Investigation of Cognitive Styles of Sixth Grade Students According to Gender and Academic Achievements

Abstract

The aim of the study is to examine and discuss whether there are differences between sixth-grade students' academic achievement, gender, and other research variables in terms of cognitive styles (field dependence/field independence). This study consist of 59 students (32 girls, 27 boys) of sixth-grade students in the second semester of 2018-2019 academic year in Istanbul. In the study, the student personal information form was used with the Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT), which was developed by Witkin, Oltman, Raskin, and Karp (1971) and translated into Turkish by Okman (1979). SPSS program was used for data analysis. In this study, the cognitive styles of the students, gender, mathematics, science, and visual arts courses in terms of academic achievement and gender differences between students' working styles based on their cognitive styles were examined. According to the results of the research, 32 out of 59 students, eight of which are independent, 24 of them were dependent. Of the 27 male students, five were independent, and 22 were dependent. It was concluded that there were 13 independent and 46 dependent students. At the end of the study, the results were presented in tables and were discussed.