Learning styles of nursing students and environmental press perceptions of two clinical nursing settings

Kolb's Learning Style Inventory and Environmental Press Questionnaire were used to study 68 third-year baccalaureate nursing students' learning styles and perceptions of environmental press differences in medical-surgical and psychiatric nursing settings from the experiential learning theory perspective. Evidence for a hypothesized match between predominating student learning styles and predominating environmental press was sought. As hypothesized, student learning styles were found to be predominantly concrete as was the predominating environmental press in both nursing settings. Medical-surgical and psychiatric nursing settings did not differ significantly from environmental press. A profile of competencies felt to be important in nursing emerged with concrete people-oriented competencies rating higher than abstract competencies.