983; Jenkins, 1982; Lemmon, 1982; & Pizzo, 1982). The popular magazine, Redbook, recently urged its readers to become intelligent consumers of education:

UNDERSTANDING THE DUNN AND DUNN LEARNING STYLES MODEL AND THE NEED FOR INDIVIDUAL DIAGNOSIS AND PRESCRIPTION

Research on the Dunn and Dunn Learning Styles Model has been conducted at more than 60 institutions of higher education and at every academic and grade level. Explanations of the 21 elements of the model and beginning steps for practitioners are provided in this article to encourage initial experimentation with some of its variables.

Effects of Matching and Mismatching Minority Developmental College Students’ Hemispheric Preferences on Mathematics Scores

AbstractThe purposes of this study were to determine the (a) effects of hemisphericity (hemispheric preference: successive/simultaneous) and instructional strategies (analytic/global) on minority developmental college students’ mathematics achievement and attitudes and (b) relationships between those students’ diagnosed hemisphericity and their learning-style preferences. The investigation employed a broadly conceived model based on the identification of each student’s hemisphericity and matching learning-style characteristics with congruent and incongruent instructional strategies. To analyze the data, we used an analysis of covariance employing a two-factor mixed design (Hemisphericity x Instructional strategy) with repeated measures on the last factor. We used t tests to analyze the degree of the relationship between hemispheric processing and correlated elements of learning style. The ANCOVA revealed significant differences when global and simultaneous students were matched or mismatched with instruct...

The Learning Style Characteristics of Gifted Students

Much of the research conducted among the gifted, the talented, and the highly creative reveals that their unique personal characteristics include being: (a) critical, (b) independent of thought and judgement, and (c) persistent (Torrance, 1965; Feldhusen, Treffinger, & Elias, 1969). Of those enumerated traits, only persistence is one of the 18 elements identified in the publications that indicate how individuals tend to learn (Dunn & Dunn, 1978). The literature concerning the gifted is devoid of information that describes how that special group responds to the

Grouping Students for Instruction: Effects of Learning Style on Achievement and Attitudes

The present study examined the effects of matching and mismatching American middle-school students with a preference for learning alone or learning with peers with selected instructional treatments in order to determine the impact upon their attitudes and achievement in social studies. Analysis revealed that the learning-alone preference performed significantly better in the learning-alone condition and that the learning-with-peers preference performed significantly better in the learning-with-peers condition. However, no-preference students also performed significantly better in the learning-alone condition than with peers. In addition, data revealed that the learning-alone and the learning-with-peers students had significantly more positive attitudes when matched with their preferred learning style; the nopreference students had more positive attitudes in the learning-alone condition.

Selected Case Studies of the Learning Style Preferences of Gifted Students.

Everyone has a learning style. Observation of students within the typical classroom provides some understanding of the diversity of individual characteristics. If a group of high school students is provided 45 minutes to develop a listing of the &dquo;Causes of Discord Between the United States and the Soviet Union,&dquo; many pursue the task in different ways. Some read independently, whereas others cluster in informal peer groups to discuss the topic. Some require extensive structure before initiating the project and ask about which resources to use, mandated length of the

Research on the Learning Style Characteristics of Selected Racial and Ethnic Groups.

Many researchers have examined the learning styles of multicultural subgroups in the United States. This paper compares and contrasts their findings, synthesizes their data, and emphasizes that individual rather than group characteristics must be addressed when providing instruction—regardless of cultural or racial background.

Learning Styles of Students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: Who Are They and How Can We Teach Them?

type of attention they require from teachers. When one analyzes why these youngsters require more attention than their classmates, it becomes obvious that they do not learn in the same way. They have a different learning style (Klavas 1993; Kyriacou and Dunn 1994). Despite the negative labels associated with children who learn differently from their same-aged classmates, research reveals that many students officially classified as failing have achieved statistically higher standardized achievement test scores in both reading and mathematics when they were taught with approaches and resources that complemented their learning styles (Brunner and Majewski 1990; Caine and Norwood 2000; Klavas 1993; Dunn and DeBello 1999). For example, after only one year of learning-style-based instruction, Special Education (SPED) high-school students in Buffalo, New Yorks public schools achieved significantly higher test scores than their counterparts who had not experienced learning-style-responsive teaching. And after two years, many of these special education students achieved almost as well as their

Incremental Implementation of Learning Style Strategies Among Urban Low Achievers

Abstract Structural analysis units on compound words, plurals, prefixes, suffixes, and contractions were divided into five 2-week phases, during which varied learning style (LS) strategies were introduced incrementally to 81 special education and 35 low-achieving general education students. During the first phase no LS accommodations were made. During the last phase all LS accommodations were removed. Pre- and posttests were administered in each of the five phases to determine reading achievement. The Learning Style Inventory (Dunn, Dunn, & Price, 1994) was administered to assess each students LS preference. Significant gains in reading achievement were revealed for both special education and general education students with LS preferences when they were taught incrementally using learning-style strategies. For students with no LS preferences, reading achievement varied greatly across the course of the experiment. A decrement in achievement for the students with LS preferences occurred when the LS strateg...

Effects of Traditional Lecture Versus Teacher-Constructed & Student-Constructed Self-Teaching Instructional Resources on Short-Term Science Achievement & Attitudes

he National Science Education Standards (NSES) * outlined by the National Research Council (NRC) (1996) were designed to overhaul completely the educational system based on the belief that learning science required active student engagement. However, active was not operationally defined and, therefore, was open to different interpretations by teachers required to implement the new Standards. Therefore, we decided to compare the effects of three different instructional strategies perceived as requiring more or less active student engagement to determine whether they were equally effective for, or appreciated by, students.