Effects of teacher- versus student-created tactual instructional materials versus interactive whiteboards on the achievement of sixth-grade suburban science students

The purpose of this researcher was to examine the effects of compatibility between the learning style preferences and instructional strategies which include learning with tactual or interactive whiteboard materials created either by the teacher or the student on students' science achievement gains.;A counterbalanced-research design was employed for implementing four instructional strategies with pretests and posttests for 87 sixth graders. The highest mean gain in science achievement was shown in learning with interactive whiteboard materials regardless of the creator. Significantly higher science achievement gains were exhibited when students learned with instructional strategy aligned with their learning style preference than when they learned with unaligned instructional strategies. Significant science achievement gains were found for low SES students when they learned using interactive whiteboards regardless of the creator of the materials. Stepwise multiple regression analyses showed that the compatible learning-style preference explained most of the variances of students' science achievement gains in each instructional strategy of using teacher-created materials, student-created materials, tactual materials, and interactive whiteboard materials.