Learning Styles in Business Management students: An empirical study in Portuguese Higher Education/ Estilos de aprendizagem dos alunos de administracao: Um estudo empirico aplicado em Instituicoes de Ensino Superior Portuguesas

This research aims to identify the learning styles of Portuguese higher education students in business management, and in turn to enable the identification of effective ways to foster the teaching-learning process. The research is divided into two parts: a theoretical approach and the analysis and discussion of the results obtained in light of the learning style of these students as characterized by the Felder-Silverman model. The data were collected from 3 Portuguese higher education institutions with the goal to contribute to the improvement of the learning process in business management courses and to provide for adequate planning of learning strategies aimed at educational success. The statistical analysis of the data was performed with SPSS version 25.0 for Windows and included both descriptive and inferential statistics. The results of the study are consistent with the findings in the literature in similar contexts, suggesting that learning styles vary according to the individual. Regarding gender, a variable that has been studied relatively little to date, there is also evidence in the study that female students seem to use cognitive strategies significantly more than their male counterparts. Keywords: Management Business Course; Learning Style; Higher Education. Esta investigacao pretende identificar os estilos de aprendizagem dos estudantes portugueses de cursos de administracao, possibilitando assim identificar formas efetivas de promover o ensino-aprendizagem. O desenvolvimento da pesquisa divide-se em duas partes: abordagem teorica e analise e discussao dos resultados obtidos atendendo a estruturacao dos principais estilos de aprendizagem dos estudantes de administracao caracterizados a partir do modelo de Felder e Silverman. Os dados foram recolhidos em tres instituicoes de ensino superior portuguesas e procuram contribuir para a implementacao de melhorias no processo de aprendizagem destes estudantes, contribuindo para o planejamento adequado de estrategias de aprendizagem que visem o sucesso educativo. A analise estatistica dos dados foi realizada atravEs do software SPSS, versao 25.0 para Windows, envolvendo medidas de estatistica descritiva e estatistica inferencial. Os resultados do estudo sao consistentes com os achados na literatura em contextos similares, sugerindo que os estilos de aprendizagem variam em funcao do individuo, e no que concerne ao Gender, variavel ainda relativamente pouco estudada, supostamente as alunas utilizam signi