Learning Styles of Nursing Students in Iran using Kolb's Theory: A review Study

Introduction: learning style of students is one of the most important factors which influence their learning. some negative effects can be observed on nursing student learning as a result of imbalance between the learning and teaching methods. using appropriate methods of teaching and determination of student learning styles can facilitate their leaning. hence, this study aims to identify the most common learning styles of nursing students in iran. materials and methods: the iranian databanks including magiran, sid, medlib and iran me-dex were searched for relevant published articles from march 21, 1991 to july 2012. in searching international databases, english transcriptions of iran were used. the persian search terms that were equivalent to their english words included learning styles, nursing students and the kolb learning styles. it should be noted that this review research included only studies that are based on the kolb's theory and research that discusses other learning styles were excluded from the re-view process. results: research articles that were based on kolb's theory of learning styles in entire iran have been collected and investigated. in all studies, the researchers searched for the learning styles of nursing students in several cities to determine the four styles of the kolb's theory (accommodat-ing, absorbent, divergent and convergent). the convergent and absorbing styles were domi-nant ones in the nursing students. these styles ranged from 28.9% to 54.2% and 29.9% to 53.8%, restrictively. conclusion: more attention should be paid to different learning styles in order to enhance stu-dents’ learning. it is recommended that teachers also pay more attention to students’ learning style and use appropriate teaching methods in this regard.