Pentavalent Inventory to Measure Learning Styles

IntroductionA great variety of instruments to measure learning styles can be found in the literature (Garcia Cue & Santizo Rincon, 2011). Many of them cater to different preferences and trends in learning from several points of view: environmental, sensory, sociological and cognitive, among others.The present study deals with the development of an assessment instrument of learning styles on the basis of five kinds of preferences that people use to learn: chronobiological (if the person feels that learning is more productive in the morning, afternoon or evening), sociological (learning individually or in a group), level of dependence on others (independence vs. dependence), sensory preferences in general and sensory preferences in the use of technology.Rodriguez Carracedo and Vazquez Carro (2013) point out that there is a variety of approaches to develop and validate instruments that allow diagnosing learning styles. These include different traits that are evaluated and different levels of depth, which can range from the preferences under the context to those relating to personality traits that are more difficult to discover.While it is true that there are other instruments that estimate the magnitude of different preferences, none of them offers the set presented in this proposal. The design was requested by a Mexican company which is in the process of construction of their own corporate university and wanted to know the learning styles of its employees and collaborators. In a period of eight months, several processes were carried out: the collection of information about learning styles' state of the art, the self-report test design, the application of the test (including several pilot studies), and the psychometric analysis of the collected data.The instrument includes a list of 108 items that deliver 18 scores, each of them associated with the possibilities offered by each preference.Since its creation, the corporate university had considered the need for an instrument that would allow it to identify the preferences of their employees and partners so that, starting from there, they could design courses, seminars, and workshops intended to be imparted in their training and development.Teachers, instructors, and facilitators that will support the corporate university need to focus on setting and supplying the conditions of learning, as well as on the teaching strategies, which should connect, mobilize and activate schemes of the students' prior knowledge, properly reinforcing their processing based on their preferences. Several authors (e.g., Dunn & Dunn, 1984) have determined that, in so far as the preferences of the participants in educational environments are taken into account, the academic achievement will be higher.This is why each person's preferences allow the conception of what is called a style, and based on this idea, it can be said that human beings are different from each other. However, it is possible to observe certain similar patterns between them (Lozano, 2005). Styles of learning are defined as a set of different preferences that individuals have to learn or to assimilate knowledge. The genuine equality of educational opportunities for students does not mean that they have the same book, the same schedule, the same activities, the same exams or even the same professors, but the variety of factors that intervine in teaching (Alonso, Gallego, & Honey, 1995). Table 1 presents some definitions of learning styles from various authors.Learning style is formed by two sets of elements: on one hand, the cognitive style, which is very close to the physiology and varies very little over the years; and on the other, the strategies and mechanisms of learning that individuals develop to adjust learning material to their cognitive style (Alonso & Gallego, 2008). This way, we can point out that learning style refers to all those tastes, preferences, trends, or provisions that in some ways the individual has, in order to develop their skills and transform them into meaningful actions (see table 2). …