The impact of teaching in a particular cognitive style on student performance.
Carol Evans,
Institution: Kingston Grammar School, UK
Abstract: The effect of teaching style, and the student's cognitive styles, on learning
performance was investigated. 32 geography students aged 17 -18-years-old, in a secondary
school all completed the CSA (Riding, 1991) The students were taught in two non-random
groups. They were all taught glacial erosion and deposition topics in two 80 minute
sessions by students identifed as having 'extreme learningstyles'. The first session was
taught by students with a Wholist-Imager style and the second, by students with an
Analytic-Verbaliser style. Both groups were also taught by one student with an
Analytic-Imager style. The students were then tested on these topics using a test format
exemplified in Riding and Douglas (1993:299). Comparison of total points scores based on
performance at GCSE, performance on the three tests and cognitive style lead to the
following conclusions. Using ANOVA no significant differences in performance were found
between the 4 styles when taught in different styles, however, closer analysis of
individual student performance revealed that some students did obtain markedly different
results when taught in different ways. Research of this nature may enable teachers to
enhance learning outcomes through the adaptation of their teaching style relative to
individual needs and capabilities. Given the sample size, larger scale research used to
verify the nature of the impacts of overall teacher style relative to the learning style
of students is needed to assess the impact on the students learning, In this study
teaching style did not lead to significant differences in performance across the different
cognitive style groupings.