Learning Styles and Academic Achievement of Tribal Students

Abstract

Access to education for all is a hurdle task for a vast country like India. It is extra difficult when we consider the remote hamlets of tribal people. Tribal education was given prime importance by the different educational policies throughout the time. There are different issues like language, culture, lack of awareness, and so on, which are threat to achieving the goal. The educational goals mostly would not get fulfilled in the schools of tribal area. This may be related to the learning styles of tribal students as there is a close association between the learning styles of students and their academic achievement. In this context, the researcher studied the learning styles used by the tribal students in Alluri Sitarama Raju (ASR) district of Andhra Pradesh state, to identify the predominant learning style of tribal students. This article also discusses about the relation between learning styles and academic achievement of the students. If the student identifies their learning styles, it will help them to plan their way of learning. Similarly, if the teachers identify the learning styles of students, teaching learning activities could be planned accordingly.

Keywords

Learning learning style tribal academic achievement students

The various ways that students learn are referred to as learning styles. The preferred method for a person to take in, process, understand and remember knowledge is referred to as their learning style. A student may have one or more learning styles. Learning styles can be categorized into six different categories, including visual, auditory, kinaesthetic, tactile, group and individual learning styles, according to the perceptual modalities of learning.

According to Reid (1995), ‘learning styles are the person’s natural, accustomed, and preferred method(s) of taking in, processing, and remembering new knowledge and abilities’. Reid (1995) found out that ‘learners have individual characters regarding to learning processes’. The perceptual channels that students like to study through are referred to as their perceptual learning style preference which are divided into ‘auditory (listening to lectures and tapes), visual (reading and studying diagram), kinaesthetic (physical activity and movement), tactile (hands-on), group (studying with others or in group), and individual learning (studying alone)’ (Reid, 1987).

Studies on Learning Styles

Learning style preferences of the students has extremely high importance in the overall performance of the students. It would add more advantages in the student’s life if they realize their way of learning. ‘Knowing their own learning style would help the students to determine their personal strengths and weaknesses’ (Gilakjani, 2012). Researches shows that learning style differs gender wise (Mallick et al., 2016). Contradictory result was found by Soundariya et al. (2017) and Singh et al. (2015). Singh et al. (2015) also stated that there is no influence of place of living, religion and educational level of father on learning styles of students. But they noticed that educational level of mother influences learning styles of students. Kinjari and Gopal (2020) found out that place of living, educational level of parents, type of institution and socio-economic status of students influence their learning styles. These studies reveals that demographic variables like gender, medium of instruction, type of school, and so on, may have influence on preferred learning styles of students. Table 1 represents the findings of researchers on major and minor learning styles of students.

Table 1.

Review on Learning Styles of Students

Researcher	Year	Major Learning Style	Minor/Negligible Learning Style
Reid	1987	Kinaesthetic and tactile	Group
Melton	1990	Kinaesthetic, tactile and individual	–
Rossi	1995	Kinaesthetic and tactile	Group
Sharifah and Wan Zalina	1995	Kinaesthetic and tactile	Group
Hariharan	2003	Nil	Kinaesthetic and group (minor) tactile visual, auditory, and individual (negative)
Rosniah Mustaffa	2007	Kinaesthetic, tactile and group	–
Ong et al.	2006	Kinaesthetic	Auditory
Riazi and Mansoorian	2008	Auditory, visual, tactile and kinaesthetic	Individual and group
Alsafi	2010	Kinaesthetic, auditory and tactile	Visual, group and individual
Adi Afzal Ahmad	2011	Nil	Nil

Source: Consolidated from different researches. References mentioned.

Learning Styles of Tribal Students

Dhiman and Verma (2014) shows that ‘there is a difference in the learning style preference of tribal and non-tribal students and that is not influenced by home environment’. There exists a negligible correlation between learning style preferences and educational commitment of tribal students (Firoz, 2019). This adds that there are some other factors which would impact on the learning style preferences of tribal students. Though there were some studies showing the glimpses of these facts, the results are not consistent. Therefore, the researcher carried out the research to analyse the learning style preference of tribal students based on demographic variables. The research also tries to find out the major, minor and negligible learning styles of tribal students and the connection between students’ academic success and their learning preferences.

Academic Achievement of Tribal Students

Academic achievement is defined as a learner’s ‘degree of success or level of proficiency in the curricular disciplines mandated within the syllabi’. It is the total knowledge gained from classroom learning.

Sujatha (2002) suggests that ‘the fundamental cognitive skills and psychological traits required for successful school participation are present in tribal students’. Kulkarni (2013) revealed that despite having the potential to flourish academically, tribal students’ grades were low. Andrabi (2015) and Saha and Kalita (2011) found that ‘the measure of academic success differs dramatically between tribal and non-tribal teenagers’. Yolila (2014) stated that ‘the academic achievement of tribal students studying in government and private schools differs significantly’. These studies show that tribal students lag behind non-tribal students in academic achievement.

Learning Styles and Academic Achievement of Students

The way students perceive their information and retain the same is highly related to their academic achievement. Students perceive and try to retain and recollect the information in different ways. This will be different for different students. Some may use only one learning style and some use combination of learning styles. Lu and Yang (2018), Najar and Bhat (2021) Naeim et al. (2022) and Sapitri et al. (2022) revealed that there is a significant relationship between learning styles and academic achievement of students. On contrary, Nur Naenah (2022) found that learning style of students is not related to their academic achievement. Zulianti and Asari (2022) found out that major learning style preference of students is auditory learning style, but student’s visual learning style is highly correlated to academic achievement. These studies leads to a conclusion that there is an inconsistency in the findings. The researcher could not find any study which indicates the results on learning styles preferences of tribal students and their academic achievement.

Objectives of the Study

To find out the preferred learning styles of tribal students.

To understand the learning styles of tribal students based on demographic variables.

To ascertain the relationship between tribal students’ learning style preferences and academic performance.

Hypotheses

There is no significant difference in the mean scores of learning style preference of tribal students based on gender.

There is no significant difference in the mean scores of learning style preference of ninth and tenth class tribal students.

There is no significant difference in the mean scores of learning style preference of state board school and CBSE board school tribal students.

There is no significant difference in the learning style preference of government and private school tribal students.

There is no significant difference in the learning style preference of Telugu medium and English medium tribal students.

There is no significant difference in the learning style preference of residential school and non-residential school tribal students.

There is no significant correlation between learning styles and academic achievement of tribal students.

Methodology

The researcher followed descriptive survey method. Six learning styles (visual, auditory, kinaesthetic, tactile, group and individual) were considered for the study. The researcher used self-prepared questionnaire to identify the learning style preference of students. This consists of 36 statements in three point scale ‘Yes’, ‘No’, and ‘Can’t Say’. An academic achievement test with 40 multiple choice questions was used to find out the achievement of students. The population of the study was ninth and tenth class students of Alluri Sitarama Raju (ASR) District of Andhra Pradesh State. The sampling technique used was stratified random sampling. A sample size of 900 were considered for the present study. Descriptive and inferential statistical analysis methods like mean (M), standard deviation (SD) and t-test were used as statistical methods to analyse the data. Pearson Product Moment Correlation test (r) was used to find the relation between learning styles and academic achievement of tribal students.

Results and Discussion

Table 2 shows the distribution of the sample and the related scores. The researcher has used statistical techniques like mean (M), standard deviation (SD), and t-test for the data analysis. The analysis of the data was done using the software MS Excel.

Table 2.

Demographic Variable wise Distribution, Mean, Standard Deviation, t-value and p-value of Students

Variable		N	M	SD	t-value	p-value
Gender	Boys	395	84.81	6.86	1.63	0.10
Gender	Girls	505	85.62	7.68	1.63	0.10
Class	IX	365	85.19	7.58	0.25	0.80
Class	X	535	85.31	7.17	0.25	0.80
Board	State	654	84.96	7.67	2.03	0.04*
Board	CBSE	246	86.07	6.33	2.03	0.04*
Type of school	Government	744	85.19	7.48	6.63	0.53
Type of school	Private	156	85.60	6.65	6.63	0.53
Medium of instruction	Telugu	254	83.16	8.34	5.48	0.00*
Medium of instruction	English	646	86.09	6.73	5.48	0.00*
Type of residence	Residential	632	85.42	7.28	0.99	0.32
Type of residence	Non residential	268	84.89	7.46	0.99	0.32

Source: The authors.

Note: *significant at 0.05 level.

Table 2 shows the demographic sample distribution and related scores of the tribal students. From Table 2, it is seen that the p-value is significant for the variables Board and Medium of instruction. This implies that the null hypotheses that there is no significant difference in the learning style preference of tribal students based on board and there is no significant difference in the learning style preference of tribal students based on Medium of instruction were rejected at 0.05 level. The mean score of preferred learning styles of CBSE students, which is 86.07, is higher than that of state school students, that is 84.96. This means that there is a significant difference in the mean scores of learning style preferences of state and CBSE board tribal students. The mean score of English medium students is 86.09, which is higher than Telugu medium students, that is 83.16. This unveils that there is a significant difference in the mean scores of learning style preferences of Telugu and English medium tribal students.

Table 2 also shows that the p-value for the variables like Gender, Class, Type of school, and Type of residence of school is not significant at 0.05 level. This implies that there is no significant difference in the mean scores of learning style preferences of tribal boys and girls, ninth and tenth tribal students, government and private tribal students, residential and non-residential school tribal students.

Table 3 shows the mean scores of sample for each learning style preference. Each learning style had six statements in three point scale. The learning style preferences was assessed as major, minor and negligible by the obtained mean scores. The criteria followed for this is given in Table 3.

Table 3.

Categorization of Major, Minor and Negligible Learning Styles

Obtained Scores	Learning Styles
14.5–18.0	Major learning style
9.0–14.4	Minor learning style
0–8.9	Negligible learning style

Source: Classification based on total score.

The mean scores of sample was found out for all six learning styles which is given in Table 4.

Table 4 shows that the sample of students use Visual, Auditory and Group learning styles (VLS, ALS & GLS) as major learning style preferences and Kinaesthetic, Tactile and Individual learning styles (KLS, TLS & ILS) as minor learning style preference. Nur Naenah’s (2022) study shows that ‘group, kinaesthetic and tactile learning styles are dominant learning styles of students’. This points out that group learning style (GLS) is dominant learning style in most of the students.

Table 4.

Mean Scores of Learning Style Preferences of Sample

Learning Style Preference	Mean Scores	Classification
Visual learning style (VLS)	14.73	Major
Auditory learning style (ALS)	14.50	Major
Kinaesthetic learning style (KLS)	12.88	Minor
Tactile learning style (TLS)	13.86	Minor
Individual learning style (ILS)	13.96	Minor
Group learning style (GLS)	15.35	Major

Source: Created by the authors from the analysis of data.

The correlation analysis was done through Pearson product moment correlation formulae and the results are given in Table 5. It is observed from the table that the correlation coefficient are 0.18, –0.03, –0.03, 0.15, 0.00, 0.15, 0.12 for visual, auditory, kinaesthetic, tactile, individual, group and total learning style, respectively. This is significant at 0.05 level with df = 898. It indicates that there is a significant positive correlation between visual, tactile, group and combination of learning styles and academic achievement of students. It also shows that there is a significant negative correlation between auditory, kinaesthetic and individual learning styles and academic achievement of students. As the co-efficient of correlation values are very less for all learning styles, the relationship between different learning styles and academic achievement are weak.

Table 5.

Pearson Correlation Coefficient of Learning Styles and Academic Achievement of Students

Learning Style Preference	Academic Achievement
Visual learning style (VLS)	0.18
Auditory learning style (ALS)	–0.03
Kinaesthetic learning style (KLS)	–0.03
Tactile learning style (TLS)	0.15
Individual learning style (ILS)	0.00
Group learning style (GLS)	0.15
Total learning style	0.12

Source: Created by the authors from the analysis of data.

But it is significant to note that visual learning style is major among tribal students and is positively correlated to academic achievement. Though auditory learning style is major learning style preference, it is negatively correlated to the academic achievement. Similarly, tactile learning style is minor learning style preference among tribal students but it is positively related to the academic achievement. These findings coincides with Lu and Yang (2018), Najar and Bhat (2021), Naeim et al. (2022) and Sapitri et al. (2022), but contradicts with Nur Naenah (2022).

Conclusion

The article reveals that the major learning style preferences of tribal students is a combination of visual, auditory and group learning style (VLS, ALS & GLS). Teachers can plan their teaching learning activities based on this information. They can focus on how to enhance the visual, auditory learning situations and create situations for group learning. The result also shows that there is significant influence of board of study and medium of instruction on learning style preferences of tribal students.

As visual, tactile and group learning styles are positively correlated to academic achievement of the students, it is important for students to learn keeping the results in mind. The teachers could help the students to focus on these learning styles which would reflect positively in their academic achievement.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

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