Asa Hilliard, an African-American educator, stresses the following points: (1) the African-American cultural style tends to be more improvised, wholistic, and person-oriented than the European style; (2) teachers can be more democratic and equitable by recognizing cultural differences; (3) intelligence tests tend to hurt African Americans; and (4)…

Learning styles of elementary education majors in biology (n=83) were compared to learning styles of students (n=673) in a general nonmajors biology course. Some recommendations made were for incorporation of student-led demonstrations and presentations, instruction with personal involvement, and audiovisuals. Discusses methods of incorporating an…

Nominal-level analysis of 4 primary learning styles (doing, thinking, watching, and feeling) of 292 subjects (mostly college students) from the Learning Styles Inventory demonstrated their discriminant/convergent validity but not the validity of the learning-style types suggested by D. A. Kolb (1976) (accommodator, diverger, converger, and…

As experiences of two first graders show, learning occurs in split-second initiatives that children take with others as they try to attend, engage, interact, communicate, and reason. Before children can learn reading, writing, and arithmetic, they must know how to learn. Children cannot learn two-way communication with gestures, words, or symbols…

Research on students' experiences in higher education has evolved from focusing on deep and surface approaches to learning to study of educational choices and individual preferences or behavior patterns in tackling a learning task. Recently, interest has turned to what factors in the learning environment influence the approaches students adopt.…

Summarizes the activities at the International Union of Biochemistry workshops held in Cali, Colombia, and Lima, Peru, during July 1990. Includes background about the education systems at the college level in these two countries, current teaching practices, and recommendations drafted by the workshop participants. (JJK)

Administered the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to three groups of university level composition students (21 basic writing students, 41 traditional first-year composition students, and 25 English-as-Second-Language students). MBTI personality type, writing measures, and relationships between composition measures and learning styles as measured by…

Analyzed field dependence-independence (FDI) cognitive style as function of socioeconomic status, sex, and cognitive competence in seven year olds (n=117). Subjects of upper-middle socioeconomic status achieved significantly higher scores that did subjects of low socioeconomic status on five McCarthy Scales and on FDI variable. Boys scored higher…

Two competing learning theories, 1 based on learning strategies and 1 on learning styles, were assessed in a study with 336 college students, mostly first-year students. Results suggest both innate predisposition and acquired skills affect learning, and the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire and Myers-Briggs Type Indicator should be…

In a study of children's use of encoding and strategy knowledge in domains in which problem-specific experience is lacking, children were tested for serial recall. Seven- and nine-year olds encoded contiguity relations, and encoding was related to strategy choices. Less consistent encoding of five-year olds did not influence strategy choices. (BC)

A review of how second-language acquisition research accounts for individual differences focuses on research on aptitude, motivation, learning strategies, and learning styles and discusses such conceptual and methodological issues as data quantification, points of contact between variables, the multicausal nature of language learning, hypothesis…

An Israeli sample of 378 students and 251 practitioners in occupational therapy (OT), social work, nursing, physical therapy, and clinical psychology completed Kolb's Learning Style Inventory. Findings suggest greater variance in learning style among students. OT students were least abstract. Both OT students and practitioners were predominantly…

The SPATIAL model (satisfaction, perception, achievement, transcendent/immanent attributes, authority, layout) posits that (1) individual perception of space affects satisfaction, participation, and achievement; (2) certain aspects of a space are subjective or beyond physical attributes; and (3) authority and layout are external and can be…

Investigated continuities and discontinuities in the use of learning strategies by Western Australian preschoolers. A follow-up study was conducted a year later. Findings showed that children who were characterized by active strategic approaches to learning in preschool maintained these approaches in the first year of school. (SH)

Comparison of 224 Pennsylvania secondary agricultural education students with a national sample showed that (1) the Pennsylvania students' cognitive skills were less developed; (2) their preferred responses to information were auditory and emotive; (3) small group and hands-on were preferred environments; and (4) they were less likely to prefer…