Learning Styles and Strategies and Academic Performance in Juvenile Offenders

The objective of this study was to describe and analyze learning styles and strategies and their relationship to academic performance in a sample of juvenile offenders from the city of Medellin, Colombia. A cross-sectional, descriptive correlational, non-experimental study was performed with a quantitative approach on 234 young people from a Specialized Care Center of the Criminal Justice System for Adolescents. They showed a strong preference for active and pragmatic learning styles, while the style with the least preference was reflexive. With respect to learning strategies, codification obtained the highest percentage from the sample in the middle percentile. The other three strategies obtained the highest percentages in the lower percentile. The acquisition strategy was positively correlated with reflexive, theoretical and pragmatic styles. The codification strategy was positively correlated with active, reflexive and theoretical styles. The recovery strategy was positively correlated with active and reflexive styles. Finally, the processing support strategy was positively correlated with all learning styles. Information acquisition was the learning strategy variable that most correlated with academic performance.