THE RELATIONSHIP OF PERSONALITY AND LEARNING STYLES WITH SCHOOL ATTAINMENT OF PUPILS IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS

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Date
1985
Authors
ADEYANJU, GABRIEL ADEGBOYEGA
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Abstract
One of the most important things parents are anxious to know about their children at the end of each school term is the average academic performance of these children. Whereas educational psychologists have researched various means by which learning could be improved - an area that has attracted least attention from literature review in Nigeria - is the learning style of pupils. This is the characteristic way of learning of individuals or the individual’s approach to learning which in turn determine how the individual utilizes his abilities to solve problems. It was the investigator's view that the learning styles and personality traits of pupils affect their school attainments. This research was therefore aimed at determining the relationship of learning styles and personality with primary school attainments. Three learning styles were identified for this purpose. a) The divergence-convergence learning style (Hudson, 1966) b) The reflective - impulsivity learning style (Kagan, 1965) c) The field independent-dependent learning style (Witkin, 1965). Vii viii In terms of personality dimensions, Eysenck's and Hudson's personality traits were adapted for the study. The learning style tests adopted from Hudson (1966),Kagan (1965) and Within (1965) respectively were individually administered and scored with emphasis on number of correct scores, wrong guesses, the time taken before the first response and the mean time taken for each of the right answers. Inter scorer reliability of the Uses and Elaboration was 0.78 and 0.81 respectively after it was subjected to Spearman’s attenuation formula. The reliabilities of the seven personality traits adopted for the study range between 0.75 and 0.89 after they were subjected to Spearman's attenuation formula. The Reflectivity and Field Independence test items were subjected to Item Analyses. This led to the elimination of four reflectivity and five field independence test items. The spilt-half method of reliability was applied to the Non verbal Reasoning Test which resulted in a reliability co-efficient of 0.71. Correlation matrices, ANOVA, Partial correlation subprogramme of the SPSS and factor Analyses were used with the aid of Iya Abubakar Computer Centre to test four hypotheses. Three Hundred and Fifteen (315) pupils were randomly sampled for the study but only 277 qualified for analyses. There were divided into two groups - Group I (hereafter referred to as Private Schools, N = 96) and Group II (hereafter referred to as Public Schools, N = 181). Anova analyses indicated that the divergers, reflectives and the field independent children were significantly better in school attainments than their corresponding convergers, impulsives and field- dependent counterparts at levels of confidence ranging between 0.001 and 0.05. In all, divergence came out to be more significantly related to school attainment than the other learning styles researched. This supports Getzels and Jackson’s (1962) classical findings on the subject. There was also the discovery that the effects of learning styles on attainment significantly superseded the effect of general ability of the Non Verbal Reasoning Test traits NVRT. However, when NVRT was partiall'ed out of the correlation between attainments and seven personality traits the relationship failed to reach significant levels except aAuthoritarianism which recorded 0.01 and 0.05 levels of significance
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A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL, AHMADU BELLO UNIVERSITY, IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN EDUCATION (EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY) DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION FACULTY OF EDUCATION, AHMADU BELLO UNIVERSITY,ZARIA.
Keywords
RELATIONSHIPS,, PERSONALITY,, LEARNING STYLES,, SCHOOL,, ATTAINMENT,, PUPILS,, PRIMARY SCHOOLS
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