The Roles of Thinking Styles in Learning and Achievement Among Chinese University Students

This dissertation, "The Roles of Thinking Styles in Learning and Achievement Among Chinese University Students" by Yunfeng, He, 何云峰, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Abstract of thesis entitled "The Roles of Thinking Styles in Learning and Achievement among Chinese University Students" Submitted by Yunfeng He for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at The University of Hong Kong in February 2006 ABSTRACT The present research examines the roles of thinking styles in learning and achievement among Chinese university students. It is based on Sternberg's theory of mental self-government (Sternberg, 1988, 1997) that proposed 13 thinking styles which have been subsequently reconceptualized into three types (Types I, II, and III) by Zhang and Sternberg (2005; see also Zhang 2002a). Three studies were conducted: Study 1 and Study 2 quantitatively examined the roles of thinking styles in academic achievement; and Study 3 qualitatively cross-validated the results from the Studies 1 and 2 and explored if and how students made use of thinking styles in the course of learning. Participants were undergraduates from a university in Shanghai, mainland China. Study 1 involved 223 first-year students; Study 2 was conducted among 504 students of all four academic years and 10 teachers. Forty-five students participated in focus group discussions in Study 3. Selections of student participants in Study 3 were made based on the notion of style types. In the quantitative studies, four instruments for students were used: the Thinking Styles Inventory (Sternberg & Wagner, 1992), the NEO Five-Factor Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1992a), the Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices (Raven, 1998), and the Style Correlates Inventory (designed by the present researcher). Teachers responded to the Thinking Styles in Teaching Inventory (Grigorenko & Sternberg, 1993d). The Style Correlates Inventory has two II dimensions: things and people. Data analyses of Study 1 were conducted at the level of individual styles; data analyses of Study 2 were undertaken at the level of style types. Quantitative results indicated that the predicted significant relationships of student achievement with thinking styles, ability, and personality traits were not supported. To explain these results, the researcher argued that the students' academic grades might not be valid indicators of their achievement. Such an argument was also confirmed by the data from the group interviews. The four main hypotheses in the qualitative study were supported: 1) students of Type II styles (styles that convey a norm-conforming tendency) perceived the roles of thinking styles in learning more often than did students of Type I styles (styles that are creativity-generating); 2) students of Type I styles preferred to make efforts to match their teachers' teaching styles more than did students of Type II styles; 3) the things dimension tended to be correlated with students' stylistic development and changes significantly more than did the people dimension; and 4) students of Type I styles appeared to have higher levels of style awareness and higher degrees of flexibility than did students with Type II styles. The limitations and major implications of the present research are discussed. Directions for further studies are put forward. An abstract of 448 words III DOI: 10.5353/th_b3576285 Subjects: Academic achievement Thought and thinking Learning College students - China - Shanghai - Case studies