ENVIRONMENTAL ADAPTATION AND COGNITIVE STYLES OF LEARNERS: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE ENHANCEMENT OF LEARNING AMONGST EARLY ADOLESCENTS
Abstract
The study, which consisted of five chapters, sought to determine the consequences for early adolescents' academic learning processes by examining the relationship between students' cognitive styles and their eco-cultural orientation. Cognitive perceptual styles included the use of categorization as a cognitive process. An observed imbalance between students' eco-cultural perceptual styles and the western academic learning methods that are usually promoted by schools served as the impetus for the investigation. The study had a clear goal in mind: to determine how students' cognitive styles were affected by their environment and how this affected the academic learning process. This goal was driven by Witkin's differentiation of cognitive styles into Field Dependence (FD) and Field Independence (FI). Adopting a contemporaneous nested research design, the.
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