Abstract No.: (For Secretariat Use)
LEARNING STYLES OF PHYSICAL THERAPY STUDENTS IN
TAIWAN EDUCATIONAL SYSEM
Hsiu-I Chen 1,Chih-Ming Chen 1, Yu-Hsiu Chu 2, Yi-Cheng Lin3*
1
Department of Physical Therapy, HungKuang University, Taichung, Taiwan, ROC 2
Department of Physical Therapy, China Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan, ROC 3
Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, China Medical University Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan, ROC
Background and Purpose: It has been known that learning approaches influence student’s academic outcome, clinical performance and instructional preferences. Knowing the students’ learning preference and characteristic would be beneficial for the design of curriculum and teacher’s teaching. Learning Style Questionnaire (LSQ) based on Kolb’s four-stage cycle of experiential learning model is a reliable
instrument for measuring the individual’s preferred way of learning. We aimed to determine the preferred learning style of physical therapy (PT) students in Taiwan, and to compare preferences from different genders, academic years, and educational systems.
Materials/Methods: The Chinese version of Learning Style Questionnaire (C-LSQ), containing 80 questions classified four subsets of 20 items, was used to assess four learning styles-the Activist, Reflector, Theorist, and Pragmatist. A total of 1075 PT students from 7 universities, 2 technological universities and 1 vocational college in Taiwan completed the questionnaire. Descriptive statistics were used to show the preferred learning styles, and mixed model ANOVA was performed to compare learning styles in different genders, academic years and educational systems. Results: 918 questionnaires were analyzed (Men 374, Women 544). The most dominant learning styles in the majority of PT students were reflectors (56.4%) and activists (48.4%). The preference didn’t show significant difference in different academic years and educational systems.
Conclusions and Clinical Relevance: The preferred learning style of PT students in different educational systems was Reflector or Activist, and they preferred to learn through “reviewing the experience” or “feeling concrete experience”. This is an important implication for curriculum design and effective teaching.
