Does teaching for a balanced use of thinking styles enhance students’ achievement?

Teaching for a balanced use of thinking styles involves instructing and assessing students using a variety of teaching styles, rather than just a single style. This article describes two experimental studies that test if teaching for a balanced use of thinking styles enhances students’ achievement. Participants were students and teachers from a comprehensive university of Shanghai, the People’s Republic of China. The first study involved 95 students majoring in computer sciences and two teachers, and the second, 85 students majoring in economics and business administration and two teachers. In each of the studies, students were taught a special topic in a 45-min session and took an achievement test. Each test paper was evaluated by two teachers. Students also responded to a self-report test of thinking styles and to two ability inventories. Support for the superiority of teaching for a balanced use of thinking styles was found in Study One, but not in Study Two.