Learning styles and their association with academic achievement ın endodontics among undergraduate dental students: a cross-sectional study

Learning styles reflect the ways in which individuals acquire and process information. Understanding students’ preferences in dental education can inform the development of more effective teaching strategies. This study examined the learning styles of undergraduate dental the VARK model. A total of 386 dental students in their second, third, fourth and fifth academic grades were included in the study. To determine their learning styles, they were asked to complete a 16-item multiple-choice questionnaire based on the VARK learning model via Google Forms. Learning styles were classified as unimodal, bimodal, trimodal or quadmodal according to the official VARK guidelines. The association between learning styles and variables such as academic grade, biological sex and academic performance was examined. Differences in quantitative variables among groups were assessed using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), while differences in categorical variables were analysed using the chi-square test. All statistical analyses were performed using SPSS version 22 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA). The students who participated in the survey preferred the auditory (A) style the most. This was followed by the kinaesthetic (K), visual (V) and reading/writing (R) styles. However, no significant correlation was found between students’ preferred learning style and their theoretical and practical endodontic GPAs. When comparing second and fifth grade students, a significantly higher proportion of second grade students preferred the reading/writing (R) style than fifth grade students. Females preferred the reading/writing style more than males did. The distribution of learning styles was as follows: 36.7% quadmodal, 14.5% trimodal, 16.5% bimodal, and 32.3% unimodal. However, no significant differences were found when comparing GPAs, biological sex and grade between unimodal or multiple learning models. Although considering individual learning styles can improve teaching effectiveness, it does not, by itself, determine academic achievement. Integrating flexible, student-centred teaching approaches into dental and endodontic curricula could provide more effective, personalised learning experiences. To improve generalisability and better understand the role of learning styles in professional education, multicentre longitudinal studies involving diverse disciplines and cultural backgrounds are recommended.