INCREMENTAL IMPLEMENTATION OF LEARNING STYLE STRATEGIES AMONG URBAN LOW ACHIEVERS

Structural analysis units on compound words, plurals, prefixes, suffix es, and contractions were divided into five 2-week phases, during whic h varied learning style (LS) strategies were introduced incrementally to 81 special education and 35 low-achieving general education student s, During the first phase no LS accommodations were made, During the l ast phase all LS accommodations were removed. Pre- and posttests were administered in each of the five phases to determine reading achieveme nt. The Learning Style Inventory (Dunn, Dunn, & Price, 1994) was admin istered to assess each student's LS preference. Significant gains in r eading achievement were revealed for both special education and genera l education students with LS preferences when they were taught increme ntally using learning-style strategies, For students with no LS prefer ences, reading achievement varied greatly across the course of the exp eriment. A decrement in achievement for the students with LS preferenc es occurred when the LS strategies were removed, The Semantic Differen tial Scale (Pizzo, 1981) was administered 4 times during the experimen t; for both special education and regular education low achievers, att itudes toward reading became increasingly favorable as LS instruction was added regardless of their LS preferences.