Learning Style Preferences Among Adults: A Scoping Review with Implications for Agricultural Education
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5032/jae.v67i2.3193Keywords:
Learning Styles, PRISMA, Scoping Review, Agricultural educationAbstract
Agriculture plays a central role in economic development, environmental sustainability, and food-system resilience, and agricultural education and Extension are key mechanisms for supporting learning and adoption in this domain. Learning styles remain a theme in education and practice, yet the evidence base is fragmented across multiple, non-equivalent frameworks and agricultural education and Extension related studies are comparatively limited in the indexed literature. To map how learning styles have been represented and operationalized in diverse contexts, this study employed a scoping review approach. Empirical studies of adult learners were identified through multidisciplinary database searches and targeted hand searches of agricultural education and Extension journals, yielding 40 included studies. Across the studies, 15 distinct learning style frameworks were identified, with Kolb’s Learning Style Inventory (LSI) used most frequently. Framework use differed by source, with agricultural education and Extension studies relying more heavily on a narrower set of instruments (e.g., GEFT, Gregorc) than multidisciplinary studies. Reported learning style preferences varied across audiences and contexts, and the included studies did not provide consistent evidence that identifying a preferred learning style was reliably associated with learning outcomes or performance. The findings support caution in treating “learning style” as a single construct and suggest that learning style measures to be used as a heuristic for designing varied instructional approaches that support engagement and perceived fit. Future agricultural education and Extension research may benefit from stronger alignment between conceptual definitions and measurement choices.
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