ABSTRACT
Grasha and Riechmann examined and assessed the learning styles of college students through a social, affective perspective on the different ways individuals approach the classroom environment (Karrer, 1988; Keefe, 1979). This measure can be classified as a social interaction scale because it deals with patterns of preferred styles for interacting with teachers and fellow students in a learning environment rather than how information is perceived or organized (Grasha, 1984; Riechmann, 1980). Although these categories do not translate as readily into instructional strategies, they are “defined around three classroom dimensions: student attitudes toward learning, view of teachers and/or peers, and reactions to classroom procedures” (Riechmann & Grasha, 1974, p. 214). From their initial research, they identified three bipolar dimensions that describe this approach: avoidant/participant, competitive/collaborative, and dependent/ independent. Further research into these styles revealed that subjects consistently receive opposite scores only for the participant/avoidant dimension (Andrews, 1981; Riechmann & Grasha, 1974). In fact, they found that most individuals do not score on polar extremes, but rather indicate some degree of preference for each of these categories (Riechmann & Grasha, 1974). Because these classroom dimensions are present in almost all instructional strategies, the six styles identified by the questionnaire are meaningful for understanding student behaviors. Another important distinction to bring out is that the styles for each of the learners are expected to change from class to class. As such, they have designed two different forms of the scale-one that assesses a general class, and the second that relates to a specific course.
