The antecedent, consequences, and importance of students’ learning preference on learning outcomes with the flipped classroom approach: a person-environment fit perspective

Abstract

Flipped learning performance is possible to be improved when there is an alignment between students’ learning preferences and educators’ chosen pedagogy, especially in the student-centered learning context. Adopting pretest-posttest research design among students in diverse academic disciplines (Study 1: N = 361; Study 2: N = 408), this research revealed the antecedents of learning experience on learning preference and showed the temporal consequences of initial learning preference on the end-of-course twenty first century competencies. The findings supported that individual attributes outweigh external factors in university learning, and these varied across disciplines. The findings highlighted the implications for the flipped classroom and support for the constructivist movement.

Keywords:

• Student-centered learning
• learning preference
• flipped classroom
• academic disciplines
• learning experience

Acknowledgment

We thank all the project staff, participating teachers, and students.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Materials and analysis code for this study are available by emailing the corresponding author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported in part by the University Grants Committee Funding Scheme for Teaching and Learning Related Proposals awarded to the second author by the University Grants Committee.

Notes on contributors

Hilary K. Y. Ng

Dr Hilary K. Y. Ng is currently an Assistant Professor of The School of Education and Languages at the Hong Kong Metropolitan University, Hong Kong. She is continuously developing herself with expertise across positive education, social psychology, cross-cultural psychology, digital technologies, and educational science. Her research interest centers on the individual difference in learning and well-being, and teaching and learning in the digital world.

Paul L. C. Lam

Dr. Paul L. C. Lam is an associate professor at the Center for Learning Enhancement And Research, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has extensive interest and experience in teaching and learning principles, case-based teaching and learning, web-assisted teaching and learning, and evaluation of eLearning and mLearning. He also has experience in designing educational tools. uReply (http://web.ureply.mobi) is a classroom student response system developed under his supervision.