Introduction:

The application of the theory of learning styles serves to improve those who have low score and to enable students to learn in the best conditions in any context. For this the determination of styles by the different questionnaires must be overlapping. On the other hand, the relationship between styles and academic performance is also a confusing subject.

Subjects and methods:

To analyze these questions, two questionnaires (CHAEA and ILS) have been used to determine the learning styles of medical physiology students. Students’ academic performance was measured at the end of the academic year with two different tests: multiple choice test and open development questions.

Results:

Learning styles: CHAEA showed that students were mostly reflective, while ILS revealed that they were active. Academic performance and learning style: CHAEA’s reflective students scored higher on test-type tests and the active had lowest scores. On the other hand, ILS active students obtained significantly lower scores than the sensitive ones in the test-type test.

Conclusions:

The different tools provide different diagnoses and academic performance is doubtful that can be affected by the styles. These findings point to the need to revise the criteria for determining learning styles and to attempt to homogenize them to achieve universal application and to work with the characteristics that define the styles rather than the questionnaire questions that have been wrongly answered.

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