About the Match of Trainees’ Learning Styles to Their Tutors’ Instructional Strategies and the Correlation of This Match with the Trainees’ Academic Achievements

Abstract

The match between students’ learning styles (LS) and their teachers’ instructional strategies (IS) and the correlation of this LS-IS match with students’ academic achievements was studied in earlier research. However, there is no report of research where one-on-one education is implemented. Moreover, there are no references relating the match of a trainees’ LS to their tutors’ IS and the correlation of this LS-IS match with the trainees’ achievements. Accordingly, the current paper presents a study designed to investigate the correlation between a trainees’ achievements and the LS-IS match. Two different methods were used to measure the LS-IS match. First, calculating the correlation between trainees’ LS and tutors’ IS (LS-IS correlation); second, calculating the LS-IS distance. Forty-two trainees with learning disabilities were paired with 39 tutors (three tutors had two trainees each) during the 2016 academic year. Thus, 42 pairs of trainees and tutors worked to help the trainees achieve better academic grades. The Felder-Soloman Index of Learning Styles (ILS) was used to measure the trainees’ preferred LS and the tutors’ preferred IS. In the first method, the LS-IS correlations were correlated with the trainees’ grades; then, in the second method, the LS–IS distances were correlated with trainees’ grades. If the LS-IS match influences the trainees’ achievements, significant positive correlations in the first method and significant negative correlation in the second method must appear. However, the results show no significant correlation (positive or negative, accordingly) between the LS-IS match and students’ achievements at the end of the first semester of 2016. A replication of the above study was made in the second semester of 2016 and similar results were obtained.