Cognitive Style In Educational Research

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For some time now, educational research is trying to explore the issue of academic success or achievement. The research has been extended beyond the “simple” issues of intelligence or/and prior academic deeds. In the attempt to identify factors which affect the learning-related performance of learners, there are many learning-related concepts; such as achievement motivation, perception of academic control etc (Cassidy & Eachus, 2000). A concept which has provided some valuable insights into learning, in academic and elsewhere, is learning style. There is a general acceptance that the way in which individuals approach a learning situation has an impact on performance and achievement of the learning outcomes. Whilst learning style has been the …show more content…

Sometimes the terms ‘learning style’ and ‘cognitive style’ are used alternately, whilst others they are used with separate and distinct definitions. Cognitive style (CS) is described in (Allport, 1937) as an individual 's typical or habitual mode of perceiving, thinking, remembering and solving problems; whilst the term learning style reflects a concern with the application of CS in a learning situation (Riding & Cheema, 1991). Riding and Cheema in 1991 describe CS as a bipolar dimension (wholist - analytic); while learning style as a number of components which are not mutually exclusive. It is also likely that cognitive style can be regarded as one significant component of learning style. In his book (Hartley, 1998), Hartley provides the following definitions: Learning Styles (LS) are the ways in which individuals approach different learning tasks. Cognitive Styles are the ways in which different individuals approach different cognitive tasks. Learning Strategies are the strategies learners adopt when they study. Hartley (1998, p. 149) continues: “different strategies can be selected by learners to deal with different tasks. Learning styles might be more automatic than learning strategies which are …show more content…

A large amount of research work has been done to enhance teaching quality in an e-learning environment (Chang, Kao, Chu, & Chiu, 2009). Among these studies, researchers indicate that adaptive learning is a crucial requirement in order to promote the learning performance of students (Brusilovsky & Maybury, 2002). Adaptive learning provides the adaptive learning strategies, learning materials and/or courses according to a student’s learning style (Brusilovsky & Maybury, 2002; Triantafillou, Pomportsis, & Demetriadis, 2003). Learning style is an indicator of how a student learns and likes to learn, and how an educator teaches to successfully address the needs of the individual students (Keefe, 1987). Hence, the first step for achieving adaptive learning environments is to identify learners’ learning styles. Several LS models have been proposed; the most well known of them are displayed on Table 1. Depending on one learning style model, numerous research studies have provided mechanisms to detect and identify LSs for achieving an adaptive e-learning environment (García, Amandi, Schiaffino, & Campo,

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