Learning style, causal attribution, and academic achievement among high school seniors from Notre Dame Schools in Cotabato

The relationships between students\u27 academic achievement and (1) their learning styles as well as (2) causal attributions for academic success and failure are investigated in this research. Grounded on Kolb\u27s (1991) experiential learning theory and learning style model, and Weiner\u27s (1985) model of attribution for achievement outcomes, the study used a descriptive-correlational design. It involved 203 fourth year students from four private Catholic high schools. There were two urban schools and two rural schools purposively selected. The learning styles, causal attributions, and academic achievements of the respondents were identified using the (1) Learning Style Inventory (Kolb, 1985), (2) Modified Attributional Style Questionnaire (Duran, Hizon, and Serrano, 1991), and (3) the average grades in five subjects, respectively. It was found out that most students were assimilators. They perceived and processed information through reflective observation and abstract conceptualization. Students attributed their school-related successes and failures to the amount of effort they expended. They rarely based their success on luck and task difficulty. Moreover, they perceived that the causes of their academic outcomes were internal and stable. Through Pearson r, significant positive correlations were obtained between academic achievement and the (1) assimilator learning style, (2) locus of control, and (3) stability of causality for academic success. Significant negative correlations were found between academic achievement and (1) the diverger learning style and (2) the locus and the stability of causality for academic failure. Fisher\u27s Z transformation test revealed that gender did not significantly moderate any of these relationships. Rural or urban school location became a significant moderator variable in the relationship between the academic achievement and the locus of causality for academic failure. Through stepwise regression, the (1) locus of causality for academic cause, (2) stability of causality for academic failure, and (3) locus of causality for academic failure were identified as the best set of predictors of academic achievement. They were found to account for about 52 percent of the variance in students\u27 school performance