Does Instructional Design Outweigh Learning Styles? A Study of Gagné's Framework, VARK Preferences, and Affective Physics Learning in Nairobi County, Kenya.

This study investigated whether learners' VARK learning style preference (Visual, Aural, Read/Write, Kinesthetic, Multimodal) moderates the effect of instructional method on affective learning outcomes in Form Two physics. A quasi-experimental, non-equivalent control-group design was used with a sample of 138 Form Two students drawn from four secondary schools in Nairobi County, Kenya, assigned to an experimental condition taught using Gagné's Nine Events of Instruction (n = 65) and a control condition taught through the conventional lecture method (n = 73). Affective performance was dichotomised into Rank A (higher affective engagement) and Rank B (lower affective engagement) using a Physics Affective Scale, and the association between learning style and affective rank was tested using Fisher's Exact Test with Monte Carlo simulation (138 sampled tables, seed = 508,741,944) because of expected cell-frequency violations. Learning style preference was not significantly associated with affective performance rank within either instructional method or in the combined sample (all p > .10). However, the two instructional methods produced starkly different affective outcome distributions: 95.4% of learners under Gagné's Nine Events attained Rank A, compared with only 20.5% under the conventional method. The findings suggest that, within the parameters of this study, instructional design was a stronger determinant of learners' affective engagement than individual learning style preference, with implications for how Kenyan physics teachers allocate instructional effort between method-level design and style-based differentiation.