A Cognitive Styles Approach to the study of Learning Style and Academic Success

• In Event: Sociology of Education Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 10. Learning and Teaching in Contentious Times

Abstract

Research done in the fields of Creativity and Innovation in Science and Technology has resulted in a typology of cognitive styles that has great promise as a measure of learning styles. Studies that began with efforts to identify high performance teams and individuals operating in fields of different paradigm states (higher or lower levels of structure, codification and focus) produced 2 measures of cognitive qualities with a considerable range of application and predictive power.
One is associated with usual facility with problem identification, diagnostics and conceptualization. The second is associated with a special strength in solving structured or predefined problems in innovative ways that are not derivable from a strictly logical approach. They are not correlated with each other at the individual level, hence a typology of 4 types based on high and low levels of each emerged from this work. .
The original college and university level research program moved down to the high school level focusing on cognitive biases in the SAT. One particularly interesting offshoot was to see which students were accepted into honors classes.
Also noted was which types benefited most from science textbooks organized in different ways This presentation will focus on the HS SAT studies and effectiveness of different types of textbooks. The value of being assigned to a college course section run by a TA of your same cognitive type will also get some attention.
In the end, the potential value of using of these cognitively based learning styles measures to restructure educational institutions to take full advantage of their potential. The implications of having cognitive style data bases on a faculty and student body to mix with a variety of indicators of preference and performance will be explored.

Author

• John M. Wilkes