The Influence of Various Learning Styles on Practical Problem-Solving in Chemistry in Scottish Secondary Schools

This thesis is devoted to focussing on the influence of various learning styles and psychological factors on the performance of school pupils in some creative practical problem-solving tasks in chemistry which are called the Mini-Projects at the bench. These projects have been selected for the research as they are believed to be capable of generating and developing a great deal of motivation and involvement in chemistry. 217 Pupils at Standard Grade Chemistry (age 15-16) have participated in the empirical part of this research and have been selected from five secondary schools in the Central Region of Scotland. During the period of the study, the sample of pupils was subjected to some psychological tests in order to assign their Field-Dependent/Field-Independent and Convergent/Divergent learning styles as well as their Motivational Patterns or Preferences. It was found throughout the research that the most effective combination of learning styles which has emerged from the interacting picture of all the psychological factors used in the research, are those of field-independent/divergent/curious-achiever styles in performing practical problem-solving in chemistry (pupil-centred) such as the mini-projects. On the other hand, the combination of field-dependent/convergent/ conscientious-social styles could lessen achievement in the mini-projects. Moreover, when the mean scores were calculated for the various groups of pupils with various learning styles, the curious groups were found to be the best while the conscientious groups were found to be the worst. All these findings have been combined to form a model which emerges at the end of the present thesis. The findings demonstrate that the field-dependent/field-independent factor is the most effective in influencing performance in the mini-projects, the motivation factor is second and finally the convergent/divergent factor takes the third position