The roles of teachers' teaching behavior in students' learning styles and academic achievement

Abstract

This research aimed to investigate whether or not intellectual styles are malleable and to study the effects of intellectual styles on learning achievement. These aims were achieved through investigating whether or not teachers’ teaching behavior could lead students to change their intellectual styles in learning, and examining the relationship between students’ intellectual styles and learning achievement. Surveys and an experiment were employed in this research. The surveys consisted of two pilot studies (Study 1 and Study 2), while the experiment formed the main study (Study 3). The pilot studies were performed to evaluate the two inventories (the Questionnaire for Teacher Interaction and the Thinking Styles Inventory-Revised) used in the main study, and to investigate the relationship between thinking styles and preferred teacher teaching behavior among students and teachers. Two hundred and forty-seven students and 94 teachers were recruited in Studies 1 and 2, respectively. Findings in these two pilot studies verified that the two inventories were applicable to Chinese secondary school teachers and students. These two studies also revealed that preferred teacher teaching behavior and thinking styles of students and teachers were related. In particular, students and teachers with a dominant preference for Type I thinking styles preferred student-centered teaching behavior to teacher-centered teaching behavior. Moreover, they preferred a wider range of teaching behavior than did the students and teachers with a dominant preference for Type II thinking styles. Also, in the teacher sample, the relationship between thinking styles and preferred teaching behavior exhibited a clearer pattern than in the student sample. The experiment was an eight-month instructional research. Five experimental classes were formed, with five teachers and 139 students as participants. Each teacher taught one class, after being trained to adopt only one type of teaching behavior to teach and to interact with students. Dominant, oppositional, and submissive teaching behaviors were the respective types adopted for three of the classes. The remaining two classes were taught by teachers adopting cooperative teaching behavior. Hence, the experiment adopted a 2 (time) × 5 (learning environment) repeated-measures design. Students’ thinking styles were measured by the Thinking Styles Inventory-Revised before and after the experiment. Also, an investigation of student learning achievement was conducted after classroom instruction. The results showed that students’ thinking styles changed in all of the five experimental classes, with teachers’ teaching behavior in teaching being the main factor contributing to the changes. Moreover, teacher-centered and student-centered teaching behaviors led to student thinking style changes along different directions. Teacher-centered teaching behavior tended to cause student thinking style changes that diverged from the teachers’ own preferred thinking styles, while student-centered teaching behavior tended to shift students’ thinking styles in a direction towards their teachers’ preferred thinking styles. Furthermore, students’ thinking styles and their learning achievement were related. Specifically, Type II styles and the internal style tended to positively predict student learning achievement, while Type I styles and the external style tended to negatively predict learning achievement. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are also discussed.