A four-year longitudinal study of dental student learning styles.

Based on research conducted simultaneously but independently in Europe, Australia, and North America, several new learning style inventories have been developed with well-recognized theoretical foundations and sound psychometric properties. One of the instruments, the Gregorc Learning Style Delineator, was used to study the perceived learning styles of 48 dental students as they proceeded through the four years of the curriculum. Students scored significantly higher on one of four possible learning style dimensions during each year of the curriculum. This dimension, the concrete sequential, is associated with the following learning style characteristics: preference for factual over abstract information, desire for a highly organized learning environment with considerable hands-on opportunity, but free from distractions or ambiguity about learning tasks. Students' preference for the concrete sequential dimension increased significantly as they progressed toward graduation, suggesting that the learning environment of the dental school actually served to reinforce the students' initial predisposition toward the concrete sequential orientation.