Learning Style Differences Between Students and Faculty Thomas Berry, DePaul University Amber Settle, DePaul University ABSTRACT Learning styles refers to the different ways that people process and retain information. Our interest is in discerning differences in learning styles between faculty and students. Just as students vary in learning styles, instructors differ in the methods they use to convey information. Any disconnect between the learning styles of instructors (and hence the methods used to teach material) and the predominant learning styles of the students may result in greater learning difficulties for students. We test the learning styles of three groups: students in the introductory finance course, finance majors, and finance faculty. Significant differences are found between each group with the greatest differences between the faculty and the introductory students. INTRODUCTION Determining the effectiveness of instruction is a critical quest for all teachers. While examinations and other forms of assessment provide feedback on instructional progress they also tend to show a variance in performance that is often hard to explain based on aptitude alone. Indeed, we know that learning depends on many factors in addition to aptitude including, but not limited to: motivation, instructional methods, environment, background, studying strategies, and learning styles. Learning styles refers to the different ways that people process and retain information. More formally, Keefe (1979) defines learning styles as “the characteristic cognitive, affective, and psychological behaviors that serve as relatively stable indicators of how learners perceive, interact with, and respond to the learning environment”. Our interest is in discerning differences in learning styles between faculty and students. Just as students vary in learning styles, instructors differ in the methods they use to convey information. It is natural to assume that instructors develop teaching styles based on what has worked for them, i.e. methods that match their own learning styles, and evidence suggests that instructors are, in fact, more comfortable teaching in styles that match their learning style (Gregorc 1984). Any disconnect between the learning styles of instructors (and hence the methods used to teach material) and the predominant learning styles of the students may result in greater learning difficulties for students. Previous work has shown that a serious mismatch between the learning styles of faculty and students can have a host of negative consequences, including poor attention and performance in students (Felder and Silverman 1988; Felder 1996). In a subject such as finance where the complexity of the material alone proves a challenge to many students the added burden of disparate learning styles may exacerbate the problem. Our hypothesis is that differences in learning styles between finance faculty and students may be a contributing factor in performance variance, particularly at the introductory level where there is the greatest diversity of student interest. If this is true then we would also suspect that students who excel in finance may have learning styles more similar to the finance faculty. To