Teachers' Styles of Thinking: An Exploratory Study

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Teachers' Styles of Thinking: AnExploratory StudyLi-Fang Zhang aa University of Hong KongPublished online: 07 Aug 2010.

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Teachers’ Styles of Thinking:An Exploratory Study

LI-FANG ZHANGUniversity of Hong Kong

ABSTRACT. The primary objective of this study was to explore whether teachers’ teach-ing styles were consistent with their thinking styles. Participants were 194 (85 male, 109 female) high school and university teachers from Shanghai, China, who responded to the Thinking Styles Inventory-Revised (R. J. Sternberg, R. K. Wagner, & L. F. Zhang, 2003) and the Thinking Styles in Teaching Inventory (E. L. Grigorenko & R. J. Sternberg, 1993). Results suggest that after the author controlled participants’ age, gender, length of teach-ing experience, school level, academic discipline, and average class size taught, teachers’ teaching styles were statistically predictable from their thinking styles. The author con-cluded that thinking and teaching styles are related but different constructs. The author discusses implications for teachers and administrators.

Keywords: teachers, teaching styles, thinking styles

INTELLECTUAL STYLES, an encompassing term for constructs such as cog-nitive styles, learning styles, and thinking styles, refers to people’s preferred ways of using their intellectual abilities (Zhang & Sternberg, 2005, 2006). For more than half a century, scholars have been examining the roles of intellectual styles in human behaviors and performance in both academic and nonacademic settings. As an individual-difference variable, intellectual styles have also been investigated extensively among teachers. Some researchers have focused on the relations of teachers’ intellectual styles to their instructional behaviors (e.g., Mahlios, 1981a, 1989; Saracho, 1989), expectations of students (Saracho, 1991), and occupational stress (Borg & Riding, 1993), whereas other researchers have focused on the relations of teachers’ intellectual styles to student achievement (Riding & Douglas, 1993; Saracho, 1991; Tymms & Gallacher, 1995) and stu-dent socialization (e.g., Webb, 1988). Still other researchers have focused on the relation of the match or mismatch between teachers’ and students’ intellectual

This project was supported by the Committee on Research and Conference Grants, Uni-versity of Hong Kong. The author thanks all teachers who participated in the study. Address correspondence to Dr. Li-fang Zhang, Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, China; [email protected] (e-mail).

The Journal of Psychology, 2008, 142(1), 37–55Copyright © 2008 Heldref Publications

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styles to student achievement (e.g., Allinson, Hayes, & Davis, 1994; Garlinger & Frank, 1986; Saracho, 1991) and patterns of classroom interactions between teachers and students (e.g., Mahlios, 1981b, 1981c). Some early studies also have emphasized the relation between teacher–student style match or mismatch and the teachers’ and students’ attitudes toward each other (e.g., DiStefano, 1970; James, 1973; Packer & Bain, 1978; Renninger & Snyder, 1983).

The majority of these researchers have found that teachers’ intellectual styles and the match or mismatch of teachers’ and students’ intellectual styles make a difference in teaching and learning in schools. For example, in an investigation of the effects of second- and fifth-grade teachers’ cognitive styles on their stu-dents’ academic achievement, Saracho (1991) found that students taught by field- independent teachers (i.e., teachers who tend to focus on cognitive restructuring) obtained significantly higher achievement gains on the Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills than did students taught by field-dependent teachers (i.e., teachers who tend to focus on the social aspect of teaching and learning). In the same study, Saracho discovered that field-independent teachers had higher expecta-tions for students than did field-dependent teachers. In studying the relation between cognitive styles and teaching practices of elementary teachers, Mahlios (1981a) observed that field-independent teachers initiated a significantly greater number of academic interactions with their students as a whole class and that field-dependent teachers tended to interact with their students individually or in small groups. When investigating the effects of cognitive styles on perceived satisfaction and performance among students and teachers, Renninger and Snyder (1983) found that students expressed significantly more satisfaction and perceived their teachers’ teaching as more effective if the students’ cognitive styles matched those of their teachers. Koppelman (1980) concluded that field-dependent teachers asked significantly fewer reason-seeking questions than did field-independent teachers.

There are two main problems with the existing studies. First, all teaching behaviors examined have been specific instructional behaviors (e.g., number of academic interactions, types of questions asked). What is lacking is an under-standing of the influence of teachers’ intellectual styles on their general teaching styles, styles that can be measured by a reliable, valid, and theory-based inven-tory. Second, most of these researchers have used Witkin’s (1962) idea of field dependence–independence (i.e., the extent to which people are dependent or independent of the organization of the surrounding perceptual field) as a theoreti-cal foundation. Although researchers should not underestimate the contribution of these studies to understanding the relation of teachers’ and students’ intellec-tual styles to teaching and learning, researchers should also see three problems in continuing to conduct research by using traditional theories of styles such as field dependence–independence theory. First, Witkin’s (1962) theory is more than four decades old and has not fared well in discriminant validation studies (e.g., Roach, 1985), suggesting that field independence is essentially identical

38 The Journal of Psychology

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to spatial ability. Second, the theory addresses only one dimension of cognitive styles, for which scores are dichotomized. Third, the theory has no straightfor-ward application to the teaching–learning process. Researchers need to study teachers’ intellectual styles by using a theory that is relatively general.

Theory of Mental Self-Government and Related Research

In 1988, researchers saw the publication of a more general theory of intellectual styles: Sternberg’s theory of mental self-government, which describes people’s think-ing styles (see also Sternberg, 1997). For two reasons, the thinking-style construct is a broad intellectual-style construct (Sternberg, 1988). First, the thinking-style construct can serve as a wide-angle lens that captures the three traditions in the study of intellectual styles: cognition-centered, personality-centered, and activity-centered traditions. Second, the theory is applicable to both academic and nonacademic set-tings (Grigorenko & Sternberg, 1995).

Using the word government metaphorically, Sternberg (1988, 1997) argued that as there are different ways in which people govern society, there are different ways in which people use their abilities. The preferred ways of using one’s abilities are thinking styles. According to Sternberg (1988, 1997), 13 thinking styles exist and can be classified into five dimensions: (a) functions (including legislative, executive, and judicial styles), (b) forms (hierarchical, monarchic, oligarchic, and anarchic styles), (c) levels (global and local styles), (d) scopes (internal and exter-nal styles), and (e) leanings (liberal and conservative styles). The characteristics of each of the 13 styles have been described in many previous studies (e.g., Zhang, 1999, 2004a). These 13 styles have been reconceptualized into 3 types of styles on the basis of empirical data (e.g., Zhang, 2004a; Zhang & Sternberg, 2005, 2006). In the present article, I introduce the three types of styles.

Type I thinking styles tend to be creativity generating and denote higher levels of cognitive complexity, including the legislative (being creative), judicial (evaluating other people or products), hierarchical (prioritizing one’s tasks), global (focusing on the holistic picture), and liberal (taking a new approach to tasks) styles. Type II thinking styles have a norm-favoring tendency and denote lower levels of cognitive complexity, including the executive (implementing tasks with given orders), local (focusing on details), monarchic (working on one task at a time), and conservative (using traditional approaches to tasks) styles. Type III thinking styles comprise the anarchic (working on whatever tasks come along), oligarchic (working on multiple tasks with no priority), internal (working alone), and external (working with others) styles. These styles may manifest the characteristics of the styles of both Type I and Type II, depending on the stylistic demand of a specific task. For example, one could use the anarchic style in a sophisticated way (characteristic of Type I styles), such as dealing with differ-ent tasks as they arise without losing sight of the central issue. In contrast, one instead could use the anarchic style in a more simpleminded way (characteristic

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of Type II styles), such as dealing with tasks as they come along without knowing how each task contributes to the ultimate goal.

Much empirical evidence has supported the validity of the theory of mental self-government in both academic (e.g., Kaufman, 2001; Verma, 2001; Zhang & Sternberg, 2002) and nonacademic settings (e.g., Hommerding, 2003; Zhang, 2005). The two most frequently used inventories, the Thinking Styles Inventory (TSI; Sternberg & Wagner, 1992) and the Thinking Styles in Teaching Inventory (TSTI; Grigorenko & Sternberg, 1993), have proven to be reliable and valid. The TSI has been revised to become the Thinking Styles Inventory-Revised (TSI-R; Sternberg, Wagner, & Zhang, 2003). This revision has resulted in improvement in internal scale reliability for the monarchic and local thinking style scales. To date, only four studies have used the TSI-R (Zhang, 2004a, 2004b, 2005; Zhang & Higgins, in press).

Similarly, among the existing studies based on the theory of mental self-government, only three studies are related to teachers’ thinking styles as mani-fested in teaching (i.e., teaching styles) measured by the TSTI. A first study (Zhang, 2001) suggested that teachers’ teaching approaches (i.e., student-cen-tered or teacher-centered) were related to their teaching styles. A second study (Zhang & Sternberg, 2002) revealed that teacher characteristics (including age, gender, and perceptions of teaching environment) affected their teaching styles. The third study (Zhang, 2006) showed that the impact of student–teacher style match on students’ academic achievement varied as a function of academic discipline and students’ self-rated ability levels.

The Present Study

In this study, I explored whether teachers teach in styles that are consistent with their thinking styles. In theory, the answer should be affirmative, because people’s behaviors (in this case, teaching styles) should be affected by their cogni-tion (in this case, thinking styles). However, this question remains: To what extent do teachers’ thinking styles contribute to their teaching styles? Empirically answer-ing this question is important because findings about the predictive relations of teachers’ thinking styles to how they perform their educational tasks (i.e., teaching styles) can be useful at both conceptual and practical levels. Conceptually, such findings can facilitate a better understanding of the nature of intellectual styles, thus enriching the growing body of knowledge in the field. At the practical level, such findings may have implications for teachers and administrators.

For two reasons, I conducted this research among high school and univer-sity teachers in Shanghai, China. First, testing the styles of thinking and teaching among mainland Chinese teachers was not the focus in any of the previous stud-ies. It is important to understand Chinese teachers’ styles of thinking and teaching because China has the largest educational system in the world (University of Penn-sylvania Graduate School of Education, 2007), which includes a massive teacher


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and academic workforce. Second, I hoped that the inclusion of both high school and university teachers would enhance the generalizability of the findings.

Moreover, in exploring the relations between teachers’ thinking and teaching styles, I took into account teachers’ age, gender, length of teaching experience, the academic discipline and level of institutions (high school and university) in which they taught, and the typical class sizes they taught. The main reason for taking these teacher characteristics into account is that these characteristics have been found to affect both thinking and teaching styles (Zhang & Sternberg, 2006). Therefore, it is necessary to statistically control these characteristics when testing the relations between thinking and teaching styles.

I measured teachers’ thinking and teaching styles by using inventories based on the theory of mental self-government. The styles involved in the study were only Type I and Type II styles because the TSTI was designed to assess only Type I and Type II teaching styles. I did not examine Type III styles for one major rea-son: This study is an initial exploration of the relations between teachers’ think-ing styles and teaching styles. As such, it is desirable to focus on testing the two types of styles (Types I and II styles) that have distinct characteristics rather than to include Type III styles, whose characteristics are very task dependent.

I predicted that teachers’ teaching styles would be consistent with their thinking styles; that is, teachers whose thinking styles were predominantly Type I (i.e., creativity generating) would also tend to demonstrate teaching behaviors that are Type I (i.e., Type I teaching styles). Complementarily, teachers whose thinking styles were predominantly Type II (i.e., norm conforming) would also tend to teach in Type II styles.

Three points regarding my predictions are worth noting. First, in the context of this study, teaching behaviors are embodied by teaching styles. Teaching styles can be considered one type of teaching behaviors because the TSTI assesses how teachers respond to specific teaching situations. As such, the teaching styles revealed through the test represent consistent patterns of teaching behaviors.

Second, I made the predictions at the style-type level, not the individual-style level. The idea of style type was a result of the summary of empirical findings (e.g., Zhang, 2004a; Zhang & Sternberg, 2005, 2006) indicating that the indi-vidual styles within each type are highly correlated. Consequently, the individual styles within the same style type would tend to predict the same type of teaching styles. Thus, it makes more sense to make a straightforward prediction based on style types than to make redundant predictions based on each individual style.

Third, my predictions were based on Lewin’s (1936) classical idea (and its evolvement; e.g., Bronfenbrenner, 2005) about the formation of human behavior, as represented by the formula B = f(P × E). That is, behavior (B) is a function (f) of the interaction between people (P; i.e., personal characteristics) and their envi-ronment (E; e.g., environmental characteristics). In the present study, behavior is represented by teaching styles; personal characteristics are represented by teachers’ thinking styles, age, and gender; and environmental characteristics are represented

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by length of teaching experience, school level taught, academic discipline taught, and average class size taught. Given that teaching styles and thinking styles are dif-ferent parts of the equation, I predicted that the two constructs would have a predic-tive relation when researchers take into account other variables in the equation.

Method

Participants

I collected data from a convenience sample of 194 (85 male, 109 female) teachers serving in four different educational institutions—two high schools (n = 96) and two universities (n = 98)—in Shanghai, China. The high schools are recognized as two of the best high schools in Shanghai, whereas the two universities are representative of large public universities in mainland China. The high school teachers’ ages ranged from 23–58 years (M = 34, SD = 8.67, Mdn = 33). The university teachers’ ages ranged from 25–60 years (M = 41, SD = 8.94, Mdn = 40). The length of the high school teachers’ teaching experience ranged from 1–36 years (M = 11, SD = 8.29, Mdn = 10). The length of the university teachers’ teaching experience ranged from 1–40 years (M = 16, SD = 8.94, Mdn = 15). Among the high school teachers, 73 taught courses in social sciences and humanities (e.g., arts, Chinese or English language, history, political science), and 23 taught courses in natural sciences (e.g., biology, chemistry, life science, physics). Among the university teachers, 80 taught courses in social sciences and humanities (e.g., education, English, history, literature, political science, psy-chology), and 18 taught courses in natural sciences (e.g., biochemistry, engineer-ing, mathematics, physics). The class sizes taught by the high school teachers varied from 25–100 students (Mdn = 45 students), and the class sizes taught by the university teachers ranged from 20–130 students (Mdn = 50 students).

Procedure

A trained research assistant collected data over a 1-week period. The high school participants were recruited through the two high school principals, and the university participants were recruited through the heads of participating departments in the two universities. The questionnaires were distributed to teachers at the end of their staff meetings. Teachers were told about the general purpose of the research and informed that participation in the research was voluntary. All teachers in the relevant organiza-tions agreed to participate in the investigation, and all questionnaires distributed were completed and collected immediately. Nonetheless, the study used a convenience sample for two reasons. First, the participating organizations happened to hold their staff meetings during the week of the survey. Second, the teacher participants were individuals who happened to attend the staff meetings. Normally such staff meetings are mandatory; few teachers could be absent from such meetings.


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Measures

Participants provided basic demographic information (e.g., age, gender, sub-ject taught, length of work experience, average class size they taught). They also responded to two measures based on the theory of mental self-government: the TSI-R (Sternberg et al., 2003) and the TSTI (Grigorenko & Sternberg, 1993).

TSI-R. The TSI-R is a revised version of the TSI (Sternberg & Wagner, 1992). This 65-item inventory contains 13 scales, each corresponding to a thinking style in Sternberg’s (1988, 1997) theory. Each scale is composed of 5 items. Each item is a statement that allows respondents to rate themselves on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (not at all well) to 7 (extremely well) describing the way they normally carry out their tasks. In the present study, the seven scales were the four Type I styles and the three Type II styles (see the Appendix for sample statements). As noted earlier in this article, the reason for using only 7 of the 13 styles was that the TSTI is designed to measure those 7 styles.

TSTI. The TSTI is a 49-item self-report questionnaire in which respondents rate themselves on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (not at all well) to 7 (extremely well) describing the way they normally carry out their tasks. The inventory was designed to assess seven teaching styles (four Type I styles and three Type II styles). Each group of seven items constitutes one teaching style scale. The Appendix shows examples of items from the TSTI.

Translation. In the present study, both the TSI-R and the TSTI were administered in Chinese. The Chinese version of the TSI-R is the result of a five-step transla-tion and back-translation procedure. The initial English version of the TSI was translated into Chinese by a graduate student (whose first language was Chinese) majoring in psychology (Step 1) and refined by myself (Step 2). Then the Chinese inventory was translated back into English by a second graduate student (whose native language was Chinese) majoring in English (Step 3). Next, on cross- referencing the original English version with the translated Chinese and back-translated English versions of the inventory, I further refined the Chinese version of the TSI (Step 4). In the TSI-R, I modified seven items in the TSI (Step 5). The Chinese version of the TSI-R has been validated in the Chinese context in several studies (Zhang, 2004a, 2004b, 2005) and has resulted in reliability and validity data that is comparable to those obtained in the United States (Grigorenko & Sternberg, 1997; Sternberg & Grigorenko, 1995).

The Chinese version of the TSTI is the result of a four-step translation and back-translation procedure. I used the first four steps described for the TSI-R to establish the Chinese version of the TSTI. Step 5 did not apply because there was no need for further modifying any of the items in the TSTI. The Chinese ver-sion of TSTI has been used in several studies conducted in the Chinese context

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(Zhang, 2001, 2006; Zhang & Sternberg, 2002) and has resulted in reliability and validity data that are comparable to those obtained in the United States (Stern-berg & Grigorenko, 1995).

Data Analysis

I estimated internal consistency for the scales in the two inventories by using Cronbach’s alpha. I conducted an exploratory factor analysis separately for the scales in each inventory to examine the validity of the inventories. Then I performed multivariate analyses of variance (MANOVAs) to identify any group differences in thinking styles or teaching styles based on age, gender, length of teaching experience, school level taught, academic discipline taught, and average class size taught. I found statistically significant differences in particular thinking and teaching styles based on all tested variables except age (see Results). Because of these statistically significant differences, except for age, I controlled for all of the aforementioned variables in the remaining analyses.

To explore the relations between teachers’ thinking styles and teaching styles, I computed partial correlation coefficients between the TSTI and TSI-R, controlling for gender (G), length of teaching experience (T), school level taught (S), academic discipline taught (A), and average class size taught (C; referred to collectively as GS-CAT). To investigate whether teachers’ thinking styles statisti-cally predicted their teaching styles, I performed hierarchical (stepwise) multiple regression analyses, with teaching styles as the dependent variables, thinking styles as the independent variables, and GS-CAT as the control variables.

Results

Internal Scale Reliability

The alpha coefficients for the seven TSI-R scales were .81 (legislative), .72 (executive), .72 (judicial), .65 (global), .68 (local), .85 (liberal), and .81 (conser-vative). These alpha coefficients are similar in magnitude to those reported in previous works in which the TSI-R was used (e.g., Zhang, 2004a, 2004b, 2005). The alpha coefficients for the seven TSTI scales were .80 (legislative), .73 (exec-utive), .59 (judicial), .64 (global), .83 (local), .65 (liberal), and .73 (conservative). These alpha coefficients were also similar in magnitude to those reported in other studies (e.g., Zhang, 2001; Zhang & Sternberg, 2002).

Validity

For the TSI-R, an exploratory factor analysis resulted in a two-factor solu-tion, with the first factor representing Type I thinking styles (including legislative, judicial, global, and liberal styles) and the second factor representing Type II


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thinking styles (including executive, local, and conservative styles). The two fac-tors accounted for 68% of the variance in the data (see Table 1).

An exploratory factor analysis of the scales in the TSTI also resulted in a two-factor solution. Type I teaching style scales (including legislative, judicial, global, and liberal styles) loaded on the first factor, whereas Type II teaching style scales (including executive, local, and conservative styles) clustered in the second factor. The two factors accounted for 77% of the variance in the data (see Table 1).

Differences in Thinking and Teaching Styles Based on Demographics

I identified statistically significant differences in particular thinking and teaching styles on the basis of all demographic variables except age. Female teachers (F) scored lower than did male teachers (M) on the global (MF = 4.45,

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TABLE 1. Factor Loadings for TSI-R and TSTI Scale Items (N = 194)

Style or measure Factor 1 Factor 2

TSI-R Legislative .85 Executive .83 Judicial .74 Global .78 Local .76 Liberal .86 Conservative .89 % variance 39.35 28.53 C. variance 39.35 67.88 Eigenvalue 2.76 2.00TSTI Legislative .94 Executive .90 Judicial .80 Global .83 Local .78 Liberal .89 Conservative .95 % variance 51.91 25.40 C. variance 51.91 77.31 Eigenvalue 3.63 1.78

Note. Variables with factor loadings of less than ±.30 have been omitted. C. variance = cumulative variance. TSI-R = Thinking Styles Inventory-Revised (R. J. Sternberg, R. K. Wagner, & L. F. Zhang, 2003). TSTI = Thinking Styles in Teaching Inventory (E. L. Grigorenko & R. J. Sternberg, 1993).

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SDF = 0.98; MM = 4.76, SDM = 0.84; t[172] = 2.15, p < .05) and liberal (MF = 4.58, SDF = 0.98; MM = 4.94, SDM = 0.84; t[172] = 1.96, p < .05) thinking styles. University teachers (U) scored lower than did high school teachers (H) on the legislative (MH = 5.71, SDH = 0.76; MU = 5.15, SDU = 0.86; t[164] = 4.41, p < .001) and global (MH = 5.10, SDH = 0.73; MU = 4.65, SDU = 0.81; t[166] = 3.71, p < .001) teaching styles. Teachers who taught larger classes tended to be less judicial (r = −.26, p < .01) in their teaching style. Teachers who had taught for a longer period of time tended to score higher on the conservative teaching style (r = .16, p < .05). Last, teachers in social sciences and humanities (S) scored lower than did teachers in natural sciences (N) on the judicial (MS = 4.94, SDS = 0.69; MN = 5.31, SDN = 0.67; t[165] = 2.74, p < .01) and global (MS = 4.80, SDS = 0.82; MN = 5.15, SDN = 0.66; t[170] = 2.24, p < .05) teaching styles.

Relations Between Thinking and Teaching Styles, Controlling for GS-CAT

As Table 2 shows, after I controlled for GS-CAT, the thinking style and teaching style scales correlated in predictable ways. In all, 28 (out of 49) cor-relation coefficients were statistically significant. Of these 28 significant cor-relations, 25 were expected (p < .001; statistically significant at p < .05 after Bonferroni correction). These were correlation coefficients of (a) four Type I thinking styles with four Type I teaching styles (thus, 4 × 4 = 16) and (b)


TABLE 2. Partial Correlation Coefficients for TSI-R and TSTI Scale Items, Controlling for Gender, Length of Teaching Experience, School Level Taught, Academic Discipline Taught, and Average Class Size Taught (N = 194)

Teaching style

Scale 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

1. Legislative .58*** −.03 .50*** .56*** .04 .47*** −.042. Executive .02 .33*** .18 .17 .38*** .05 .38***

3. Judicial .48*** .08 .42*** .44*** .30** .43*** .054. Global .51*** .09 .41*** .69*** .17 .46*** .125. Local .07 .33*** .18 .05 .53*** .22* .37***

6. Liberal .64*** .04 .42*** .52*** .14 .52*** −.047. Conservative −.08 .52*** .19* .12 .59*** .02 .58***

Note. TSI-R = Thinking Styles Inventory-Revised (R. J. Sternberg, R. K. Wagner, & L. F. Zhang, 2003). TSTI = Thinking Styles in Teaching Inventory (E. L. Grigorenko & R. J. Sternberg, 1993). With the Bonferroni correction method, the corrected p is p' = α/m, where α = .05, m = the number of tests of hypotheses = 49, and p' = .05/49 = .001. Thus, *** denotes p < .001 without Bonferroni correction and indicates statistical significance at p = .05 with Bonferroni correction.*p < .05. **p < .01.

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three Type II thinking styles with three Type II teaching styles (thus, 3 × 3 = 9). However, three statistically significant relations (simultaneous error rates uncontrolled) were not expected: the relation of (a) judicial thinking style with local teaching style (r = .30, p < .01), (b) local thinking style with liberal teach-ing style (r = .22, p < .05), and (c) conservative thinking style with judicial teaching style (r = .19, p < .05).

Prediction of Teaching Styles From Thinking Styles, Controlling for GS-CAT

Table 3 summarizes the results of the hierarchical multiple regression analy-ses. These results indicated that after the GS-CAT background variables were controlled, five of the seven thinking styles (with the exceptions of executive and judicial) statistically predicted all seven teaching styles.

The total contributions of thinking styles and demographic variables to teaching styles were indicated by the total R2 values. The variations in teaching styles accounted for by the background variables (as represented by R2

GS-CAT) were .32, .49, .37, .38, .41, .08, and .53 for the legislative, executive, judicial, global, local, liberal, and conservative teaching styles, respectively. The unique contributions of thinking styles to teaching styles beyond the background vari-ables (as represented by R2

thinking style) were .41, .18, .26, .40, .36, .32, and .20, for the legislative, executive, judicial, global, local, liberal, and conservative teaching styles, respectively. Regarding the nature of the unique contributions of thinking styles to teaching styles, all statistically significant βs were positive, signifying a positive relation.

Like the results from the partial correlation analysis, the results from the regression analyses essentially support my predictions. As with the partial cor-relations, I found unexpected positive contributions of conservative thinking style to judicial and global teaching styles, liberal thinking style to local teaching style, and local thinking style to liberal teaching style.

Discussion

In the present study, I examined whether teachers’ teaching styles were consistent with their thinking styles. In trying to answer this research question, I tested two predictions. First, teachers whose thinking styles were predominantly Type I would tend to use Type I teaching styles. Second, teachers whose thinking styles were predominantly Type II would tend to use Type II teaching styles.

Results from both partial correlations and multiple regression analyses gen-erally supported my predictions. Results revealed that teachers’ teaching styles were fundamentally in agreement with their thinking styles. For at least two reasons, the statistically significant relations between teachers’ thinking styles and teaching styles are more likely to reflect true relations between the two constructs than would have been found by chance. First, the magnitude of the

Zhang 47

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TAB

LE

3. P

redi

ctio

ns o

f Tea

chin

g St

yles

Fro

m T

hink

ing

Styl

es, C

ontr

ollin

g fo

r G

ende

r, L

engt

h of

Tea

chin

g E

xper

ienc

e, S

choo

l L

evel

Tau

ght,

Aca

dem

ic D

isci

plin

e Ta

ught

, and

Ave

rage

Cla

ss S

ize

Taug

ht (

N =

194

)

Te

achi

ng s

tyle

Mea

sure

L

egis

lativ

e E

xecu

tive

Judi

cial

G

loba

l L

ocal

L

iber

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Con

serv

ativ

e

R2

(GS-

CA

T)

.32

.49

.37

.38

.41

.08

.53

R2

(tot

al)

.73

.67

.63

.78

.77

.40

.73

R2

(thi

nkin

g st

yles

) .4

1 .1

8 .2

6 .4

0 .3

6 .3

2 .2

0β 1s

t th

inki

ng s

tyle

.38 L

ib**

* .5

0 Con

***

.31 L

eg**

.4

5 Gl**

* .4

9 Con

***

.41 L

ib**

* .4

4 Con

***

β 2nd

thin

king

sty

le

.29 L

eg**

—

.2

8 Con

***

.20 L

eg*

.33 L

oc**

* .2

1 Loc

**

.19 L

oc**

β 3rd

thin

king

sty

le

.16 G

l* —

.2

8 Lib

**

.19 C

on**

.2

1 Lib

**

.26 G

l**

—β 4t

h th

inki

ng s

tyle

—

—

—

.18 L

ib*

—

—

—F

18

.43**

* 9.

26**

* 10

.44**

* 21

.63**

* 12

.67**

* 10

.38**

* 20

.69**

*

dfa

8, 1

29

6, 1

32

8, 1

26

9, 1

27

8, 1

28

8, 1

26

7, 1

28

Not

e. G

S-C

AT

= g

ende

r, le

ngth

of

teac

hing

exp

erie

nce,

sch

ool l

evel

taug

ht, a

cade

mic

dis

cipl

ine

taug

ht, a

nd a

vera

ge c

lass

siz

e ta

ught

. R2

(thi

nkin

g st

yles

) =

uni

que

cont

ribu

tions

of

thin

king

sty

les

to te

achi

ng s

tyle

s be

yond

the

back

grou

nd v

aria

bles

. Sub

scri

pts

indi

cate

sig

nifi

cant

cor

rela

tions

of

the

colu

mn’

s te

achi

ng s

tyle

with

a s

peci

fic

thin

king

sty

le. L

ib =

libe

ral;

Con

= c

onse

rvat

ive;

Leg

= le

gisl

ativ

e; G

l = g

loba

l; L

oc =

loca

l. Fo

r βs

, the

1s

t, 2n

d, 3

rd, a

nd 4

th th

inki

ng s

tyle

s re

fer

to th

inki

ng s

tyle

s th

at c

ontr

ibut

ed th

e m

ost,

seco

nd m

ost,

thir

d m

ost,

and

four

th m

ost,

resp

ectiv

ely,

to e

ach

teac

hing

sty

le.

a Lis

twis

e ca

ses

excl

usio

n w

as u

sed.

* p

< .0

5. **

p <

.01.

*** p

< .0

01.

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Zhang 49

statistics resulting from both partial correlation and hierarchical multiple regres-sion analyses was strong enough to have practical meaning. Second, the findings make substantive sense. According to Lewin (1936) and Bronfenbrenner (2005), people’s behaviors can be explained by the variance in their thinking. Thus, it is not surprising that teachers with creative thinking styles (i.e., Type I) would edu-cate their students about the importance of creativity in various activities, ranging from classroom learning to out-of-class activities and from school to community engagements, as denoted by the statements in the TSTI. Such teacher behaviors are manifestations of Type I teaching styles. It also makes sense that a teacher whose thinking styles are conservative (Type II) would tend to exhibit behaviors such as expressing a strong preference for teaching the same subject matter to the same grade every year, focusing on knowledge transmission, and using topics and methods of teaching that have been successful in the past.

One could argue that the statistically significant relations between the two scales were due to the fact that the two inventories are based on the same theo-retical framework. Researchers can easily dismiss such an argument for at least three reasons. First, the TSI-R assesses people’s preferred ways of performing tasks in general situations, whereas the TSTI measures teachers’ preferences only in teaching-relevant activities. Second, related to the first reason, because the two inventories aim at assessing people’s preferences in different contexts, the semantics in the inventories differ. For example, a statement such as “I care more about the general effect than about the details of a task I have to do” con-tributes to the assessment of global thinking style in the TSI-R, whereas “When I’m preparing for my class, I like to present the main idea of my lesson, leaving the details to my students when they are in class” assesses global teaching style in the TSTI.

Third, the specific ways in which the scales within each inventory and those across the two inventories were correlated indicate that the two inventories are measuring different, although related, constructs. For instance, after the five demographic variables (GS-CAT) were controlled, the liberal and conservative thinking styles were negatively correlated (r = –.21, p < .01). However, partial correlation analysis did not result in a statistically significant relation between liberal teaching style and conservative thinking style (r = .01, p = .95). In other words, liberal thinking style and liberal teaching style did not correlate with con-servative thinking style in the same way. Liberal thinking style had a significantly negative relation with conservative thinking style, whereas liberal teaching style was not statistically significantly related to conservative thinking style.

Meanwhile, none of the coefficients between Type I thinking styles and Type II teaching styles (or between Type II thinking styles and Type I teaching styles) were negatively correlated at a statistically significant level, suggesting that teachers’ thinking styles did not contribute negatively to their teaching styles. Indeed, both partial correlations (simultaneous error rates uncontrolled) and mul-tiple regression analyses resulted in several unexpected statistically significant

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relations. Although these relations were not specified in my predictions, they are explicable in post hoc speculations, especially when Type I teaching styles are contributed to by more than only Type I thinking styles. Among the four Type I teaching styles, all except legislative were statistically contributed to by Type II and Type I thinking styles. This finding indicates that when teachers teach in Type I teaching styles, they tend to not only draw on their Type I thinking styles but also use their Type II thinking styles. For example, judicial teachers used not only legislative and liberal but also conservative thinking style (see Table 3 for other examples). In other words, teachers with Type I teaching styles tended to use a wider range of thinking styles than did teachers with Type II teaching styles. This finding is in line with research findings based on the theory of mental self-government and other style models. For example, Zhang (2002) found that university students who were at the relativistic cognitive-developmental stage (characterized by reasoning with a more critical mind) used both Type I and Type II thinking styles and that students who were at the dualistic stage (characterized by reasoning in absolute, black-and-white, and right-and-wrong terms) used only Type II thinking styles. Witkin (1965) concluded that successful problem solvers demonstrated greater mobility, shifting between field-dependent and field-independent styles. Meneely and Portillo (2005) similarly found that people who scored higher on creativity measures tended to flexibly use both the left brain and the right brain (see also Sternberg, 2006). Therefore, like relativistic students, successful problem solvers, and creative individuals, teachers who use Type I teaching styles tended to demonstrate more flexibility in teaching tasks, traversing the two types of thinking styles.

Even though each thinking style resulted in statistically significant partial correlations with its corresponding type of teaching styles, executive and judicial thinking styles did not statistically contribute to any teaching styles. It is not clear why executive and judicial thinking styles did not show statistically predictive power for any teaching styles; thus, a replication of the present study is needed. Should similar findings be obtained, other research procedures such as interview-ing and teacher observation could assist researchers in finding explanations for such findings.

The present study has three limitations. First, I used a convenience sample, as opposed to one that was selected through a well-designed sampling procedure. Second, the results were based entirely on participants’ responses to self-report tests. It is widely recognized that self-report data are not always highly related to data from behavioral measures. Self-report tests may elicit self-belief as a response to the statements presented rather than an independently verified psy-chological structure reflecting true individual differences. To truly understand the relation between teachers’ thinking styles and teaching behaviors on the basis of the theory of mental self-government, future researchers should include data on teacher behavior or student evaluation of teachers’ teaching. Third, I collected the data from only one city in mainland China. Researchers should not overly

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Zhang 51

generalize results from such a limited sample. Despite these limitations, the con-tributions of this study to the growing body of literature on teachers’ intellectual styles may be discussed in three ways.

First, results regarding the psychometric properties of the two inventories have added to the existing data bank for the two inventories. A related contribu-tion may concern the fact that the present study is the first that involved univer-sity teachers since the establishment of the theory of mental self-government in 1988. The third contribution is that this study built on past research that focused on the impact of teachers’ intellectual styles on their teaching behaviors. Previous studies focused on specific teaching behaviors, whereas I focused on the relations between teachers’ thinking styles and their general stylistic patterns of teaching. The merit of examining general stylistic patterns as opposed to individual behav-iors is that findings from the former may have higher levels of generalizability and thus may have broader implications for understanding teacher–student inter-action, student learning outcomes, and teachers’ teaching behaviors. I found that, in general, teachers’ thinking styles are highly indicative of their teaching styles. However, thinking styles and teaching styles are not the same thing.

Because the present study is an initial test of the relation between thinking and teaching styles and because it is puzzling that two of the seven thinking styles (executive and judicial) did not statistically predict teaching styles beyond the background variables, the present work should be considered exploratory. Statisti-cally significant predictive relations of reported thinking styles to teaching styles do not guarantee causal relations between these variables. Nevertheless, because the results largely support the anticipated relations and make substantive sense, one major implication of the findings may be tentatively proposed for teachers and administrators at both high school and university levels. Teachers could benefit from an awareness of the predictive relation of thinking styles to teaching styles because this finding signifies that teachers’ thinking styles affect their teaching styles, a major indicator of teachers’ teaching behavior. Indeed, research has not only indicated that teachers’ intellectual styles affect their own teaching behaviors (e.g., Kagan & Smith, 1988; Stuber, 1997) but also suggested that teachers’ intel-lectual styles influence students’ learning outcomes (e.g., Adderley, 1987; Foley, 1999; Saracho, 1991). The present finding further justifies the need for teachers to be mindful of their styles of thinking, because their thinking styles seem to affect their general stylistic patterns of educational practice.

High school and university administrators could benefit from the finding that thinking styles predict teaching styles. My results suggest that teachers’ thinking styles are a good indicator of teachers’ teaching styles, even after background vari-ables (GS-CAT) are taken into account. Therefore, understanding teachers’ think-ing styles could be made a part of the process of selecting teachers for employment and a component of teacher development programs. Although thinking styles should not be used as the sole criterion for personnel selection, they can be con-sidered a point of reference. Finally, the nature of thinking styles (or intellectual

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styles in general) should be made known to teachers through staff development programs. My years of experience delivering invited speeches in secondary and tertiary educational institutions suggest that once teachers and administrators learn about intellectual styles, they are often enthusiastic about discussing and generat-ing ways of applying the knowledge of intellectual styles to their work.

AUTHOR NOTE

Li-fang Zhang is an associate professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong. Her main research interests are in the fields of intellectual styles, gifted-ness, and human development.

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APPENDIXSample Items From the Thinking Styles Inventory-Revised (TSI-R; R. J. Sternberg, R. K. Wagner, & L. F. Zhang, 2003) and Thinking Styles in Teaching Inventory (TSTI; E. L. Grigorenko & R. J. Sternberg, 1993)

Subscale Sample item

TSI-R

Legislative I like tasks that allow me to do things my own way.Executive I like situations in which it is clear what role I must play or in what way I should participate.Judicial I like to evaluate and compare different points of view on issues that interest me.Global I tend to pay little attention to details.Local I like problems where I need to pay attention to details.Liberal I like to do things in new ways not used by others in the past.Conservative I like situations where I can follow a set routine.

TSTI

Legislative I frequently assign students independent projects.Executive I think that guidelines for teaching should contain step-by- step strategies for implementing lessons.Judicial Teachers should give continual feedback on students’ progress.

(appendix continues)

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Zhang 55

Original manuscript received October 8, 2006Final version accepted April 8, 2007

APPENDIX (continued)

Subscale Sample item

Global I think teachers must increase the conceptual as opposed to the factual content of their lessons.Local A teacher must give his or her pupils a lot of concrete and detailed information about the subject being taught.Liberal Teachers must pose problems, raise questions, and intervene with paradoxes, dilemmas, and discrepancies that students try to resolve.Conservative Textbooks that have been approved by the school or school district are the best resources for teaching.

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Documents

Teachers' Styles of Thinking: An Exploratory Study