An Exploratory Study of Preferred Learning Styles of Visually Impaired Children

Shaista Majid, Sumaira Chaudhary

Abstract

The research was designed to explore the learning styles preferred by the
children with visual impairment. A survey was conducted to collect
information from 50 males and 50 female students with visual impairment
studying in grade six to ten at government special education schools for
visually impaired in Rawalpindi and Islamabad, selected through simple
random technique. The younger version of Visual, Aural, Read/write, and
Kinesthetic (VARK) questionnaire containing four sub scales for each
sensory modality was used as a research tool. The tool was administered
after pilot testing. Results of this study showed that the reading/writing
style of learning was the most preferred learning style by students with
visual impairment. Gender differences were not found significant on
visual and oral sub scales, whereas boys and girls were found significantly
different on two learning styles; i) read/write, and ii) kinesthetic. The study
concludes that reading/writing style of learning is the most preferred style
by the visually impaired students and the visually impaired boys also take
interest in kinesthetic style of learning. The study recommends the
teachers of visually impaired students, to opt the teaching strategies as per
their preferred style of learning; i.e. reading/writing style of learning.