An Investigation between Multiple Intelligences and Learning Styles

Abstract

Exploring learning style and multiple intelligence type of learners can enable the students to identify their strengths and weaknesses and learn from them. It is also very important for teachers to understand their learners’ learning styles and multiple intelligences since they can carefully identify their goals and design activities that can teach to the different intelligences, and design student-centered activities. This study aims to reveal secondary school students’ multiple intelligences and learning styles. It also aims to describe gender differences and the relationship between learning styles and multiple intelligences of the students. The research study employed a quantitative research design and the data were collected from the students of a state school in the winter term of 2015-2016 Education Year. The data were gathered by means of the two instruments: The Perceptual Learning-Style Preference Questionnaire (PLSPQ), and the Multiple Intelligence Inventory. It was observed that the students had almost all these types of learning styles but mostly they were found to be tactile and auditory learners. The three intelligence groups: Naturalistic, Visual and Kinesthetic intelligences types received the highest score. The analyses also indicated that there was a significant difference between males and females. It was seen that most of the intelligence types and learning styles had a moderate positive correlation.