Social representations of the development of intelligence, parental values and parenting styles: a theoretical model for analysis

Within the theoretical framework of social representations theory, a substantial body of literature has advocated and shown that, as interpretative systems and forms of knowledge concurring in the construction of a social reality, social representations are guides for action, influencing behaviours and social relations. Based on this assumption, the primary goal of the current study was to investigate the relationship between social representations of the development of intelligence and parenting styles while also examining the role played by the values that parents desire for their children. The sample included 466 subjects with educational responsibilities (117 fathers, 227 mothers and 122 mother–teachers). Participants completed a self-administered survey on their representations of the development of intelligence, values desired for their children and parenting styles. A theoretical model which examined the relations among these variables was tested. Structural equation modelling procedures indicated, as hypothesised, that dimensions which emphasise the role of parents and the importance of constant accompaniment of children for the development of intelligence influence the authoritative parenting style, while dimensions which outline the role of school and teachers relate to authoritarian and permissive parenting styles. Additionally, although in some cases values were seen both to be determined by social representations and to influence parenting styles, the meditational hypothesis of values was not fully confirmed. Overall, the results obtained suggest that social representations, styles and values tend to build up a potentially significant organisation for parental activities. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings in research and educational intervention are discussed.     

Thinking styles and conceptions of creativity among university students

This research aims to understand university students’ thinking styles and the relationship with their views of creativity. The Thinking Styles Inventory‐Revised II was used to measure 13 thinking styles as defined in Sternberg’s theory of mental self‐government and the Conceptions of Creativity Scales was used to inquire students’ views about the conditions for evaluating creativity from six aspects: intelligence, knowledge, style of thinking, personality, motivation and learning environment. Significant relationships were identified between thinking styles and conceptions of creativity. This research contributes to the understanding about the relationship between conceptions of creativity and thinking styles, and brings insights for educators about educational innovations, as one of the key objectives of educational innovations is to develop creativity of the younger generation.     

Exploring the Relationship between Cognitive Style and Teaching Style

To a great extent the nature of the relationship between the cognitive style of a student teacher and their predominant teaching style in the classroom has been ignored by educational research. This study used an opportunist sample of 84 trainee teachers studying for one year full time for a Post Graduate Certificate in Education, in a range of subject specialist areas, based at a single English university. Students' cognitive styles were assessed, and those with more extreme cognitive style scores were selected to participate in semi‐structured interviews. A subject specialist mentor had been assigned to each student; 77% (n=59) completed a questionnaire on their perceptions of the teaching style of their PGCE student. Statistically significant differences in approaches to learning and teaching were identified between the four cognitive styles. Gender differences were also noted with analytic‐verbaliser females adopting the most analytical style in the classroom and wholist‐imager males the most wholist style. Qualitative analysis identified differences in approach to teaching between the students with more extreme cognitive styles. Wholists were more sensitive than analytic students to situational factors such as the culture of the school, support from the mentor, and in their ability to accept criticism. Further research is recommended to verify such findings. In this respect, a longitudinal study focusing on changes in cognitive style and approach in the classroom could be fruitful. Consequently, universities need to adopt varied teaching and assessment tools varied in order to accommodate the continuum of cognitive styles.     

Intellectual Styles and Academic Achievement among Senior Secondary School Students in Rural China

The present study empirically addresses two longstanding controversial issues in the field of intellectual styles. The first concerns the distinction (or similarity) between various style constructs. The second relates to whether or not intellectual styles make a difference to students' academic achievement. Specifically, the study investigated the relationship between Torrance's modes of thinking and Sternberg's thinking styles. It also examined the role of the two style constructs in achievement in Chinese, English, and mathematics. Three self‐report inventories were administered to 452 students from a senior secondary school in rural China. After students' age, gender, and self‐rated abilities were controlled for, thinking styles predicted modes of thinking. In general, conservative intellectual styles predicted better achievement across the three subjects among students in lower grade levels, whereas creative intellectual styles contributed to achievement in Chinese among students in higher grade levels. It is concluded that each of the two style constructs has a unique value in explaining individual differences in human performance. Furthermore, the study makes another call for cultivating creative intellectual styles among school students.     

Leadership styles and decision-making styles in an Indonesian school context

School leadership has been well researched in developed countries. However, in Asia, particularly in Indonesia, school leadership has not been well explored. Using survey data from a sample of 475 teachers in six Lampung school districts, this paper examines the relationships between school principal leadership styles and school principal decision-making styles in an Indonesian school context. Findings are that most of the relationships between school principal leadership styles and school principal decision-making styles are significant. These findings suggest that teachers perceive that principals should exhibit much more transformational leadership style and rational decision-making style but avoid laissez-faire leadership style and avoidant decision-making style.     

智力风格的实践支持与理论困惑

提出智力风格构念的目的在于整合不同的风格理论与模型,在传统核心构念如能力、人格等基础上,增强我们解释和预测学生学习成绩的能力。1930年代以来,不同类型的智力风格(如认知风格、学习风格)不断被提出并在教与学的各个领域得以大量研究与应用。文章从学习成绩的视角总结回顾了智力风格在教育心理学领域的应用研究。以此为基础,分析了教师与学生风格匹配与学习者自我风格意识两个重要的争议性的问题,并提出了可能的研究方向。     

Peer Groups as a Context for School Misconduct: The Moderating Role of Group Interactional Style

Peer group interactional style was examined as a moderator of the relation between peer group school misconduct and group members' school misconduct. Participants were 705 students (M_age = 11.59 years, SD = 1.37) in 148 peer groups. Children reported on their school misconduct in fall and spring. In the winter, group members were observed in a limited‐resource task and a group conversation task, and negative and positive group interactional styles were assessed. Multilevel modeling indicated that membership in groups that were higher on school misconduct predicted greater school misconduct only when the groups were high on negative or low on positive interactional style. Results suggest that negative laughter and a coercive interactional style may intensify group effects on children's misconduct.     

The relationship between anxiety‐stability,working memory and cognitive style

While prior research indicates that relationships exist between anxiety‐stability and working memory, and cognitive style and anxiety‐stability, they have not been considered together. The aim of this study was to consider how anxiety‐stability is related to working memory, gender and style in interaction. The sample consisted of 179 12–13‐year‐old Year 8 secondary comprehensive school pupils in the UK. Teachers rated the level of anxiety‐stability of pupils. Pupils completed an assessment of working memory efficiency, the information processing index (IPI). They also did the cognitive styles analysis to determine their positions on the two fundamental cognitive style dimensions, which were indicated by two ratios: the Wholist‐Analytic ratio and the Verbal‐Imagery ratio. Working memory capacity and cognitive style interacted in their relationship with anxiety‐stability, such that higher memory was associated with a greater increased stability for Wholist‐Verbalisers and Analytic‐Imagers than for Analytic‐Verbalisers and Wholist‐Imagers. The results were discussed in terms of the unitary versus complementary nature of style combinations.     

多元智能、学习风格与高职学习者英语能力的相关性研究

文章以实证研究的方法对高职学习者的英语能力与多元智能、学习风格的相关系数结果进行分析讨论。用Spss16．0对107名高职学习者的多元智能、学习风格进行描述性分析、平均数多重比较及与英语能力的相关性检验,调查结果显示：人际交往、内省智能分别是高职学习者最显著的两项智能,独立风格是最受欢迎的学习风格;多元智能与学习风格在学习过程中相互作用、影响,多处存在显著差异;受试群体的英语能力与人际智能负相关、与内省智能正相关,与动手、体验型风格正相关。     

Getting old and heading south: the academic success of Southerner learners in design cohorts

This paper investigates the relationship between learning style, as determined by Kolb's Learning Style Inventory, age and one measure of academic performance in design assignments for two cohorts of first‐ and third‐year architecture students. The paper focuses on the results of a cross‐curriculum learning style survey conducted as part of a project aimed at resolving the learning difficulties of students collaborating in multi‐disciplinary and multi‐cultural team assignments. The research was conducted to determine how learning style differences in heterogeneous teams might be addressed through pedagogy. In light of evidence in student cohorts of learning style changes towards the learning styles of design teachers as students progress through their studies, this paper demonstrates how these changes reflect a statistically significant relationship between learning styles and academic performance in design assignments.     

Towards Inclusive Teacher Education: Sensitising individuals to how they learn

Higher education has struggled to acknowledge and translate into better teaching and learning practices that sizeable literature base suggesting a link between cognitive style, learning preferences, and performance. Research is reported in which 80 undergraduate students on a primary education degree were studied to examine the relationship between their cognitive style, their learning preferences, and perceived impact on their teaching practices. All students completed the CSA measure of cognitive style, the ASSIST, two further questionnaires exploring learning preferences and perception of good teaching during the course, and an evaluation at the end of the teaching unit. Significant differences were found between the three cognitive styles investigated: wholist, intermediate, and analytic. In terms of learning preferences, using ANOVA statistically significant differences were found between the three styles with wholists being most concerned about speed of delivery and least liking computer‐assisted learning. In addition, wholists preferred less structure than analytics in their teaching and claimed to use more images while analytics claimed to use more speech in their teaching. Intermediates demonstrated a greater preference for tangential approaches to teaching and were least happy with the nature of the teaching they had received while at university. Many of the differences reported in the literature between the different cognitive styles were not evident in this study. However, the interpersonal and intrapersonal characteristics of wholists and analytics, respectively, were evident and perceived to impact on planning and delivery in the classroom. While further school‐based research involving greater numbers is required, interest in learning styles remains especially relevant if one intends to offer a truly inclusive education for all learners.     

Academic risk factors and deficits of learned hopelessness: a longitudinal study of Hong Kong secondary school students

The aim of the present study is to explore a causal model of academic achievement and learning‐related personal variables by testing the nature of relationships between learned hopelessness, its risk factors and hopelessness deficits as proposed in major theories in this area. The model investigates affective–motivational characteristics of students such as prior academic failures, academic attributional style, self‐efficacy, thoughts about intelligence, school values, learned hopelessness, self‐esteem, learning strategy effectiveness and academic achievement, and the relationships among them. A sample of 741 Hong Kong secondary students completed a series of scales over a school year. As expected, prior achievement was the best predictor of subsequent achievement. The next best predictors were perceived learning difficulties and learned hopelessness. This in turn leads to disengagement from schooling and students taking on most responsibility for their failing. Recommendations for teachers and schools to ameliorate these beliefs may redress the move towards hopelessness.     

Learning motivation and performance excellence in adolescents with high intellectual potential: what really matters?

In the development of performance excellence, the relative roles played by intellectual ability and motivation remain speculative. This study investigates the role played by general intelligence, school environment, self‐efficacy, and aspects of personal identity in the formation of learning motivation in German students attending the Gymnasium schools. Using self‐reports of academic achievement and scores on a shortened version of the Berlin intelligence structure test for adolescence to differentiate students as achievers or underachievers, ninth‐grade students were administered a battery of self‐report instruments, designed to measure learning motivation, school environment, self‐efficacy, and personal identity. After the posited factor structure was confirmed, factor scores were computed and then used as data in hierarchical regression analyses using learning motivation as the criterion variable. The results showed that the greatest predictors of learning motivation were variables related to personal identity‐style, rather than general intelligence, supporting the hypothesis that learning motivation is a moderator variable of intellectual achievement for students with intellectual giftedness, rather than an inherent component of giftedness.     

The Effect of Pupil Cognitive Style and Position of Prose Passage Title on Recall

A replication of Bransford and Johnson's (1972) experiment on contextual prerequisites was carried out with the additional inclusion of cognitive styles as independent variables. A total of 77 10‐ and 11‐year‐old subjects (year 6, primary school) were asked to read a short prose passage on the topic of washing clothes. Half of the subjects were told the title of the passage before reading it and half after. All subjects attempted to free recall the passage. They had also completed the Cognitive Styles Analysis (CSA) (Riding, 1991), thus providing their position on the two fundamental cognitive style dimensions: Wholist‐Analytic and Verbal‐Imagery. It was found that the Wholist‐Analytic cognitive style and title‐passage order interacted in their effect on recall (p < 0.05). Whilst Wholists performed best when the title was presented before reading the passage, the order made no difference for other individuals. This suggested that this cognitive style reflects the way individuals organise information.     

Standardization of a scale for the study of children's learning styles: Structure,stability, and criterion validity

Conventional approaches to early assessment and intervention for young school children focus primarily upon notions of general intelligence, academic readiness, personality, and perceptual integrity. However, such concepts are grounded largely in hypothetical constructs that provide little information to those carrying out enrichment and remediation programs. Alternatively, the concept of learning style focuses upon the phenomenology of potentially changeable or teachable behaviors manifested in common learning situations. The 16-item Study of Children's Learning Styles rating scale was completed by teachers for 1,513 kindergarten children from diverse community, racial, socioeconomic, and religious backgrounds. Principal components factor analysis with varimax rotation revealed three distinct styles of learning-related behavior; i.e., Avoidant, Inattentive, and Overly Independent. These dimensions were found to retain substantial internal consistency, as well as retest and interobserver reliability. Learning styles were validated against the criteria of teacher-assigned grades and standardized achievement scores gathered one year later, and were compared to a concurrent measure of general intelligence. Each style was related to other behavioral dimensions not devoted exclusively to the learning process.     

Performance on Middle School Geometry Problems With Geometry Clues Matched to Three Different Cognitive Styles

ABSTRACT— This study investigated the relationship between 3 ability‐based cognitive styles (verbal deductive, spatial imagery, and object imagery) and performance on geometry problems that provided different types of clues. The purpose was to determine whether students with a specific cognitive style outperformed other students, when the geometry problems provided clues compatible with their cognitive style. Students were identified as having a particular cognitive style when they scored equal to or above the median on the measure assessing this ability. A geometry test was developed in which each problem could be solved on the basis of verbal reasoning clues (matching verbal deductive cognitive style), mental rotation clues (matching spatial imagery cognitive style), or shape memory clues (matching object imagery cognitive style). Straightforward cognitive style–clue‐compatibility relationships were not supported. Instead, for the geometry problems with either mental rotation or shape memory clues, students with a combination of both verbal and spatial cognitive styles tended to do the best. For the problems with verbal reasoning clues, students with either a verbal or a spatial cognitive style did well, with each cognitive style contributing separately to success. Thus, both spatial imagery and verbal deductive cognitive styles were important for solving geometry problems, whereas object imagery was not. For girls, a spatial imagery cognitive style was advantageous for geometry problem solving, regardless of type of clues provided.     

Patterns of Close Relationships and Socioemotional and Academic Adjustment Among School‐Age Children with Learning Disabilities

This study examined patterns of close relationships among school‐age children with learning disabilities (LD) as manifested in their attachment style, their self‐perceived loneliness, their sense of coherence, and teacher ratings of their academic functioning. In line with resilience theory, this study also aimed to further explore predictors of positive adjustment for children with LD. The sample comprised 98 children with LD from regular classes in four Israeli public elementary schools, and 98 non‐LD children from the same classes. Significant group differences emerged in attachment styles and adjustment. Attachment style significantly correlated with socioemotional adjustment but not with academic functioning. In addition, a subgroup of resilient children emerged among the LD children. Discussion focused on the value of attachment patterns for understanding social and emotional adjustment among school‐age children with LD.     

Preferences for teaching styles matter in academic achievement: scientific and practical implications

The two primary objectives of this study were: to identify the preferred teaching styles of secondary‐school students and to compare these preferences with those of university students from past research; and to examine the contributions of students’ preferred teaching styles to their academic achievement. A sample of 298 students from a Catholic boys’ school completed the Preferred Thinking Styles in Teaching Inventory and the Self‐rated Ability Scale. Participants’ achievements in 12 school subjects were obtained. Results indicated great similarities between the preferred teaching styles of the present sample and those of university students in previous studies. Achievement scores in all 12 subjects were predicted by students’ preferred teaching styles beyond their self‐rated abilities. Some of these predictive relationships were domain‐specific, while others were not. The findings’ scientific and practical implications are discussed.     

Implementing a case‐based e‐learning environment in a lecture‐oriented anaesthesiology class: Do learning styles matter in complex problem solving over time?*

This study explores how students' learning styles influence their learning while solving complex problems when a case‐based e‐learning environment is implemented in a conventional lecture‐oriented classroom. Seventy students from an anaesthesiology class at a dental school participated in this study over a 3‐week period. Five learning‐outcome tests and two course‐satisfaction surveys were implemented during the case‐based instruction using a blended approach (online and face‐to‐face). The results of one‐way ANOVAs with repeated measures revealed that the four learning styles (active–reflective, sensing–intuitive, visual–verbal, sequential–global) did not influence students' learning experience and learning outcomes during the implementation of case‐based e‐learning. However, the pattern of the students' performance graph and further analysis with a liberal approach implied that the active–reflective learning style may influence learning outcomes slightly at an earlier time during the case‐based learning implementation; however, as time passed, this learning style no longer influenced their learning at all. Thus, learning styles may not be considered important or may be considered only during the early stages of instructional implementation in order to facilitate the students' transition to the new case‐based learning environment. It is more efficient to encourage students to adapt to different learning environments than to design adaptive systems in order to embrace diverse learning styles.