The influence of a psychological and a cognitive component of a student's thinking style on his/her success in lifelong learning

Introduction. Contemporary lecturers should be able to teach a lot of students with different abilities, needs, interests, cultures, backgrounds, approaches to learning, stresses, sometimes with the lack of motivation, self-confidence, persistence, limited perceptional abilities and uncertainty of their future life. Each lecturer has to understand her/his teaching style and accommodate it to their students' learning styles. Methods. The method of the research is the theoretical analysis of scientific literature on the given problem. Learning, psychological and cognitive components of students' thinking styles are examined. Results. The essence of thinking style, the cognitive types, eight psychological types' preferences and appropriate learning strategies are explored. The authors conclude that effective teaching includes the following steps: assessing the developmental needs of students; developing a comprehensive, effective learning program based upon the needs assessment; assessing the individual thinking styles of students and lecturers; planning lecturers' interventions that are compatible with the learning styles needed by students; evaluating teaching outcomes to determine the extent in which program and teaching objectives have been achieved. Discussion. The authors support the point of view of DeBello that most students are capable of analyzing their own thinking style, which gives them a chance of choice and responsibility for their own learning. Conclusion. The more we know our students, their thinking styles in general and the psychological and cognitive components in particular, along with their goals and needs, the more successful the students will be in their life-long and life-wide learning. © 2017