Modeling the causal relationships between the thinking Styles and learning Approaches and the Academic Achievement among sample of education and Arts Students at King Faisal University

Abstract

The paper aims to identify the preferred styles of thinking to students of the faculties of Education and Arts at King Faisal University and to identify their learning styles at the two colleges, as well as to model the causal relationships between the thinking styles and the deep or surface style of learning among the population of the study. To achieve this, the thinking styles inventory of Sternberg and Wagner (1992), translated by Abu Hashim (2008), and the questionnaire of learning styles were applied by the researcher after verifying their psychometric characteristics on a sample of (123) male students. The results show that the most preferred thinking styles of education to students were (Legislative - Minor - Royal - Hierarchy - External - Judiciary - Executive - Local - Liberal - Conservative - Internal - World - Anarchist) but for arts students the result was (Legislative - Hierarchy -  Executive -Externally - Royal - Judiciary - Liberal - Local - Minor - Internal - Conservative – World respectively). There were statistically significant differences between the average scores of students of the  two colleges in the minor style only inclining to education The percentage of those who prefer the deep approach among sample students was 73.2%, those who prefer the surface approach 26.8%, and the surface approach was significantly positive correlated with the styles (Judiciary - Hierarchy -liberal), while the deep approach was significantly positive correlated with the styles (Hierarchy - Anarchist -liberal) and the correlation coefficient between achievement and the minor style enabled to deduce the following regression equation:

Achievement = 19.1+ (0.115) Minor style