Study on the learning styles and metacognitive learning strategies of prospective science teachers

The aim of this study was to analyze and identify the learning styles and metacognitive learning strategies of prospective science teachers. The study was performed according to the relational screening method. The study group consisted of 186 prospective science teachers studying at the Fırat University, Faculty of Education, Department of Science Education, Elazığ, Turkey, in the academic year of 2018-2019. They were students in years 1, 2, 3, and 4. In order to identify the learning styles of prospective science teachers, we used the "Kolb Learning Styles Inventory" developed by Kolb (1984) and adapted to Turkish by Gencel (2006) and the "Determination Scale of Metacognitive Learning Strategies" by Çöğenli and Güven (2014) was used to identify the metacognitive learning strategies of prospective teachers. Statistical analyses of the study data were made using the SPSS package program. In the analysis step, the numbers and percentages, calculations of arithmetic mean and Standard deviation, and the one-way variance analysis (ANOVA) were used for study questions. According to the study results, the majority (70.96%) of prospective science teachers had their distinctive and characteristic learning styles. An examination of the learning styles based on study year revealed a significant difference in terms of metacognitive learning strategies (F (3, 182) = 3.836, p=.011< .05). A significant difference was found between the average scores of the 2nd year prospective science teachers and those in the 3rd year of their studies. As the sub-dimensions of metacognitive learning strategies were analyzed on the basis of study year, it was found that the planning strategies of the 3rd year science teacher candidates were significantly different from the mean scores of those in their 1st year. Furthermore, it was found that there was no gender-based differentiation in terms of metacognitive learning strategies (U=2,424.50, p> .05). On the other hand, the arithmetic averages of the BÖSBÖ sub-dimension scores of male and female prospective science teachers showed that the average scores of female prospective science teachers were ranked as monitoring strategies (X̄= 4.2175), planning strategies (X̄= 4.1753), affective strategies (X̄= 4.1039), and evaluation strategies (X̄= 4.0779). And the monitoring and evaluation strategies of male science teacher candidates were found to be equal. However, there was no significant relation between the learning styles and metacognitive learning strategies of the prospective science teachers (F (3, 182) = .466, p> .05). As a result of this study, it was found that in the studied group of prospective science teachers, there was no relation between the sub-dimensions of learning styles and metacognitive learning and between the strategies of planning, monitoring, evaluation, and affective strategies. Keywords: Metacognitive Learning Strategies, Prospective Science Teachers, Learning Styles