Relationship between Thinking Styles and Academic Achievement

Abstract

Students differ in the ways that they think about problems and how they learn. Thinking style is the term used to describe the individual differences among students in how they think and learn. This study was designed to determine the relationship between thinking styles and academic achievement of secondary school students. The population in this study consisted of science students at grade 9 from male and female secondary schools of Tehsil Rawalpindi. Random sampling technique was used to select the sample. In the present study, two research instruments were used. The Convergent and Divergent Test was used to identify the thinking styles of the secondary school students and the Achievement Tests of Chemistry were used to identify the academic achievement of the students. The collected data was analyzed to calculate means, T-statistics, and Pearson product-moment correlations. Male students were mostly convergent thinkers and female students were mostly divergent thinkers. The relationship between thinking styles and academic achievement of secondary school students was positive and significant.