The relationship between pre-service science teachers’ cognitive styles and their cognitive structures about technology

Abstract

Background: Today, for most of us, technology is a vital and inevitable part of our lives. Due to its widespread use, a great emphasis is being given to educating generations about technology. And, every individual has his/her own style of organizing and collecting information. Purpose: The purpose of the present study is to identify the relationship between pre-service science teachers' cognitive styles and their cognitive structures about technology. Sample: The study was conducted with the participation of first and third grade pre-service science teachers majoring in Science Education in the Faculty of Education at Abant İzzet Baysal University in the spring semester of 2012-2013. Design and methods: The study was designed as a case study and a qualitative research method was used. Students were administered two instruments: Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT) and a Word Association Test (WAT). Results: Results clearly suggested that the first grade participants with a fielddependent cognitive style were better at associating concepts when compared to those with a field-independent cognitive style. And, participants with a fielddependent style, could form more connections between the technology-related concepts. A comparison of the findings on the field-dependent participants by their grade demonstrated that the first and third grade participants with a fielddependent cognitive style got similar scores in terms of the total number of words generated for each key concept. Conclusions: Considering that education is for individuals, it is impossible to ignore individual differences during the process. The most interesting finding of the present study is that field-dependent individuals have a higher cognitive structure, unlike that which has been asserted so far in the literature.

Conceptual Understanding Levels of Students with Different Cognitive Styles: An Evaluation in Terms of Different Measurement Techniques

“…Nicolaou and Xistouri (2011) stated that "In order to avoid the different criteria found in the literature for discriminating between field-dependent and field-independent participants, the Alamolhodaei's study uses a statistical technique for the discrimination"(p.5). And so, this method is often preferred because it produces more valid and reliable results in cognitive style researches (Aydin, 2015;Cataloglu & Ates, 2014;Mousavi, Radmehr & Alamolhodaei, 2012). In this method, the students who find more correct shapes than the number obtained as a result of adding one-quarter of the standard deviation of the scores obtained, are classified as fielddependent, and the students who find less correct shape than the number obtained by subtracting one-quarter of the standard deviation from the average are classified as field-dependent.…”