Abstract—Due to the rapid development of the Internet and information technology, schools of all levels around the world pay special attention to the talent cultivation in the field of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). In STEM education, the cultivation of knowledge and skills plays an important part, and teamwork and problem-solving abilities are critical soft skills for the future talent.
In teaching practice, individual differences have long been a critical issue and an important reference indicator for adaptive teaching. This study adopted a hidden figure test to investigate the difference in learning outcome and activeness among learners with different cognitive styles in the STEM collaborative learning activities. The hidden figure test based on the theory of field-dependent and field-independent cognitive styles, proposed by Witkin (1962), was originally developed by Messick (1746) and adapted by Wu (1974).
Index Terms—Cognitive style, collaborative problem solving, STEM, simulation learning, field independence.
The authors are with the Chinese Culture University, Taipei, Taiwan (e-mail: sklu@sce.pccu.edu.tw).
Cite: Hsin-Ke Lu and Peng-Chun Lin, "A Study on the Effect of Cognitive Style in the Field of STEM on Collaborative Learning Outcome," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 194-198, 2018.