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