Abstract

Different studies on the teaching and learning process have established students’ different and unique ways of learning. Many researchers agreed that learning materials should not just reflect the teaching methodology, but should be designed for all kinds of students and all kinds of learning styles. This study adopted the survey research design to investigate the influence of learning styles on the achievement of secondary school students in physics. The population of the study consisted of all secondary school physics students in Yaba Local Government Area of Lagos State of which a sample of 191physics students of intact classes in the five schools randomly selected from population. Two research instruments which are Index of Learning Style (ILS) by Felder – Silverman (1988) and Physics Achievement Test(PAT) were used for data collection. The reliability coefficient of 0.75 was established for physics achievement test and 0.67 for the Index of Learning Styles using KR – 20. Five research questions guided the study. Data collected were analyzed using Pearson product moment correlation, paired sample t-test, independent sample t-test and descriptive statistics. The results showed that the learning style, age and gender have significant influence on students’ achievement in physics. Visual and active learning are the predominant learning styles in physics classrooms and it was recommended thatteachers/instructors need to diagnose and identify students learning styles take these diverse learning styles into considerationsand design instructional methods that take care of those diversities and remain sensitive of such during the instruction process.