Relationship between personality type, learning style preference, and mathematics achievement in college developmental mathematics

Most community colleges have open-door policies, thus allowing the enrollment of underprepared students. They provide remedial courses to prepare those students for college level mathematics. The primary goal of the remedial and developmental courses is to prepare students to perform as well in their first college level course as the students who do not need a developmental course. In other words, the developmental courses are designed to provide students with the competencies necessary for college work

The increasing demand for remedial and developmental mathematics courses, however, may not necessarily be indicative of students' inability to learn mathematics. It might be the result of a mismatch between those students learning style preferences and personality types on one hand and course content, learning environment, and instructional methods on the other.

The primary objective of this research was to investigate the relationship between students' personality types, learning style preferences, and achievement in Intermediate Algebra. As a secondary purpose this relationship was investigated based on gender and race differences. This study was initiated with the purpose of providing mathematics instructors with such information who could then modify their pedagogical strategies in order to enhance their students' learning, if those relationships proved significant.

To achieve the purposes of this study, three instruments were administered to 202 developmental, Intermediate Algebra students at a community college. Two of these instruments the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and the Learning Style Inventory (LSI), were administered to students two months after the beginning of the semester. The Academic Assessment and Placement Program (AAPP) test was administered at the end of the semester.

Parametric and nonparametric statistics were applied to analyze the collected data. Specific tests that were used included one-way analysis of variance, two-way analysis of variance, Tukey HSD post hoc multiple comparison test, Student-t test, and Chi square test for independence.

Although the study showed no significant relationships between students' learning style preferences and their mathematics achievement, further analysis revealed that students with Tactile preference achieved lower mathematics scores than their Auditory and Visual counterparts. In the same manner, although the study showed no significant relationships between students' personality types and their mathematics achievements in general, it was found that students with Intuition personality type achieved significantly higher mathematics sores than the students with Sensing personality type. These differences, along with indications from previous research, have led this researcher to believe that learning styles and personality types should be further investigated for their possible impact on students' learning.