EFFECTS OF INDEX LEARNING STYLES (ILS) ON LEARNERS PREFERENCES STYLES TOWARDS LEARNING AUTISM BEHAVIORAL SYMPTOMS

Abstract

In Malaysia, the issue of Autism is silently increasing and it needs to be considered seriously by a society. Azizan (2008) stated that based on a research conducted in Perak; one in every 625 children was autistic. Even though the finding does not represent the actual number of children being affected in Malaysia, the actual number might be higher than that in the real situation. The lack of research particularly on how society should be taught on this disability makes the situation become worse. Nobody knows what causes autism; no proper guide has been distributed and no information on autism was shared at school level. Autism needs special attention from society since the cause of this disability was unknown. More support in terms of research and guidance is needed. Most of the past research and study only focused on autistic children and their parents. Those findings mostly too scientific to be understood by the societies and the results does not often to be published. So in order to increase the knowledge and awareness of learners', the learners preferences style need to be identify in the first place so that when designing the learning material, it can suits and match with their learning styles. In this case, the instrument of Index Learning Styles (ILS) which developed by Felder and Soloman (1994) has been utilized. This instrument consists of forty four (44) items that fall under four categories; Sensing-intuitive, Visual-verbal, Active-reflective and sequential-global. The finding shows that visual learners are dominant compared to text learners. The findings from this study help researcher to develop a suitable an Interactive Multimedia Learning Environment (IMLE) which based on visuals characters which can helps society in learning Autistic behavioral symptoms.