Relationship of learning styles and academic performance of secondary school students

Objectives: To identify the learning styles of secondary school students and to find out the relationship of these learning styles with their academic achievement. Methodology: The population of the study comprised of all tenth grade male and female students of public sector schools of Rawalpindi and Islamabad, Pakistan. A total of 745 students were randomly selected from 12 schools by applying simple random sampling technique. Results: The major findings of the study were that male students had higher level of preference in visual and auditory learning styles as compared to female students at the secondary level. No significant relationship was found between learning styles and academic achievements of students. Conclusion: Female students had higher level of preference in visual and auditory learning styles level, while male students only follow kinesthetic learning style and no relationship was found between students learning styles and academic achievement. Key words: Learning styles, auditory learning style, visual learning style, tactile learning style, academic achievement