Learning Styles in undergraduate dentistry students: A systematic review

To evaluate the prevalence of Learning Styles (LS) among undergraduate dentistry students (UDS).

Cochrane manual's methodology and PRISMA statement were used. Four databases were searched, and the studies were selected based on eligibility criteria. The search strategy was Learning Style AND Dentistry and Learning Style AND dental student.

A total of 30 articles were included, 17 of which used the Visual, Aural, Read-write and Kinesthetic (VARK) questionnaire, 8 the Kolb LS Inventory (LSI), 3 the Honey-Alonso questionnaire (CHAEA) and 3 the Felder and Solomon LS index (ILS). The studies that allowed us to extract all the necessary data to calculate the global percentages for each instrument were grouped together. For VARK, LSI, CHAEA and ILS the highest number and percentage of learning styles were 1089 (50.4 %) multimodal, 518 (32.7 %) divergent, 239 (46.7 %) reflectors and 107 (64.8 %) active, 130 (78.8 %) sensitive, 138 (83.6 %) visual and 106 (64.3 %) sequential, respectively.

There is a tendency for multimodal, divergent and reflective LS to increase among clinical students, unlike initial and preclinical dentistry students, who lean towards unimodal, convergent and theoretical LS. This dynamism in LS could be influenced by the different methodologies strategies used in the preclinical and clinical courses.