International Journal of Advanced Research inManagement and Social Sciences

ISSN: 2278-6236
 
Vol. 2 | No. 8 | August 2013 www.garph.co.uk IJARMSS | 246
INTRODUCTION
Education as the key to development is mandated to upgrade teaching
effectiveness amongeducators as well as learning efficiency among learners
.M
any efforts by schooladministrators have been done to improve the retention of
college students. Academicadvising, orientations, facility improvements, mentoring,
and continuous modifications tocurriculum and pedagogy are being made
continuously to ensure that the controllablevariables are explored without reducing
then self determination of the students. Most ofthese student support services
have proven to be insufficient in improving student retentionamong large
populations of students.Students learn in a variety of ways, and their ability to
attain this information also varies. Astudent's capacity to learn is impacted by the
teacher's style of conveying information.Unfortunately, little attention has been
given to how children think (Markova, 1992). Often,it is assumed that students'
minds operate in the same way as the teacher's does. So muchof student failure in
school comes directly out of the larger failure to stimulate all thoseareas in the
children's brains, stimulation which could open up their minds in so many
ways(Markova, 1992).The distinction of the individuality of students can be
illustrated by the diversity of their testscores. When most students begin school,
their test scores are comparable but theirexperiences are varied (Popham, 1998).
As their formal education continues, most studentsin a specific classroom are
taught in the same style – the style most compatible to thatteacher. Just as each
student possesses different types of knowledge from his/herexperience, so does
each student process information differently to complete the learningcycle. As a
result of the students’ hereditary factors, their particular life experiences and
thedemands of their environment, students develop learning styles that emphasize
certainlearning abilities over others (Guild and Garger, 1985).Mathematics Learning
is regarded as complex and technical that most students are afraidof. To minimize
such negative reactions of students towards the subject, the
educatorscontinuously keeps on finding solutions to this by considering the learning
styles and studyhabits of the learners. Since learning can take place in three ways
such as learning styles,study habits, experiences and formal trainings.
 
 International Journal of Advanced Research inManagement and Social Sciences
ISSN: 2278-6236
 
Vol. 2 | No. 8 | August 2013 www.garph.co.uk IJARMSS | 247
Presently, teachers commonly observed that students’ level of achievements are
gettingdeteriorated especially in Mathematics, Science and English and in other
fields of studies. Itwas actually observed that in a class of 50 students, only
twenty-five percent of them havevery satisfactory achievement and thirty percent
are only satisfactory. This observation wasbased on the actual performance of
secondary students who came from remote schoolsbetween the years 2004 to
present.The Kalinga –Apayao State College institution , whose clients (students)
are coming from farflung areas of Kalinga and the neighboring provinces, is
charged to provide quality andquantity knowledge and skills to its clients. Today,
more challenges and responsibilities areapproaching for its care. It’s time to care
and mind the needy students. That is, educatorsmust care to know the hidden
factors that hinder mental, social, and spiritual developmentof their learners
especially that it has been observed that most of the students do not havethe full
background of mathematics education before entering in higher level of
education.To resolve such gap in mathematics teaching and learning, research in
students’individuality in learning has to be done.The aforementioned observations
motivated this study to trace the roots of suchweaknesses of students in the
fields of Mathematics, Science and Language. However, thefocused is on
Mathematics – Algebra through evaluation of students’ learning style andstudy
habits as well as the academic performance .
RATIONALE
The purpose of this study is to determine whether a student’s knowledge of
his/her learningstyle influences her /his performance in learning College Algebra
and use it to improve theresult of exit exam in math during the semester.
Students must also be oriented on what dothey belong in the different learning
styles so that they will benefit from it and knows howto counter act their
weaknesses. It is also bent to look into the weaknesses and needs of thestudents in
learning College Algebra.Measuring the achievements of students should not be
enough as bases in evaluating howstudents got there course. Their learning style
relationship with their achievement or theirstudy habits are great factors to look
at by Mathematics educators. These are two things(learning style and study
habits) are usually the reasons that made the achievements low orhigh when these
are not discovered and used to strengthen the learners level of learning.

 
 International Journal of Advanced Research inManagement and Social Sciences
ISSN: 2278-6236
 
Vol. 2 | No. 8 | August 2013 www.garph.co.uk IJARMSS | 248
The study, then, described the learning styles, study habits of students in Algebra
and showhow these two things are related it to their performance. Hoping that the
findings will be agreat source of information to enrich the level of knowledge and
abilities of students inAlgebra.
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
Learning style is defined as “a person’s preferred mode of learning (Smith (1982)."
Jamesand Blank explain that a learning style is the “complex manner in which, and
conditionsunder which, learners most efficiently and most effectively perceive,
process, store andrecall what they are attempting to learn”
24
(James & Blank, 1993, p.48). Swanson quotesReichmann's reference to learning
style as "a particular set of behaviors and attitudesrelated to the learning
context" and also presents Keefe's definition of learning style as "thecognitive,
affective, and physiological factors that serve as relatively stable indicators of
howlearners perceive, interact with, and respond to the learning environment"
(Swanson, 1995,p. 2)The study of learning styles has brought great attention the
importance of modifyingcurriculum and unification of the perceptual differences
of students. According to Barbe(1981) and Dunn (1988), research has developed
more complex and comprehensive modelsthat considers the effect to other
elements of a person’s unique learning style. For example,Keefe (1987) described
three dimensions of personal preferences or styles in learning, aswas stated in the
dissertation by E. Paul (2001):
•
Cognitive styles
 – information processing to include the way one encodes, Processes,stores,
retrieve, and decode information;
•
 Affective styles
 – personality dimensions to include attention span, motivation,Interests, and
emotions; and
•
Physiological styles
 – to include gender behavior, health-related behavior, and physicalenvironmental
conditionsDunn (1989) states that identifying one’s learning style is much easier
than explaining itsexistence. Students are affected by their own emotionality,
sociological,Environmental and physical preferences. According to Dunn, Dunn and
Price (1979) eachindividual learns through complex set of reactions to varied
stimuli, feelings and previouslyestablished thought patterns that tend to be
present when an individual learns. The learning