Characterizing Cognitive Styles: James Anderson

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Characterizing Cognitive StylesJames Anderson
Cognitive style and multicultural populations.
Journal of Teacher Education, 39, 1, 2-9
Field-Dependent, Relational/Holistic, Affective
Field-Independent, Analytic, Non-Affective

• Perceive elements as discrete from their
  background
• Do best on analytic tasks
• Learn material that is inanimate and impersonal
  more easily
• Performance not greatly affected by opinions of
  others
• Style matches up with most school environments

• Perceive elements as a part of a total picture
• Do best on verbal tasks
• Learn material which has social/human content
• Performance influenced by authorizing figures
  confidence or doubt
• Style conflicts with traditional school
  environment

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Populations Exhibiting These Cognitive Styles
James Anderson
Cognitive style and multicultural populations.
Journal of Teacher Education, 39, 1, 2-9
Field-Dependent, Relational/Holistic, Affective
Field-Independent, Analytic, Non-Affective

• Euro-Americans (primarily, males)
• Minorities with high degree of acculturation

• American-Indians
• Mexican-Americans
• African-Americans
• Vietnamese-Americans
• Puerto Rican-Americans
• Chinese-Americans
• Japanese-Americans
• Many Euro-American females

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Characterizing Cognitive StylesSherry Turkle
and Seymour Papert
Epistemological pluralism styles and voices
within the computer culture. SignsJournal of
Women in Culture and Society, 16, 1, 128-157 1990.
Concrete/Bricolage (Levi-Strauss)
Canonical/Formal

• Enjoy working with information in context
  (conceptual framework)
• Like to arrange and rearrange well-known
  materials to form theories
• Prefer to have relationship with or understanding
  of subjects of inquiry
• Often need to visualize information
• Prefer to collaborate

• Enjoy manipulating abstract symbols
• Develop theories by manipulating symbols based-on
  a set of predefined rules
• Prefer to study material separate from self
• Do not need to visualize information
• Enjoy working alone

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How Women Practice ScienceSue RosserWomens Way
of Knowing
Female Friendly Science Applying Womens Studies
Methods and Theories to Attract Students. By Sue
Rosser, Pergamon Press.
Womens Ways of Knowing, By Mary Field Belenkey,
Blythe McVicker Clinchy, Nancy Rule Goldberger,
and Jill Mattuck Tarule.

• Use of precise gender neutral language to
  describe data and theories.
• Critique of observations, conclusions drawn, and
  theories generated differing from those drawn by
  the traditional scientist from the same
  observations.
• Awareness of other biases such as those of race,
  class, sexual preference, and religious
  affiliation which may permeate theories and
  conclusions drawn from experimental observations.
• Development of theories that are relational,
  interdependent, and multicausal rather than
  hierarchical, reductionistic, and dualistic.