This study examined online graduate students' perceived learning styles and perceptions of factors that influenced their overall academic achievement in online courses. The study explored relationships between the learning styles and the factors identified as influencing achievement. Previous research produced mixed results when evaluating the…

In January 2011, a trio of researchers published the results of an experiment in which they demonstrated that students who read material in difficult, unfamiliar fonts learned it more deeply than students who read the same material in conventional, familiar fonts. Strange as that may seem, the finding stems from a well-established principle in…

The author explored the developmental courses of deep learning approach and critical thinking over a 2-year period. Latent growth curve modeling (LGM) procedures were used to test and trace the trajectories of both theoretical frameworks over time. Participants were 264 (119 women, 145 men) university undergraduates. The Deep Learning subscale of…

Currently, American schooling, driven by No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and standardized tests, emphasizes development of intelligence. Because of this, teachers must heavily emphasize acquisition of foundational information (facts) in lectures, assessments, and of course, time-consuming test preparation, at the expense of intellect, that…

In this paper, we integrate organizational, engineering education, and educational learning literature to develop a model of student learning so as to research how learning style, behavioral tendencies, gender, and race have the potential to act as facilitators or barriers to the learning process. We argue that the gains in higher-order cognitive…

Explores the notion of practical wisdom as an alternative to current formulations of critical thinking. Concludes that practical wisdom, unlike critical thinking, allows one to address uncertainty and ambiguity, and recognize that thinking is much more than an intellectual cognitive act of an individual. (KS)

The study reported here extends the investigation begun by Piaget of content effects to laboratory and naturalistic tasks. If the accuracy and completeness of the subjects' expected variables is related to content, then performance on laboratory and naturalistic tasks should differ systematically. The subjects' expected variables were measured by…

Reported is a study designed to investigate the convergent validity of the cognitive preference construct and to develop new techniques for analyzing cognitive preference data. The cognitive preference construct was invented to help evaluate the science curricula of the sixties based on the assumption that a student's intellectual approach to…

The purpose of this paper is to reopen the discourse on cognitive skill acquisition to focus on the interactive effect of differences in cognitive construct and instructional format. Reports an examination of the contextual issues involved in understanding the interactivity of instructional conditions and cognitive style as a meta-knowledge…

This study examined the effects of inquiry training on students' ability to think analytically and the relationships of that ability with achievement in geometry and algebra. Results indicated that inquiry-trained students were not more analytical in approaching mathematics than others. (SD)

Concepts of critical thinking and psychological type are reviewed. An instrument that has gained wide acceptance for evaluating individual preferences is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). Four dimensions of the MBTI that can also be considered learning preferences, with their associated contrasting preferences, are: (1) orientation toward…

The conceptual starting point for almost all recent gender related theory and research is to identify the characteristics of current educational practice as rooted in a type of thought that is linear, analytical, stage dependent, discursive, and "objective," and that separates thought and language--this is the mode that is typically associated…

The unified theory described in this paper characterizes human reasoning as an information processing system with a hierarchical sequence of components and subtheories that account for performance on successively narrower tasks. Both deductive and inductive theories are subsumed in the unified componential theory, including transitive chain theory…

Examined hypothesis that cognitive misers (CM)--individuals low in the need for cognition--forego effortful message scrutiny with a presumably truthful communicator. Results showed that CMs depended more on message scrutiny when a knowledgeable source is of questionable honesty than when the source's honesty is clear. Other factors are discussed.…

Summarizes recent research in reading and developmental psychology. Studies on schema theory and metacognition, and cognitive styles are described, and their implications for school library media programs and teaching critical thinking are discussed. (EM)