A Study of the Relation among Learning Styles, Thinking Skills for Problem Solving and Scientific Inquiry Ability for 4th Graders

• Main Authors: Wen-chi Lin, 林文琪
• Other Authors: none
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/71982583009245827155

碩士 === 國立屏東教育大學 === 數理教育研究所 === 99 === This study was designed to examine the relationship among learning styles, thinking skills for problem solving and scientific inquiry ability based on the sample of 4th graders. The purposes of this study were （1）to describe the learning styles, thinking skills for problem solving and scientific inquiry ability of 4th graders.（2）to compare the performance of 4th graders’ scientific inquiry ability between the different learning styles. （3）to compare the performance of 4th graders’ scientific inquiry ability among the different performance of thinking skills for problem solving. （4）to explore the relationships among learning styles, thinking skills for problem solving and scientific inquiry ability of 4th graders.（5）to explore learning styles and thinking skills for problem solving for predicting the scientific inquiry ability of 4th graders. Participants were 282 students at the 4th grades in Pingtung . Assessing instruments included the “Test of the Scientific Problem Solving Ability of elementary school students,” “Learning Style Questionnaire” and “ Test of the Scientific Inquiry Ability of 3rd-4th graders.” The data obtained was analyzed by descriptive statistics, two-ways ANOVA, one-way ANOVA, Pearson product- moment correlation and multiple regression analysis. The findings of this study were as follows: 1. In terms of learning styles, the numbers of students who were “activist” and “reflector” were more than “theorist” and “pragmatist”. The performance of thinking skills for problem solving were almost the same. The performance of students’ scientific inquiry ability, the ability of “design and planning” and “explain and analyze” were better than the ability of “define question” and “practice and verification”. 2. The performance of scientific inquiry ability had significant differences between the different learning style students. In addition, the performance of scientific inquiry ability had significant differences between the different performance of thinking skills for problem solving. 3. The creative thinking skills and the total performance of thinking skills for problem solving had small significant correlations with learning styles of reflector. There were no significant correlations between learning styles and scientific inquiry ability. But there were significant correlations between the thinking skills for problem solving and the scientific inquiry ability. 4. The critical thinking skills, reasoning thinking skills, and learning styles of “activist” could predict the scientific inquiry ability effectively, and they could explain 20.4% of the scientific inquiry ability.