Styles of Learning According to Felder & Soloman Model and its Relation with Synthetic Thinking of Graduate Students in the Departments of Chemistry

Abstract

This research aims to identify: 1-favorite learning Styles of the study group according to Felder & Soloman Model; 2- investigate, according to Felder & Soloman Model, if there are any statistically significant differences of favorite learning style due to gender variable; 3- find out the synthetic thinking of the participants; 4-to find out if there are any statistically significant differences among participants in terms of their synthetic thinking according to gender variable; 5- investigate if there are any statistically significant differences in terms of learning styles of synthetic thinking and in Felder & Soloman model according to gender variable; 6-investigate the differences in relation to learning styles in synthetic thinking and in Felder & Soloman model according to (gender and college) variables. The participants were selected purposefully and they were composed of 275 MA students (86 males from colleges of education and sciences and 189 females from colleges of education and sciences) in the colleges of education and department of chemistry in all colleges of sciences. The researchers have made a measure for styles of learning according to Felder & Soloman model consisted of 36 items distributed on five dipole styles and test of synthetic thinking consists of 12 essay questions distributed in 6 skills. The psychometric characteristics were affirmed by face validity and validity by internal consistency. The SPSS program was used The results have revealed that 1-The research sample subjects used (serial, optical, sensual, meditation, active, intuitional, spelling, and finally total style).as the styles (optical, sensual, serial) comes at first degree and the other (intuitional, spelling and title) were not indication and came in hypothetical. 2-Not all the styles are influenced by gender and college variables and interaction between college variables for chemistry departments. 3-Weak synthetic thinking in MA students in colleges of education and colleges of science for chemistry departments. 4-Synthetical thinking is influenced by gender variables in favor of males because their average 5,1628 is bigger than females average 3.1746. Also synthetic thinking is not influenced by college variables and the interaction between gender and college. 5-There is positive extreme indication relation between styles of learning according to Felder & Soloman model on synthetic thinking in institutional and (optical) indicated for males’ favor, (meditation) for education, serial in favor of sciences.