The purposes of this study were 1) to determine the field dependence/independence preference (FD/FI) of selected master's students and their choice of academic discipline, 2) to determine the FD/FI of selected master's students and their areas of specialization within their discipline (kinesiology, health promotion, recreation), 3) to determine the relationship between FD/FI and GRE scores, and 4) to determine the relationship between FD/FI and cumulative GPA. The Witkin Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT) was used to test for FD/FI.

The purpose of this study is to identify what detail design tools are more productive for the different types of professional software developers. By establishing a match between the detail design tool and the cognitive style of the professional programmer, the end product (Information Systems) should be of a higher quality. Two laboratory experiments were conducted. The first experiment was with professional Software Developers; the second one was with students. The dependant variables considered in this study were the number of semantic errors and the time required to complete a design task for conditional logic. The independent variables were the cognitive style of the subject, the complexity of the task, and the detail design tools. Decision trees, flowcharts and pseudocode were used as detailed design tools. Field dependence was the only dimension of cognitive style that was tested.

Historically, Native American students have not achieved academic success; ethnic and racial stereotypes are common explanations for the problem. Many perceive the Native American student to be lacking either academic preparation or socio-cultural support for success. A review of the literature showed emerging research which indicates that significant differences can be shown between the learning styles of Native American students and their non-Native counterparts. It has been claimed that these differences may account for some of the differences in academic achievement. The purpose of this study was an attempt to document more thoroughly the differences between the learning styles of Native American and non-Native university students, employing the Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT). The GEFT measures degree of field sensitivity, a measure of the degree to which an individual is affected by the surrounding environment or situation within which learning is to take place. It has been postulated that Native American children tend to be reared in a culture which promotes field dependent learning styles. Conversely, children reared in families promoting strong individual identity tend to be more field independent. The results of administering the GEFT to a group of Native American university students and to a comparison group of non-Native students supported the theory. A numerical difference of 2.1, on a scale of 1 to 18, was found between the mean scores of the two study groups with the Native American students scoring in the more field dependent domain. The mean score for the Native American student study group was 9.7, while that for the comparison group was 11.8. In addition to ethnic differences, the data from this study showed differences from previously established norms both by age and gender. Based on the results of this study, educators may be urged to consider the style in which a student learns before categorizing him or her as academically deficient. Further study of learning styles of Native American students and concommitantly of teaching styles which are best suited to Native American students is recommended. / Graduation date: 1991

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 371-389).

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Teachers College, Columbia University, 1996. / Includes tables. Typescript; issued also on microfilm. Sponsor: Leah Blumberg Lapidus. Dissertation Committee: Harold F. Abeles. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 98-113).

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This study was designed to examine whether a person's prepositioned cognitive style influenced learning achievement in a visually-oriented task for an online learning environment in higher education. Field dependence-independence was used to identify individuals' cognitive styles. A true experimental study was conducted in the fall 2005 term at the University of Central Florida. This researcher followed Dwyer and Moore's research (1991, 2002) and divided learners into three groups (field dependent [FD], field neutral [FN], and the field independent [FI] students). Eighty-three preservice teachers participated in this study; the data from 52 of the FD and the FI participants were analyzed to answer research questions. The findings in this study supported those in the literature review; students from both FD and FI cognitive styles performed equally well in online learning environments. In addition, for providing introductory-level instruction on visually-oriented tasks in an online learning environment, instructions which emphasized an FD approach benefited both FI and FD students in their knowledge-based learning achievement. In this approach, extra cues and sequence of content might have been the reasons that students had higher scores on their knowledge-based learning achievement and satisfaction levels. The findings of this study also indicated that students could demonstrate higher performance-based learning achievement if they had more experiences on the subject matter and higher knowledge-based learning achievement if they felt the instructions were easy to follow and the workload of the module was manageable. Based on the findings and conclusions, the recommendations are: (1) A larger sample size is needed to generalize the findings of the study; (2) In this study, student-to-student and teacher-to-student interactions might affect students' learning achievement. Future studies should consider those interactions as factors and examine their effect on students' learning achievement.

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