Effects of teaching environment appropriate to learning styles on academic achievement, retention, and attitudes

The realization of meaningful and permanent learning, which is of greatsignificance in the process of education, to large extent, rests with the conscious learningefforts of the one who learns. However, what is meant by the conscious learning effortsis that the learner is aware of learning what and why and how it is learnt. The answersthat the learner will find in his mind to these questions will make what e has leantmeaningful and permanent.Although the instructors believe they exert all they can in the classroom topromote student success, they keep complaining about the fact that they have not beenable to obtain the desired learning. However well instructors prepare before lesson,whatever means and equipments they bring to the classroom, they may not attain thelearning success as it has been expected. That is because the learners in the classroomhave different learning styles just as they have different physical characteristics.Learning styles are the forms that the students utilize in making different choices duringthe learning process. The data about these forms were considered in order to determineto what extent they influence the degree of keeping something in mind, the manners andin the academic success variable and this project proposal has, therefore, beendeveloped. The research will be carried out using control group and experimental groupthrough experimental method.There has been a great need for such studies that are thought to contribute to thesolutions of many problems encountered in education. One such problem is financialloss in the economy of the nation caused by the students due to failure or late graduation,which requires reinvesting money on such students. Another is that the students developan adverse attitude against learning when they have difficulty in learning. This studyaims to find out how such students can be reduced to a minimum number.This study aimed at revealing the learner attitudes toward this course, recall leveland efficiency of the course to academic success with the applications of the course toacademic success with the applications of the course that is carried out appropriate tofield learning styles dimension in the 5th grade of the social studies course in elementaryschool.The design of the study was based on experimental and control group pre / posttest model. The applications related to the study was realized in the fall term of 2005-2006 academic year with the collaboration of Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart ElementarySchool and in the classroom of 5-A and 5-C experimental and control grouprespectively. Throughout the study, teaching materials were developed by the researcherconsidering the learning styles learners and were utilized in presenting the course.In order to collect data, an achievement test that would evaluate learners?academic achievement, learning style inventory that would evaluate learners? learningstyle characteristics and lesson plan, instruction material was developed.The data obtained were analysed by SPSS; with a significance level of .05 as thelevel of arithmetic mean, standard deviation, t test, percentage and differences weremade use of to analyze the data.After statistical analysis, in this research, the following results were obtained:1. There was a significant difference between the success of control group andexperimental group, experimental group being more successful than thecontrol group.2. There wasn?t a significant difference between the attitudes of control groupstudents and those of experimental group.3. There was a significant difference between the retention of control group andexperimental group, experimental group being more successful than thecontrol group.