The effects of high school students? individual differences on the learning levels on geography teaching

The aim of this study is to determine the effects of high school students? individual differences on their learning levels on Geography teaching.The study is a survey method based research. The research data has been obtained via the effects of individual differences on Geography teaching questionnarie applied to the students. And the examples of the research consist of 10th grade students from Kastamonu Anatolian High School, Kastamonu Kuzeykent High School and Kastamonu Trade Vocational High School which are under MEB (Ministry of Education) in 2008 ? 2009 academic year. To 120 students who are studying in 10th grade of these schools, a questionarie about determining individual differences has been applied. In the analysis of the data SSPS 17.0 version has been used and in the analysis of scale form?s personal information belonging to the students, percentage and frequency distributions have been taken. The items including students? general learning styles and the ones students prefer during the geograpghy courses have been groupped meaningfully and coherently and each item has been entered to the SPSS programme by grading. Likert type 5 point scale has been predicated on scoring and by comparing students? personal information, groups formed with each item and students? pass degree, a result has been obtained.As a result of research findings about students? personal information it has been found out that students? gender (F: 1,397); whether students have a study room or not (F: 0,678); their parents? age (F: 0,394- F: 0,658), their educational background (F: 0,843- F: 0,690), their occupations (F: 0,005- F: 0,540), whether their house is their own or mass housing or for rent (F: 0,119), their income (F: 1,191), whether they are alive or not, hayatta veya hayatta olmamasının, whether they are step child or not and whether they live with their family or not are not effective on students? Geography course success.As a result of research findings about students? general learning styles and the ones they prefer during the Geography courses it has been found out that individual learning style (F: 0,246- F: 1,184), group learning style (F: 0,420- F: 0,649), teacher centered learning style (F: 1,668- F: 0,767), learning atmosphere (F: 0,625- F: 1,100) and learning style by using materials (F: 1,721- F: 0,612) are not effective on students? Geography course success.Furthermore, as a result of research, school types (F: 81,665) , number of the rooms in the house they live (F:3,841), whether they have brothers or sisters or not (F: 3,665); student centered learning style which is one of the learning styles students prefer in general and in Geography courses (F: 2,289- F: 2,838) are effective on students? Geography course success. That the most preferred learning style is student centered learning style shows that in Geography courses students prefer learning with hands-on activities, correlating between the previous acquirements with their new information and learning new data according to their own criteria.Key Words: Individual Differences, Student Centered Learning , Tactile Learning, Survey Method.