Teachers’ Strategies in Dealing with Students’ Various Learning Styles

Abstract

There will always be a possibility that a mismatch may occur between students’ learning styles and their teachers’ teaching style. This mismatch commonly results in students’ lack of understanding and motivation in learning the target language. Therefore, teachers’ strategies are needed to overcome this problem. This study aims to investigate teachers’ strategies in dealing with students’ various learning styles in English classes of several senior high schools in Salatiga. 12 English teachers from six different senior high schools; three private schools and three public schools, were interviewed. The results of the interviews were classified based on three strategies which derived from Bacay’s (2006) study: (1) requiring the students to adjust to teachers’ teaching style (more teacher-centered); (2) adjusting to students learning styles (more learner-centered); and (3) balancing between numbers 1 & 2. In general, there are two main factors that may influence a teacher to use a certain strategy—what I refer to as internal and external factors. The former includes teachers’ beliefs about effective teaching, their power, or their students’ needs. Whereas, the latter, may include limited time, government policy, materials or topics of the lesson, and most probably the average amount of students they teach in one class. It was found that the strategy mostly used was the third strategy, the second was the first strategy, and the least used was the second strategy due to the factors mentioned above.