Doctor of Philosophy / The main aim of this research is the exploration of relationships and correlations between thinking styles of student designers, their personal aptitudes, and design education. It involves discovering the role/s several groups of learning styles and cognitive abilities may play in problem solving during administered design tasks; and the influence they may have on academic performance and quality of produced design solutions. The main hypothesis is that differences in designers’ individual problem solving strategies and, ultimately, products of their expertise – designed artefacts – can be correlated with the differences in their learning styles and cognitive abilities. We suggest the following. (a) Designers with different styles adopt different approaches to design situations and use different strategies during problem solving. It is possible to find the supporting evidence by investigating their performance on design tasks. (b) Individual differences in design reasoning and problem solving could be correlated with the differences in individual cognitive abilities. (c) It may be possible to find correlations between cognitive styles and cognitive abilities. (d) It is likely that a number of visible or measurable qualities of students’ design drawings, would in some way reflect different characteristics of the above individual styles and abilities. The methodological approach draws on theoretical and empirical knowledge from several domains, including: design studies, psychology, cognitive science and study of creativity. This study is concerned with selecting and substantiating the input – a number of cognitive styles and abilities chosen for evaluation; and their subsequent assessment. It involves administering design sessions and exploring them as a process to see whether and how the above abilities and styles are reflected in problem solving. It also deals with the assessment of the product i.e. produced design solutions, and their relation to the academic performance reports. And, finally, it explores correlations between the input, the process and the product to help finding explanations for the students’ preferences in adopting particular problem solving strategies in designing. This study is based upon the analysis of six major datasets from (1) an electronic test assessing individual positions on four dimensions (two dichotomies) of learning styles; (2) tests of cognitive abilities chosen on the basis of their relevance to designing; (3) design sessions, administered individually under retrospective protocol guidelines; (4) questionnaires, containing summaries of design sessions, and introspective reports of imagery use and problem-solving styles and strategies; (5) judgements of academic performance from course supervisors based on marks and grades; and (6) assessments of design drawings by professional architects. The analysis revealed fundamentally different ways by which students approach design situations; they are positively correlated with their learning styles. Students’ approaches to problem situations change with the task and within the task. However, eighty percent of the first year and half of the final year subjects showed various degrees of inflexibility in dealing with design problems; this may have decreased the quality of performance. Learning styles proved important in predicting the process and the outcome of problem solving. They may account for moderate to low quality of design solutions in cases with either style (from both dichotomies explored) being of low development. Styles were also observed to may have a moderate to strong influence on the students’ academic performance. Correlations between the measured cognitive abilities and academic performance were moderate to significant for the first year and similar but marginally lower for the final year students. At the same time, final year students scored higher on the ability tests and showed better results on the learning styles assessments. One of the likely reasons for this is the enhancement of abilities and styles during the course of study. No significant linear correlations between preferred learning styles and most of the measured cognitive abilities have been observed. The probable inference is that abilities are among many other factors affecting the development of learning styles. It has been, however, possible to establish a number of important correlations between the measurements of learning styles, cognitive abilities, observed problem solving behaviour, and students’ design solutions. Overall, it has been demonstrated that the applied methodology, although requiring further refinement, does enable examining and elucidating the influence of learning styles and cognitive abilities on design problem solving and academic performance.

<p>Denna studie hade som syfte att undersöka och analysera hur pedagoger arbetar med inlärningsstilar utifrån Dunn & Dunns modell. Data samlades in genom en kvalitativ undersökning i form av intervjuer med tre pedagoger, samt observationer i klassrumssituationer för att få kunskap om hur olika lärstilar fungerar i praktiken. Undersökningen visade att de observerade eleverna jobbade med alla sina sinnen i större eller mindre omfattning. Informanternas definition av inlärningsstilen var att individanpassa undervisningen, att ge eleverna möjlighet att testa sina multisensoriska sinnen, att undervisa från helheten till detaljerna, samt att skapa stimulans genom informell möblering. Informanterna jobbade i enlighet med sin egen definition av modellen, som däremot skiljde sig i förhållande till Dunn & Dunns teorier, genom att inte diagnostisera eleverna och att använda mindre andel av studiematerial. Inlärningsmodellen är ingen fulländad metod för undervisning, utan snarare ett verktyg att använda utifrån varje elevs individuella sätt att lära, i kombination med annan metodik, för att skapa motivation, självkänsla och arbetsglädje.</p>

<p>Elevperspektiv på lärstilsmetodiken. Upplever eleverna att det är lättare att lära i de ämnen som tillämpar lärstilsmetodiken.</p>

<p>Examensarbetet är en studie om inlärningsstilar där även en jämförelse görs med andra sätt att se på inlärningen. I min litteraturgenomgång går jag igenom hur man tidigare såg på inlärning och hur inlärningsstilar ser på inlärningen idag. Jag har valt att begränsa mig till att skriva om de främsta och mest betydande pedagogiska inriktningarna. I avsnittet om inlärningsstilar utgår jag från Dunn och Dunns inlärningsstilsmodell vilken anses vara den mest omfattande och bäst utforskade av alla modeller. Intervjuerna som genomförts tar i första hand upp lärarnas uppfattning om att arbeta med inlärningsstilar i skolan. I diskussionen redovisar jag mitt resultat vilket visar att mycket av det inlärningsstilar förespråkar kan hittas i tidigare pedagogiker eller metoder. Mitt resultat visar att det finns en skillnad i hur stor utsträckning man som lärare mycket man jobbar med inlärningsstilar i de olika åren 1-3 och 4-6.</p>

<p>The school is responsible to make sure that each students´ individual needs are met as well as that the lessons are suitable for all students´ ability. As this is the case it is very interesting to evaluate how this is done in reality. The purpose with the study has been to shed light upon what different methods teachers in various schools use in order to individualize their teach­ings. Are their obvious differences in the way teachers work with individualization and how does this affect the students? The teachers in the different schools provided me with informa­tion on how they work in order to teach, stimulate and motivate well achievers as well as stu­dents who find school more difficult. I also asked if, and to what degree they apply different learning techniques as well as if, and how often they consider various learning styles.</p><p>The phenomenological study is qualitative. Methods used are interviews with the different teachers as well as observations in all four classrooms. The classes were each observed for a full day and after time spent in the classroom teachers involved that particular day was inter­viewed.</p><p>The results showed that the teachers work in many different ways in order to individualize their teaching. It was also clear that there were differences on the classrooms physical shape as well as material and books. There were also differences in class sizes and the amount of teachers in the classrooms – which surely affected the situations. A conclusion of the study is that two main methods of individualization were noted. One method used by one group of teachers was to let all students work on the same problems but to their own ability. The other group of teachers used and offered, to a larger extent, different and various materials to their students in order to meet the child at its level of scholastic development and ability.</p>

Examensarbetet är en studie om inlärningsstilar där även en jämförelse görs med andra sätt att se på inlärningen. I min litteraturgenomgång går jag igenom hur man tidigare såg på inlärning och hur inlärningsstilar ser på inlärningen idag. Jag har valt att begränsa mig till att skriva om de främsta och mest betydande pedagogiska inriktningarna. I avsnittet om inlärningsstilar utgår jag från Dunn och Dunns inlärningsstilsmodell vilken anses vara den mest omfattande och bäst utforskade av alla modeller. Intervjuerna som genomförts tar i första hand upp lärarnas uppfattning om att arbeta med inlärningsstilar i skolan. I diskussionen redovisar jag mitt resultat vilket visar att mycket av det inlärningsstilar förespråkar kan hittas i tidigare pedagogiker eller metoder. Mitt resultat visar att det finns en skillnad i hur stor utsträckning man som lärare mycket man jobbar med inlärningsstilar i de olika åren 1-3 och 4-6.

<p>The study attempts to understand how distance education practices influence the learning of calculus. Understanding student learning in a distance education environment is an important factor to consider in improving the learning experiences of students who for one reason or the other opt not to study in conventional institutional of higher education. On one hand, understanding student learning may illuminate the influences that the learning environment has on student learning and on the other hand, it may inform on how learning experiences can be improved. The aim of this study is to acquire a deeper understanding of the diverse manner in which distance students learn calculus, Specific focus is also placed on the distance education contect of the Zimbabwe Open University (ZOU) influences student learning. The study describes a group of student's experiences of learning calculus in the ZOU distance education environment.</p>

Denna studie hade som syfte att undersöka och analysera hur pedagoger arbetar med inlärningsstilar utifrån Dunn &amp; Dunns modell. Data samlades in genom en kvalitativ undersökning i form av intervjuer med tre pedagoger, samt observationer i klassrumssituationer för att få kunskap om hur olika lärstilar fungerar i praktiken. Undersökningen visade att de observerade eleverna jobbade med alla sina sinnen i större eller mindre omfattning. Informanternas definition av inlärningsstilen var att individanpassa undervisningen, att ge eleverna möjlighet att testa sina multisensoriska sinnen, att undervisa från helheten till detaljerna, samt att skapa stimulans genom informell möblering. Informanterna jobbade i enlighet med sin egen definition av modellen, som däremot skiljde sig i förhållande till Dunn &amp; Dunns teorier, genom att inte diagnostisera eleverna och att använda mindre andel av studiematerial. Inlärningsmodellen är ingen fulländad metod för undervisning, utan snarare ett verktyg att använda utifrån varje elevs individuella sätt att lära, i kombination med annan metodik, för att skapa motivation, självkänsla och arbetsglädje.

Elevperspektiv på lärstilsmetodiken. Upplever eleverna att det är lättare att lära i de ämnen som tillämpar lärstilsmetodiken.

The school is responsible to make sure that each students´ individual needs are met as well as that the lessons are suitable for all students´ ability. As this is the case it is very interesting to evaluate how this is done in reality. The purpose with the study has been to shed light upon what different methods teachers in various schools use in order to individualize their teach­ings. Are their obvious differences in the way teachers work with individualization and how does this affect the students? The teachers in the different schools provided me with informa­tion on how they work in order to teach, stimulate and motivate well achievers as well as stu­dents who find school more difficult. I also asked if, and to what degree they apply different learning techniques as well as if, and how often they consider various learning styles. The phenomenological study is qualitative. Methods used are interviews with the different teachers as well as observations in all four classrooms. The classes were each observed for a full day and after time spent in the classroom teachers involved that particular day was inter­viewed. The results showed that the teachers work in many different ways in order to individualize their teaching. It was also clear that there were differences on the classrooms physical shape as well as material and books. There were also differences in class sizes and the amount of teachers in the classrooms – which surely affected the situations. A conclusion of the study is that two main methods of individualization were noted. One method used by one group of teachers was to let all students work on the same problems but to their own ability. The other group of teachers used and offered, to a larger extent, different and various materials to their students in order to meet the child at its level of scholastic development and ability.