Does Online Learning Differentiate Learning Styles of Turkish Teacher Candidates?

Background

The World Health Organization declared a global pandemic in March 2020 due to the epidemic. As a result, education has been disrupted worldwide, and schools, universities, and many educational institutions have switched to distance education activities (UNESCO, 2020). In this process, all educational institutions in Turkey were moved to online platforms. With the pandemic, teachers and students, who met with the online learning environment, stayed away from each other. The concept of school and university was removed from within the four walls. The teaching was continued in the online environment by adopting the phrase "School is everywhere." Therefore, in this process, the habits of students and teachers have changed (Çalımlı, 2021). With the epidemic in the virtual age, digital tools have come to the fore, and the teaching and learning process has progressed in the virtual environment through life lessons or videos containing lectures and online platforms. With the advantage of the virtual age, digital literacy has been taken to the center of education, and a paradigm shift has been experienced in education. While teachers and students are trying to keep up with change, teachers and students have had teaching and learning experiences in virtual environments (Agnoletto & Queiroz, 2020).

Along with the online learning process, teaching environments have been restructured. Different technologies have been included in the learning environment, providing students with an adequate education independent of time and place. Meanwhile, with 21st-century technology, students were offered the opportunity to learn with different learning styles in an online environment (Alshehri et al., 2020). Therefore, with the pandemic, the concept of learning style has started to attract attention in the context of different age groups and learning environments in the online learning process. Since learning style is a complex concept and students' learning styles will change with the online learning process, the need for studies on this subject has increased in the literature. Especially with today's technology and changing conditions, determining students' learning styles has come to the fore in the virtual age because it is known that the learning styles of the students in the online learning process will reflect their abilities and skills (Bozkurt et al., 2020). Considering that students' learning styles are among the critical factors that play a role in learning information, it aims to determine students' learning styles in the virtual age within the changing conditions. It is thought that by organizing appropriate educational environments for them, their needs can be met, and measures can be taken to make sense of information (Aydın, 2016).

When the studies on learning styles were examined, they were carried out before the pandemic process (Burns & Danyluk, 2017; Estrada et al., 2020; Sunggingwati & Haviluddin, 2019). In studies dealing with students' learning styles before the online learning process, it has been observed that students have many learning styles and that learning style is affected by the learning environment (McKeachie, 1995; Tyndall, 2017). For example, Burns and Danyluk (2017) revealed that by making pre-service teachers aware of their learning styles, their success in conceptual learning increases. Estrada, García-Prieto, and Conde-Vélez (2020) aimed to determine the learning styles of undergraduate students and decided that students with different learning styles predominantly have collaborative, dependent, and independent learning styles. Sunggingwati and Haviluddin (2019) also focused on the learning styles of undergraduate students and found that students have a complex learning style of observing, feeling, think. Gürses and Bouvet (2016) also determined that undergraduate students' learning styles are close to learning by doing and experiencing, so students prefer to learn through experimentation. Paechter and Maier (2010) revealed that students' learning styles differ according to their learning environments and that students with different learning styles prefer different learning environments. At this point, it can be stated that the learning environment is essential for students learning styles.