Intellectual styles and their influence on university success among students with and without hearing impairment

Abstract

There are three controversial issues in the field of intellectual styles: whether or not certain relationships exist among different style constructs (style overlap); whether or not styles are value-laden; and whether or not styles could change. The present research mainly aimed at further addressing these three controversial issues respectively by: 1) exploring the relationships between two style constructs (field dependent-independent styles and thinking styles); 2) investigating the influence of intellectual styles on quality of university life and university self-efficacy; and 3) examining how personal factors (ability and conceptions of learning) and university experiences impacted intellectual styles among university students with and without hearing impairment from art and design academic disciplines. The present research adopted quantitatively-driven mixed methods, including a pilot study, a main study with a test at Time 1 and a test at Time 2with the duration of one academic-year, and a qualitative study. The pilot study validated all the inventories among 213 students with hearing impairment and 274 students without hearing impairment. The main study examined the interrelationships among the six main research variables and how personal factors impacted intellectual styles among 256students with hearing impairment and 286students without hearing impairment. Based on results of the main study, 36 participants (16 with hearing impairment and 20 without hearing impairment) were selected for the follow-up semi-structured interviews which explored how university experiences influenced intellectual styles, partially verified quantitative findings regarding style changes, and explained some unexpected results in the main study. Results of the main study generally supported the research hypotheses. To be specific, for all the participants, results of the present research showed that: 1) thinking styles overlapped field dependent-independent styles; 2) Type II intellectual styles tended to be positively related to quality of university life in the first academic year, while Type I intellectual styles tended to be positively related to quality of university life in the second academic year; and 3) students with Type I intellectual styles tended to have higher levels of university self-efficacy, while those with Type II intellectual styles tended to have lower levels of university self-efficacy. These findings suggested that intellectual styles overlap with each other, and that intellectual styles are value-laden. It was also identified that, after studying art and design courses for one academic year, students without hearing impairment tended to score higher on Type I intellectual styles and lower on Type II intellectual styles, while students with hearing impairment tended to score higher on both Type I and Type II intellectual styles. For all the participants, both personal factors (ability and conceptions of learning) and university experiences significantly influenced their intellectual styles. These results indicated that intellectual styles are malleable. Apart from these, intellectual styles were found to mediate the relationships between personal factors and student developmental outcomes among all the participants. Discussions focus on contributions of the research findings to the styles literature and on the implications of the findings for higher education of student with and without hearing impairment. Recommendations for future studies are also made.