LEARNING STYLES AND ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE IN PHYSICAL EDUCATION OF GRADE 9 STUDENTS IN LEYTE NATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL: PROPOSED INSTRUCTIONAL GUIDE

Abstract

JOANNA ROSE D. MEMBRILLO, Holy Infant College, Tacloban City, LEARNING STYLES AND ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE IN PHYSICAL EDUCATION OF GRADE 9 STUDENTS IN LEYTE NATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL: PROPOSED INSTRUCTIONAL GUIDE Adviser: LILIA P. ADRALES, Ed. D. The descriptive-correlation study determined the relationship between learning style and academic performance in Physical Education of Grade 9 students of Leyte National High School, Tacloban City during the school year 2015-2016 as inputs to a proposed instructional guide. It tested the hypotheses that: 1) There is no significant relationship between the learning styles of the students and their academic performance in Physical Education; and 2) There are no significant differences of the learning styles of the students as grouped according to the profiles. It was conducted at Leyte National High School, Tacloban City 235 students as respondents from the four curricular programs such as Basic Education Curriculum with 131 respondents, Science Technology Education (STE) with 65 respondents, Special Program for the Arts (SPA) with 26 respondents, and Special Program for Sports (SPS) with 13 respondents. The data were gathered using a survey questionnaire composed of a researcher-made for the profile of the respondents, and the VAK Learning Style Brain Box Questionnaire based on Gardner’s model (in Vaishnav, 2013) for the learning style. An achievement test in Physical Education was also used for the level of academic performance. The data were then statistically analyzed using the following: percentage for the distribution of the respondents in terms of each profile, learning style and academic performance; mean to determine the percentage sores of the results of the achievement test; Pearson r for the relationship between the learning style and academic performance; and t-test and single analysis of variance (ANOVA) for the differences of learning styles as grouped according to the profile variables. The study concludes that the students differ in learning styles, which supports the common notion of individual differences. Specifically, it is concluded that the students in Leyte National High School were more dominantly auditory. Also, the study infers that some individuals could be more versatile than the others as manifested by those who have two or three dominant learning styles. The students were “moving towards the mastery” level in terms of their academic performance in Physical Education. Thus, it can be deduced that the students’ performance still needs to be improved. Also, it is deduced that there are factors which have always significant influence on the students’ poor or high performance. The learning style, to some extent, has an association to academic performance in Physical Education. Specifically, the results of the study support the following conclusions: students who have higher preference of auditory learning are less likely to achieve high in the achievement test in PE which imply that the strategies and/or activities that the teacher had used in Physical Education did not suit the preferences of the students who had high preference of this learning style; that the students who have high preference of visual learning style are likely to achieve higher in Physical Education, which implies that the strategies/activities used by the teachers in PE suit to the preferences of the visual learners. Gender and program caused differences in learning styles, but not age. Specifically, females were more auditory than males, while the males were more inclined to be kinesthetic than females; BEC and STE students were more visual than SPA students; however, SPA students were more kinesthetic than BEC students. It was strongly recommended that the output of the study which is an instructional guide is strongly recommended for implementation.