The Effect of Learning Strategies on Higher-Order Thinking Skills Students with Different Learning Styles

This factorial-experimental study investigated the comparisons among higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) of students taught by contextual teaching and learning (CTL), collaborative learning, and competitive learning, investigated the comparisons among HOTS of students with visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic (VAK) learning styles, and investigated the interaction effect among learning strategies and learning styles on students HOTS. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to determine items validity of learning VAK styles questionnaire. The sample of the study consists of 270 students, which was taken from Faculty of Education Halu Oleo University and Muhammadiyah University, Kendari, Indonesia. Two way analysis of variance and Tukeys test were used to compare the experimental results. Results indicate that applications of CTL, collaborative learning, and competitive learning have different effect on students HOTS. There is a statistically significant difference in higher-order thinking skills of visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic students. There is an interaction effect among learning strategies and learning styles on the students HOTS. CTL is more effective to be applied to kinaesthetic students, collaborative learning is more effective to be applied to auditory students, and competitive learning is more effective to be applied to visual students. In addition, to increase the higher-order thinking skill of university students with different learning styles, the design of the learning-teaching processes should be modelled based on the students learning style preferences.