Learning Strategies and Learning Styles PERSPECTIVES ON INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES CECIL R. REYNOLDS, Texas A&M University, Col/ege Station ROBERT T. BROWN, University of North Carolina, Wilmington DETERMINANTS OF SUBSTANCE ABUSE Biological, Psychological, and Environmental Factors Edited by Mark Galizio and Stephen A. Maisto HANDBOOK OF MULTIVARIATE EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY Second Edition Edited by John R. Nesselroade and Raymond B. Cattell HISTORICAL FOUNDATIONS OF EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY Edited by John A. Glover and Royce R. Ronning THE INDIVIDUAL SUBJECT AND SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGY Edited by Jaan Valsiner LEARNING STRATEGIES AND LEARNING STYLES Edited by Ronald R. Schmeck METHODOLOGICAL AND STATISTICAL ADVANCES IN THE STUDY OF INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES Edited by Cecil R. Reynolds and Victor L. Willson THE NEUROPSYCHOLOGY OF INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES A Developmental Perspective Edited by Lawrence C. Hartlage and Cathy F. Telzrow PERSONALITY AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES A Natural Science Approach Hans J. Eysenck and Michael W. Eysenck PERSONALITY DIMENSIONS AND AROUSAL Edited by Jan Strelau and Hans J. Eysenck PERSPECTIVES ON BIAS IN MENTAL TESTING Edited by Cecil R. Reynolds and Robert T. Brown THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS OF BEHAVIOR THERAPY Edited by Hans J. Eysenck and Irene Martin A Continuation Order Plan is available for this series. A continuation order will bring delivery of each new volume immediately upon publication. Volumes are billed only upon actual shipment. For further information please contact the publisher. Learning Strategies and Learning Styles Edited by RONALD R. SCHMECK Southern Illirwis University Carbondale, Illinois Springer Science+Business Media, LLC Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Learning strategies and learning styles / edited by Ronald R. Schmeck, p. cm.—(Perspectives on individual differences) Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Learning.2. Cognitive styles. I. Schmeck, Ronald R. II. Series. LB1060.L4246 1988 88-12586 370.15'23—dcl9 CIP ISBN 978-1-4899-2120-8 ISBN 978-1-4899-2118-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-4899-2118-5 © Springer Science+Business Media New York 1988 Originally published by Plenum Press, New York in 1988 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1988 All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored i n a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher I dedicate this book to the following individuals in ~ppreciation for their support during its preparation: N. Courtney, K. Harmon, S. Haynes, C. Labyk, P. McCarthy, C. Meade, C. Meek, A. Vaux, and my son Eric. Contributors John Biggs, Department of Education, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong J. P. Das, Developmental Disabilities Centre, University of Alberta, Ed monton, Alberta, Canada Noel Entwistle, Department of Education, University of Edinburgh, Edin burgh, Scotland John R. Kirby, Faculty of Education, Queen's University, Kingston, On tario, Canada Patricia McCarthy, Department of Educational Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota Ference Marton, Department of Education, University of Goteborg, Moln dal, Sweden Gordon Pask, OOC Program, Faculty of Education, University of Amster dam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Paul Ramsden, Centre for the Study of Higher Education, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia Z. L. Rockenstein, Department of Human Services, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, North Carolina Ronald Ray Schmeck, Department of Psychology, Southern lllinois Uni versity, Carbondale, lllinois E. P. Torrance, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia Claire E. Weinstein, Department of Educational Psychology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas vii Preface A style is any pattern we see in a person's way of accomplishing a particular type of task. The "task" of interest in the present context is education-learning and remembering in school and transferring what is learned to the world outside of school. Teachers are expressing some sort of awareness of style when they observe a particular action taken by a particular student and then say something like: "This doesn't surprise me! That's just the way he is." Observation of a single action cannot reveal a style. One's impres sion of a person's style is abstracted from multiple experiences of the person under similar circumstances. In education, if we understand the styles of individual students, we can often anticipate their perceptions and subsequent behaviors, anticipate their misunderstandings, take ad vantage of their strengths, and avoid (or correct) their weaknesses. These are some of the goals of the present text. In the first chapter, I present an overview of the terminology and research methods used by various authors of the text. Although they differ a bit with regard to meanings ascribed to certain terms or with regard to conclusions drawn from certain types of data, there is none theless considerable agreement, especially when one realizes that they represent three different continents and five different nationalities. Fur thermore, the data upon which their concepts are based were gathered from widely differing cultural populations, and some of the theories were originally formulated without awareness of related work being done by some of the other authors who now appear next to them in the present text. Yet, in spite of such differing origins and differing perspec tives, the authors show remarkable agreement regarding how best to conceptualize the educational process and the individuality of students. There is also considerable agreement regarding the best ways to apply the resulting theories in practice in order to improve education. ix x PREFACE The second chapter, prepared by Noel Entwistle, recognizes that at the core of any "style" must lie something very basic which permeates a person's perceptions and subsequent behavior enough to produce those consistencies to which we apply the label "style" or, in his words, "orientation." It is his view that a major component of this core is the student's motive. He identifies three broad classes of motives: (a) pure interest in learning (or more broadly, in self-actualization); (b) the need to demonstrate self-worth coupled with the assumption that one will fail (constantly striving to avoid being "the fool"); and (c) the need to dem onstrate self-worth coupled with the assumption that one will succeed (constantly striving to accumulate symbols of merit-e.g., praise and high grades). One of these three motives tends consistently to lie behind each of the "approaches to learning" discussed by Ference Marton in Chapter 3. Chapter 6, dealing with self-concept, relates nicely to Entwis tle's discussion of motives. Marton's Chapter 3 presents an overview of innovative, qualitative research into learning carried out at the University of Goteburg. Using interview data in which students describe their experience of learning in school settings, Marton has formulated conceptions of the process that parallel formulations that I and my colleagues developed on the basis of large-scale survey research in the United States. We both found that one can place a student's approach to the task of learning on a continuum that extends from surface (or as I've called it, "shallow") processing of symbols to deep analysis of the meanings that underlie symbols (includ ing, ultimately, formulation of personal conceptions of reality). This surface to deep continuum can be used to describe how students' define learning, how they approach the task of studying, how they approach education in general, and to their approach to specific tasks such as reading and writing. All of this is discussed in the chapters of the pre sent text. The fourth chapter, by Gordon Pask, reviews some classic research which equals Marton's work in terms of the impact that it has had on other researchers-for example, myself (Chapters I, 6, and 12) and Ent wistle (Chapter 2). Instead of using interviews and the "retelling of texts" as Marton had, Pask relied upon one-to-one tutorials and comput er-assisted tutorial systems in which students reveal their trains of thought by requesting specific bits of information and then demonstrate that they understand by teaching the information back to the researcher. Pask consistently uncovered two basic cognitive strategies, which can be called styles when they are used consistently across varied situations. The two styles/strategies are holist learning (payin~special attention to global features of experience) and serialist learning (preferring detailed xi PREFACE sequential analysis of experience and enjoying especially the specifica tion of procedural rules). In Chapter 5, J. P. Das presents a review of his work. Within the context of education, Das has applied the concepts of sumultaneous successive coding processes and planning processes originally identified by the Russian psychologist Luria. Luria studied brain-injured patients to uncover cognitive processes, and Das and his colleagues (d. Kirby's Chapter 9) have used psychological testing procedures (including factor analysis) to identify and assess these same processes in students and to determine ways in which they might account for and suggest ways of improving the level of functioning (e.g., reading) of those students in the school setting. Patricia McCarthy and I make an attempt in Chapter 6 to tie what is known of social development and self-concept development to perfor mance in educational settings, including a suggested connection be tween the person's social experience and his or her cognitive style. We describe research indicating that the quality of a learning outcome (the coded educational experience) is heavily influenced by the personality of the student. Students do not all derive the same conceptions from the same experiences, and this can be explained, in part, by differences in self-esteem which subsequently affect both perception and cognition (i.e., learning style). Possible connections between social experience and cognitive style are discussed further in the final chapter. The style and strategy concepts developed in the first half of the book are applied to practical educational problems in the last half. In addition to applying the concepts to some classic problems in the areas of reading, writing, and creativity, the latter half of the text confronts such issues as situational determiners of style (the nature of the school setting) and how to change style. In Chapter 7, Paul Ramsden discusses aspects of the educational setting that most influence students' approaches to the material to be learned. The way in which a course of study is structured can pro foundly influence the ways in which students process information pre sented to them, and the ways the information is processed determine the nature of the codes left behind in memory. One of the interesting aspects of Ramsden's chapter is that he basically agrees with the con cepts developed earlier in the text but argues nicely that style is quite flexible and really not very "stylistic" at all, in the sense that it is not "fixed." In Chapter 8, John Biggs uses the surface-deep continuum dis cussed above to analyze differences in ways students approach the task of writing an essay. His analysis of writing is derived from and illus-