Grasha-richmann college students’ learning styles of classroom participation: Role of gender and major

Introduction: this study aimed to investigate the male and female students’learning styles of classroom participation and these styles’ differences betweenhumanities and science majors.methods: 1039 individuals were selected through the proportional stratifiedrandom sampling method among undergraduate and graduate students inhumanities (n=421) and science (n=618) faculties of tehran university. in thehumanities group, there were 285 females and 136 males, and in the sciencegroup, there were 208 females and 410 males. the participants answered thegrasha-riechmann student learning styles scale.results: the findings indicated that the females obtained significantly highermeans in collaborative, participative, and dependent styles than males, but inavoidant, and independent styles, the means for males were higher than thosefor females. also, the science group’s means in collaborative, participative,dependent, and competitive styles were significantly higher than those for thehumanities group.conclusion: according to the findings, it seems that due to psychologicalcharacteristics, female students tend to collaborate with other students ofthe same sex and participate in their activities. in this way, they also are moredependent on their teacher and classroom, because otherwise they will facesome problems such as anxiety. in addition, it seems that science students incomparison to humanities students are more participative and collaborativebecause they need more collaboration in their projects and course work.