The role of critical thinking skills and learning styles of university students in their academic performance

Such as cognition and application of different ways of thinking, research, problemsolving, critical thinking skills and creativity. in addition to critical thinking,learning styles is another key factor which has an essential role in the processof problem solving. this study aimed to determine the relationship betweenlearning styles and critical thinking of students and their academic performancein alborz university of medical sciences.methods: this cross-correlation study was performed in 2012, on 216 studentsof alborz university who were selected randomly by the stratified method. thedata was obtained via a three-part questionnaire included demographic data,kolb standardized questionnaire of learning style and california critical thinkingstandardized questionnaire. the academic performance of the students wasextracted by the school records. the validity of the instruments was determinedin terms of content validity, and the reliability was gained through internalconsistency methods. cronbach's alpha coefficient was found to be 0.78 for thecalifornia critical thinking questionnaire. the chi square test, independentt-test, one way anova and pearson correlation test were used to determinerelationship between variables. the package spss14 statistical software was usedto analyze data with a significant level of p < 0.05.results: our findings indicated the significant difference of mean score in fourlearning style, suggesting university students with convergent learning style havebetter performance than other groups. also learning style had a relationship withage, gender, field of study, semester and job. the results about the critical thinkingof the students showed that the mean of deductive reasoning and evaluationskills were higher than that of other skills and analytical skills had the lowestmean and there was a positive significant relationship between the students’performance with inferential skill and the total score of critical thinking skills(p < 0.05). furthermore, evaluation skills and deductive reasoning had significantrelationship. on the other hand, the mean total score of critical thinking hadsignificant difference between different learning styles.conclusion: the results of this study showed that the learning styles, criticalthinking and academic performance are significantly associated with oneanother. considering the growing importance of critical thinking in enhancingthe professional competence of individuals, it's recommended to use teachingmethods consistent with the learning style because it would be more effective inthis context.