The investigation of teacher candidates' learning styles in terms of various variables

The aim of this study is to investigate the learning styles of freshmen and senior teacher candidates who are at the departments of; Elementary School Education, Science and Turkish Education in terms of various variables. In this study, correlational research method was performed.The universe of this study consist of freshmen and senior students at the departments of Elemaentary School Education, Science and Turkish Education in 2007?2008 academic year at Dokuz Eylül University. Students were selected by using proportional stratified sampling method keeping in mind the number of students. In accordance with the dispertation of the universe; 58 primary school, 35 science and 57 Turkish education freshmen class pre-service teacher and seniors; 66 elementary school education, 35 Science and 49 Turkish Education teacher candidates consist of the sample of the study.Kolb?s Learning Styles Inventory III was employed as data gathering instrument in the study. In data analysis, arithmetic means, standart deviation, t-test, one-way analysis of variance, x2 and Pearson correlation analysis were employed.Acording to the findings of study, it is seen that, %38,7 of teacher candidates have Assimilating, %37?3 have Converging, %15,3 have Diverging and %8,7 have Accomodating learning styles.It was observed that pre-service teachers? learning styles don?t differ in terms of gender. And ıt was observed that pre-service teachers? learning styles differ on a meaningful level according to Y dimension (abstract conceptualization-concrete experience) through the perceiving the knowledge dimension (Y dimension-?horizontal dimension?) and using the knowledge that are perceived dimesion (X dimension-?vertical dimension?). It was determined that the reason of this difference is men?s concrete experience score means are meaningfully level higher than women.Pre-service teachers? learning styles differ meaningfully according to their department. It was observed that there is difference on a meaningful level Y subdimensions (AC-SK ve CE-SD) and departments.It was observed that Elementary and Science education teacher candidates? learning styles differ meaningfully on freshmen and senior levels. However, the Turkish education teacher candidates? learning styles don?t differ according to the classes. It was observed that in all departments while freshmen? learning style is assimilating, seniors? learning style is Converging.It was observed that teacher candidates? learning styles don?t differ in terms of statistics meaningfully according to the type of high schools form which that they graduated however it does not differ meaningfully according to X and Y dimension.It was obserded that pre-service teachers? learning styles does not differ in terms of statistics meaningfully according to their high school departments. However, learning styles X dimension differ meaningfully according to high school departments the cause of this difference is RO(YG) subdimension. It was observed that reflective observation score means are high in TM department when compared to other departments.It was recorded that pre-service techers? academic achievement means differ meaningfully according to gender; and women?s academic achievement means are higher than men?s.Lastly ıt was found that, teacher candidates , the learning styles of studying different departments, differ. In addition, it was found out that, students who have the highest academic achievenemt means are Accomodating although it is not statistically meaningful. And a difference on a meaningful level was found at X and Y dimension