The Impact of the Thinking Style on Teaching Methods and Academic Achievement

Abstract

Thinking style is an area of interest for researchers. It influences the decision-making of individuals in every aspect of their life. Does thinking style influence the choice of learning methods? What about academic performance? This research paper's objective is to study the impact of thinking styles on the methods of teaching and academic achievement. There are 186 Albanian university students who participated in the study. The questionnaires were distributed online during the second semester of the 2016-2017 academic year. SPSS 20 and JASP 0.8.1.2 were used for data analysis. The statistical analyses utilized are as follows: distribution table, crossed tabulation, Pearson correlation coefficient, One-Way ANOVA, comparison of means, regression analysis. The study concluded that thinking style has an impact on academic achievement and not on teaching methods. The largest number of students belong to the concrete-sequential category. An additional conclusion is that students who apply different types of thinking rate the hybrid learning as most effective.

A Simple Tool for Infection Prevention and Control Practice Surveillance: Development and use for Designing Feasible Programs in Egyptian Hospitals

“…Finally, data collection activities required frequent reading to prevent necessary IPC step from ever being forgotten. Reading is another training method in addition to being an experimental learning experience (Sahatcija et al, 2017).…”

Student’s thinking to identify concave plane based on Gregorc model

“…Specifically, it aimed at analyzing the process of students' thinking (Suryabrata, 2002) who correctly identified a concave plane based on Gregorc's model of thinking style. This study chiefly differs from aforementioned relevant prior studies which firstly determine students' thinking styles then analyse variables which relate to it, for instance, critical thinking (Myers & Dyer, 2006) or logical thinking (Zakir, 2015) and achievement (Sahatcija et al, 2017) since it identified students' thinking styles through their stages of thinking process in developing definition, forming opinion, and drawing conclusion then the identified thinking styles were confirmed through questionnaire. Thus, the current study provided students' thinking processes which characterize their thinking styles.…”

“…Setyawan (2017) showed the different processes of constructing knowledge between random concrete and random abstract students, but it did not affect their success in doing construction. Sahatcija et al (2017) revealed that thinking style only had an impact on achievement and not on the perception of learning methods. Furthermore, Djadir et al (2018) concluded students who have thinking styles based on Gregorc have distinct profiles in solving mathematical problems.…”

“…There are also several studies (e.g. Myers & Dyer, 2006;Zakir, 2015;Setyawan, 2017;Sahatcija, Ora, & Ferhataj, 2017;Djadir, Upu, & Sulfianti, 2018) which specifically refer to Gregorc's (1982) model of thinking. Myers and Dyer (2006) found that students with deeply embedded Sequential Abstract learning style preferences exhibited significantly higher critical thinking.…”

Student’s Learning Style and Achievement after Being Taught Contextually

“…The majority of the students of various branches except mechanical engineering prefer active, sensing, visual and sequential learning styles. Sahatcija, Ora, and Ferhataj (2017) used the Gregorc (2017) classification, which consists of four categories: concrete-sequential, concrete random, abstract-sequential, abstract-random, and they found out that most Albanian university students use the first thinking style, namely concrete-sequential thinking style. According to Ictenbas & Eryilmaz (2011), to meet the needs of those students in different ways, instructors must design their courses differently.…”