The Effects of Field Dependent/Field Independent Cognitive Styles and Motivational Styles on Students' Conceptual Understanding about Direct Current Circuits

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of Field Dependent (FD)/Field Independent (FI) cognitive styles and motivational styles on high school students' conceptual understandings about direct current circuit concepts. The participants of this study consisted of 295 high school students (male = 127, female = 168) who were enrolled in eleventh and twelfth grade in four high school located in Düzce. At the beginning of the study, the Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT) was administered to identify students' FD/FI cognitive styles. After the administration of GEFT, a questionnaire was administered to determine students' motivational styles. Direct Current Resistive Electric Circuit Test (DIRECT) was administered in order to probe students' levels of conceptual understandings. One-way ANOVA and Post-Hoc Tukey test was used to statistically compare the mean scores of students with different cognitive and motivational styles. The results indicated that there was statistically significant difference among the mean scores of FD students and others (FINT and FI students). In addition, it was found that there was statistically significant difference among mean scores of social motivated students and others (curious, conscientious and achiever student). These results imply that due to traditional approaches in learning environment, some of students are still more advantageous than others in electricity subject in Turkey. We couldn't have managed to enhance the understandings of all students with different abilities, especially of social motivated students.