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Learning Styles and Student Performance in Women’s Wear Course: A Multivariate Approach
Abstract
Understanding how students' learning styles influence their academic performance is essential in optimizing instruction, particularly in vocational fields like fashion education. This study examines the impact of visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning styles on students’ creativity, garment construction, and technical proficiency in women’s wear course. A quantitative, cross-sectional design was adopted, involving 70 fashion students from Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta. Data on students’ learning preferences were collected using a validated 21-item VAK-based questionnaire. K-means cluster analysis was applied to categorize students into three learning style clusters. Subsequently, a one-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted to assess the effect of learning style clusters on learning outcomes. The analysis revealed significant multivariate effects of learning styles on the combined outcomes (Pillai’s Trace = 0.923, F(6, 132) = 18.87, p < .001). Univariate ANOVAs and post hoc tests indicated that students in the auditory-dominant cluster consistently outperformed those in the visual- and kinesthetic-oriented clusters across all outcome dimensions. These findings highlight the importance of aligning teaching strategies with diverse learning styles to ensure equitable learning experiences in creative disciplines. The results also provide practical guidance for curriculum designers in vocational fashion education to develop multimodal learning environments that balance auditory, visual, and kinesthetic engagement, thereby enhancing learning inclusivity and effectiveness.
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.17509/invotec.v21i2.86485
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