The Relationship Between Pedagogy and Changes in Students' Learning Styles in Physician Assistant Education

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between instructional pedagogy and changes in physician assistant (PA) students' learning styles during a 2-year master's program.

Two parallel curricular tracks were established in the didactic year, one using problem-based learning (PBL) and the other lecture-based learning (LBL) for 6 years. Kolb's Learning Style Inventory (LSI) was administered to both groups at matriculation and at the end of the first and second years. Multivariate analyses, including logarithmic transformations of LSI data because of its ipsative nature, were conducted to evaluate differences and changes in students' learning style.

A majority of students changed learning styles during the program. Despite considerable movement within and between learning styles, the percentage distribution of LBL students' learning styles changed little during the program, whereas there was a significant increase in PBL students having a Convergent learning style after 2 years. PBL students preferred more transformation than prehension in information processing than LBL students. About a third of LBL students, compared to a fifth of PBL students, had reverted to close to their matriculation learning style by the end of the clinical year.

Primary care physicians and PAs tend to have a Convergent learning style. Little movement towards this learning style was seen with LBL students, whereas a significant increase in the number of PBL students had adopted this learning style by the end of the program.