New questions about learning styles

Educators are increasingly concerned about the efficacy of their instruction, and are conscious that the challenges facing them will not be met using traditional methods of teaching. Many pedagogical approaches have been proposed to facilitate the achievement of that goal. The one we will explore in this paper is related to the process by which students learn, and is based on the learning styles inventories developed respectively by Felder and Keirsey and on the Kolb's learning cycle. During the last three decades, several successful studies of learning styles have been conducted. Nevertheless, only a few questions have been addressed and most of the studies were of limited scope, brief duration, or narrow focus. This paper will discuss the contribution of a wide mapping of learning styles of former and current engineering students, taking into account gender, culture, ethnicity, nationality, and different teaching methodologies for supporting innovation and reform in engineering education.