Learning Styles among students of three different Universities in Dentistry in Brazil: Transversal study

• Autor(a) principal: Meza , Constanza Andrea Hernandez
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Outros Autores: Vilaça , Ênio Lacerda, Tiboni , Fernanda, Santos , Luiz Fernando Frigeri Dos, Ignácio , Sergio Aparecido, Orsi, Juliana Shaia Rocha, Rached , Rodrigo Nunes, Nogas , Paulo Macuchen, Oliveira , Elen Marise Castro de, Souza , Paulo Eduardo Alencar de, Fernandes , Ângela, Almeida , Marcelo Levi Dias de, Johann , Aline Cristina Batista Rodrigues
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Research, Society and Development
• Texto Completo: https://rsdjournal.org/index.php/rsd/article/view/34397
• topic: Learning; Teaching; Education.; Aprendizaje; Enseñaza; Educación.; Aprendizagem; Ensino; Educação.

Learning styles indicate the ways and conditions in which students understand, retain, and memorize knowledge in a productive and responsive manner. One of the most widely used tools to assess learning styles is the VARK (Visual, Aural, Read/write, and Kinesthetic) questionnaire. To identify the learning styles of students enrolled in three different dentistry programs in Brazil by applying the VARK questionnaire. This cross-sectional study involved a sample of 340 undergraduate students enrolled in dentistry programs at the following institutions: Federal University of Minas Gerais (n=172), Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais (n=100), and Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná (n=68). An online questionnaire was administered to the students via “Qualtrics CM 2020”, between May 2020 and September 2020. It comprised questions about the student`s demographic, socioeconomic, and academic characteristics. Their learning style was assessed by the VARK questionnaire. The chi-squared test and Z-test were used to analyze the relationship between learning styles, considering p<0.05. The most frequent learning style category was found to be unimodal (80.2%), followed by bimodal (16.8%) and trimodal (9.4%). Most unimodal students were distributed throughout the kinesthetic (27.1%), auditory (23.8%), and writing/reading (20.0%) styles, and no statistically significant differences were found among the studied variables. The students enrolled in the three dentistry programs were predominantly unimodal, a finding that diverges from the existing literature. Additionally, a higher frequency of kinesthetic learners was found in the study sample, as verified in other studies.