The Relationship Between Learning and Thinking Styles and the Performance of Female Pharmacy Students in an Anatomy...

In professional health education, it is common to align teaching strategies with students' preferred learning and thinking styles. However, the evidence supporting this "meshing" approach is weak. To address this gap, this study aimed to investigate the learning and thinking styles of first-year female pharmacy students and compare them to their performance in an anatomy course.

This cross-sectional study evaluated first-year female Doctor of Pharmacy students enrolled in an anatomy course over two consecutive academic years. Two validated inventory tools were used to assess students' learning and thinking styles: the Visual, Aural, Read/Write, and Kinesthetic Learning Styles Inventory (VARK) and the Thinking Style Indicator (TSI). The students' final course grades were compared with their thinking and learning styles.

259 students (98% of both cohorts) provided complete data on both instruments. The kinesthetic (58%) and concrete-sequential learners (32%) had the highest grades among the studied population. Neither learning style (P = 0.959) nor thinking style (P = 0.918) predicted the performance of students in the anatomy course. On the other hand, students with multimodal learning and thinking styles tended to have better scores than those who were unimodal.

The results of the study demonstrate that learning and thinking styles do not have a significant role in the performance of pharmacy students in an anatomy course, which led us to reject the null hypothesis. Thus, anatomy educators should make full use of multiple active blended learning modalities available to accommodate the full range of individualized learning preferences.