Effects of learning-style responsive vs. traditional staff development on community college professors' achievement in and attitudes toward alternative instructional strategies

This researcher conducted an investigation concerning the effects of learning-style responsive versus traditional staff development on community college professors' achievement in and attitudes toward alternative instructional strategies. This study involved 84 faculty from three community colleges in Florida. Participants were voluntary and experienced both a learning-style responsive workshop and a traditional workshop through a counter balanced, reversed measures design. Objectives for each workshop focused on one learning-style method, thereby exposing participants to content about learning styles while using learning-style strategies to deliver the material. The average participant was a Caucasian female between the ages of 40-49 years old who taught in the Arts and Sciences. The Productivity Environmental Preference Survey (PEPS) (Dunn, Dunn and Price, 1979, 1980, 1990, 1996) was used as the self-report instrument to identify the participants' learning-styles. The Semantic Differential Scale (SDS) (Pizzo, 1981) was used to assess the participants' attitudes toward the two instructional approaches in contrast with each other. A researcher-developed instrument called The T-Hart Achievement Test (THART) served as a pre- and posttest assessment consisting of multiple-choice questions based on the objectives of the staff development workshop. Each group reported a statistically more positive attitude following the learning-styles experimental workshop regardless of the method used. This finding supported the hypothesis that participants receiving staff development through their learning-style preference evidence significantly higher attitudinal test scores than participants receiving traditional staff development. There was no statistical difference in the knowledge or achievement on treatment concepts and practices learned by participants when the Programmed Learning Sequence (PLS) method was used. There was, however, a statistically significant difference in the achievement of the community college faculty when Learning-Style Small Group Techniques (SGT) were applied. This finding supports the experimental hypothesis that participants receiving learning-style responsive staff development will evidence significantly higher mastery of knowledge of workshop concepts and practices as measured by achievement-test scores than participants receiving traditional staff development. There was also a statistical difference in achievement by age when using the Small Group Techniques (SGT) learning-style method than when using the Programmed Learning Sequence (PLS) strategy.