What style Medical teachers use to learn?

Planning and implementation of effective empowerment programs and using appropriate educational methods are prerequisites for empowering teachers of medical colleges. Identification of their learning styles and presentation of training courses according to them seem to be important. This study endeavored to identify the learning styles of faculty members based on Kolb theory at Mashhad University of Medical Sciences in the academic year 2018.

This was descriptive-cross sectional research. The population was 138 teachers of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences that were teaching during the 2018-2019 and were included in level one of empowerment course for educational intents. Based on the universal sampling, the population was selected as the sample. The data collection instrument was Kolbchr('39')s learning style inventory V.3.1. Data were analyzed through descriptive statistics and Chi-square and Kruskal-Wallis statistical tests.

The participation rate of teachers were 77.5%. The teacherschr('39') learning styles in order of their prevalence included: 58 assimilating (59.8%), 27 converging (27.8%), 9 diverging (9.3%), 3 accommodating (3.1%). It is not found any significant relationship between dominant learning styles (assimilating and converging) and demographic variables. There was no significant difference between learning styles in basic and clinical teachers as well.

Due to the dominant learning style, it is suggested that in empowerment courses, more lecture teaching methods, visual methods and self-study methods with reading materials be used. It should be taken into account that there will be different learning styles in the courses, each of which requires a specific teaching method. Due to the multiplicity of learning styles, various teaching methods need to be employed.