This study described the factors related to the teaching style of the instructors at the 1994 Buckeye Leadership Workshop (BLW) as measured by scores on a modified Principles of Adult Learning Scale (PALS). The impact of the instructors' teaching styles when two or more instructors worked together in a team teaching situation in terms of their planning efforts, their perceptions of the teaching experience, and the learners' perceptions of the learning experiences was also investigated. As the research on teaching styles in adult education has evolved, several educators have come to the conclusion that no single teaching style was better than another. The conclusions of several studies that teachers of adults were more effective when they practiced a consistent teaching style whether that style was learner-centered or teacher-centered as compared to teachers who did not have a well defined style, stimulated the investigation of teaching styles in team teaching. No studies of the impact of teaching style in team teaching situations were found in the adult education literature.
The BLW was an adult education workshop which was conducted in a resident camp environment. The population of the study included the 28 instructors, who taught the classes and the 134 participants, and a census was used in gathering data. The modified PALS was used to identify the teaching styles of the instructors and two additional instruments were developed to measure the teaching styles of the classes as perceived by the instructors and the learners. All three instruments were reviewed by experts, then field tested by 20 4-H professionals for validity and reliability. The test-retest Pearson correlation for reliability for the PALS was r = .70, and the Cronbach's alpha for the other instruments was .90. To further document the reliability of the instruments, Cronbach's alphas were calculated on the full project data. The resulting reliability coefficients were: .75 for the modified PALS, .81 for the instructors' evaluations of plans, .72 for the instructors' evaluations of their classes, and .85 for the participants' evaluations of the classes.
Two major conclusions were drawn. First it was concluded that the teaching styles of the classes were not strongly related to the teaching styles of the instructors who planned and conducted them. It appeared that the culture of the BLW was so strongly supportive of the learner-centered style that the instructors planned and presented very learner-centered classes regardless of their personal preference in teaching style. Second, it was concluded that the learners evaluated the teaching style of the classes as even more learner-centered in style than the instructors' evaluations. This conclusion conflicted with previous studies in formal adult education which reported that the students evaluated classes as more teacher-centered than did their teachers.