Abstract
Styles ofLearning and Thinking in Two Appalachian Colleges by Phillip Dean Pitchford Tis education forms the common mind, Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined. ALEXANDER POPE Moral Essays What influences our style of learning and thinking? Each of us learns best in a unique way,1 but neurologists can now describe the mysterious processes of the brain well enough to classify them.2 Educators are using the classification systems to match their teaching techniques to students' learning styles. Dr. Saburo Sato and Dr. Paul Torrance, two learning style researchers from different countries, support a cautious consideration of culture as an important influence on the development of individual preferences for specific ways of thinking and learning .3 They compared the learning styles of Japanese and American college students and discovered a difference between the ways the members of the two cultures process information.4 The purpose of this study is to compare the learning styles of Appalachian college students to those of students measured by Torrance and Sato.5 Two Kentucky college instructors, Dr. Mark Sohn of Pikeville College and Dan Bellack of Berea College, tested their students using Torrance's questionnaire, Styles of Learning and Thinking Form C, as did Sato in Japan. The results of the test may be used to place people in one of three categories, which Dr. Torrance calls left-brain dominant, right-brain dominant, and integrative. The classifications are based on research into the way the brain processes information . Neurosurgeons began to study learning styles when they discovered ways to physically determine processing differences in epileptic patients. The doctors severed connecting tissue between the two hemispheres of the brains of epileptics to reduce the intensity of seisures. The result of this severing— or commisurotomy— is that patients end up with two separate, independently functioning brains inside their heads. When they see something with only the right eye, for example, the visual information goes only to the left hemisphere. In a normal person this visual information would be shared by both hemispheres.7 Expanded efforts to determine the nature of specialization of brain hemispheres produced a description of the types of information processed by the right and left sides.8 35 Table I COMPARISON OF OPERATIONS PREDOMINANT IN LEFT AND RIGHT HEMISPHERES OF THE HUMAN BRAIN Left Hemisphere Right Hemisphere Verbal Nonverbal Analytical Holistic Temporal Creative Lineal Intuitive Logical Emotional Systematic Aesthetic Rational Robert Kail notes that the normal person's brain hemispheres may differ in the extent of dominance "only sixty versus forty percent" and attributes success to the person who uses both ways o( thinking to achieve objectives. Kail also says "the school system emphasizes the lefthemisphere approach. The fact of the matter is, the whole culture is set up around lefthemisphere concerns".9 People from cultures which emphasize right-hemisphere thinking may find themselves belittled in technological societies' schools. Let us examine the results of the tests administered by Dr. Sohn and Dan Bellack in their Appalachian colleges and compare them to Torrance and Sato's cross-cultural findings. Table II COMPARISON OF COLLEGE STUDENTS' STYLES OF LEARNING AND THINKING (SOLAT) Appalachia (N-81) Japan (N-200) USA (N-200) Style Mean St. Dev. Mean St. Dev. Mean St. Dev. Left 10.2 4.9 10.7 4.7 8.3 4.6 Right 12.2 4.4 10.2 4.1 9.6 4.9 Integrative 15.3 6.1 15.0 5.8 18.1 5.7 Japanese and random USA data is from E. Paul Torrance and Saburo Sato10 We must approach the interpretation of this data with prudence lest we sanction stereotypes of generalizations. The notion of a distinct Appalachian subculture has been questioned by respected authorities.11 This is a pilot study. Great statistical validity has not been established to support the view that subcultures in the United States definitely use learning styles which vary from the norm. The study was initiated because the author sensed a right-hemisphere 36 orientation among residents of Pike County, Kentucky while living there. The author concedes the impossibility of scientific confirmation of any correlation between right-brain orientation and cultural development. If, however, the intuitive assumption that...
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.