Self-regulated learning and learning style — A longitudinal research in the area of vocational education

A common feature of theories of learning style is that students are classified according to their cognitive characteristics along one- or multi-dimensional bipolar (usually cognitive) scales. Conclusions as to the efficient learning styles, forms and means of the student may be drawn from the preferred strategies related to learning style. Teaching strategies which produce the most preferred learning strategies can also be specified, and these in turn serve as a starting point for designing the learning environment. The common feature of all learning style theories is that only certain cognitive individual characteristics are integrated into their system, which, however, reduces to a great extent the scope of validity of the given approach. From this it also obviously follows that neither theory is capable of typifying all the learning characteristics of the individual in the proper way and in proper detail. In our paper an attempt is made to explore the learning characteristics of vocational school students in Budapest, applying a version of Kolb´s Learning Style Inventory.