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Learning styles and the selection of majors among Lebanese youth

Abstract

Learning style preferences and selection of university major data were obtained from a sample of 199 Lebanese high school graduates. These measures and gender were used to assess the relation between the selection of major and learning style preferences. The main assumption was that students who believe they have competencies or ability in a certain area would make choices to pursue activities in these areas in order to develop further these competencies (Holland, 1973). The perceptual and biological development of students’ auditory, visual, tactual and kinesthetic senses appeared to be a key factor in their way of acquiring information. Thus, fitting learning preferences to the specific content knowledge required is with little doubt a very important issue that needs to be addressed by research. This study found that learning style preferences were not homogeneous and were not homogenously distributed across majors. Overall, students indicated a preference for the visual and active learning styles.Females, however, were higher than males on both reflective and verbal styles. Chi-square analyses indicated that each of the six general major areas had distinct learning style attribute profiles that distinguished them from the others. Learning style profiles, therefore, may contribute positively to student selection processes for different majors.peer-reviewe

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