Learning styles of medical students and related factors

BACKGROUND: The concept of learning style is quite important for teachers to teach, organize students’ learning experiences, and accomplish educational goals. Motivation is one of the most important psychological concepts in education. Motivation is multidimensional and ranges from amotivation to extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation. When students are motivated extrinsically, they enjoy striving toward rewards and goals which may differ from individual goals. Intrinsically motivated students enjoy exploring, learning, and curiosity-oriented academic efforts. Understanding learning styles can make it easier to create, modify, and develop more efficient curriculum and educational programs. It can also encourage students’ participation in these programs and motivate them to gain professional knowledge This study aims to determine the learning styles of medical school students and to evaluate whether there is a relationship between their learning styles and academic motivation and the sociodemographic variables. METHODS: In this study a questionnaire containing socio-demographic factors, Grasha-Reichmann Learning Styles Scale, Academic Motivation Scale was filled out by 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th -year medical students of the 2019–2020 academic year. Frequency, percentage, mean, ANOVA, Pearson correlation analysis, and independent group t-test (for analyzing data with normal distribution) were applied. Mann Whitney U test, Kruskal Wallis test, and Spearman correlation analysis were used for analyzing data without normal distribution. RESULTS: We found that the mean of independent learning was the highest among the learning style dimensions, and the mean of the intrinsic motivation to know (IMKN) was the highest among the academic motivation dimensions. We found that there were significant relationships between independent learning and intrinsic motivation (IM), between avoidant learning and extrinsic motivation (EM) and between collaborative learning and IMKN, IM to accomplish things (IMAT) and IM to experience stimulation (IMES). CONCLUSION: We think that different teaching methods can be applied to strengthen collaborative learning, participant learning, and intrinsic motivation. We hope that this research will contribute to medical education on the subject of establishing appropriate teaching methods. Teachers have to plan and implement activities based on students’ learning styles and academic motivation to encourage students to effectively participate in the classroom. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12909-023-04267-4.