Passive learners rarely play a role in their own education, but follow whatever their teachers decide is best for them. Active learners are self-motivated, independent people who take responsibility for themselves. (JOW)

For students to become proficient critical thinkers and decision makers, they must be involved in a continuous process of skills acquisition and application. This article presents and illustrates an action model (comprising perceptions, thought processes, actions, and closure) allowing middle school students the opportunity to design their daily…

Educators have three approaches to learning styles: focusing on the individual, using comprehensive models to adapt instruction to major learning differences, and identifying key elements of an individual's learning style and matching instruction and materials to these differences. One controversial aspect of learning styles is the use of…

An associate law professor recounts the incompatibility of his own professors' analytical teaching methods with her dynamic learning mode. Since learning the 4MAT principles, she has used alternative approaches to help law students move from experiential learning to abstract thought, to practical theory applications, and to development of new…

Study of 119 counseling psychologists revealed that counselor individual differences in cognitive complexity, but not preferences for client problems, moderated cognitive processes that lead to bias in clinical judgment. Counseling psychologists with lower cognitive complexity were more likely to form biased clinical judgments than were those with…

Explores a study investigating the effect of individual cognitive styles on learning through computer-based instruction. Identifies a significant difference between the cognitive styles on test scores, in particular the Wholist/Verbaliser group, and indicates a potential for cognitive styles to influence learning outcomes measured by performance…

Our emphasis on accountability overlooks children's differences. Half of all individuals who take a norm-referenced test will be below average. Should such students be pushed, mauled, and remediated or squeezed into a common learning mold? Holding teachers accountable for humane treatment of "whole children" is a worthier pursuit. (MLH)

Describes a project involving a group of 65 freshmen at a private girls' high school. After taking the Dunn, Dunn, and Price Learning Style Inventory, students were given their preferred learning-style profiles and instructions for adapting learning and study methods. Test scores improved substantially without implementing a comprehensive…

"Weak central coherence" refers to the detail-focused processing style proposed to characterise autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The original suggestion of a core deficit in central processing resulting in failure to extract global form/meaning, has been challenged in three ways. First, it may represent an outcome of superiority in local…

In this paper I comment on recent recommendations that students' responsiveness to instruction (RTI) provides a basis for identification of students as learning disabled. I repeat an earlier argument (Gerber & Semmel, 1985) that teachers embedded in schools are naturally variable in their capacity to respond to differences in students' response to…

Learning style is a factor researchers claim influences student educational performance. This article summarizes information about student learning styles. The idea of learning styles is based on the theory that there are different methods of gathering, organizing, and evaluating information. Research has not produced conclusive evidence about…

Because most studies investigating psychological profiles of subjects convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) have been conducted at the time of arrest or treatment, it is unclear whether subjects' anxiety, depression, and hostility represent "trait" characteristics central to alcohol abuse or "state"…

Studies of the brain and of the human culture can be used to demonstrate the limits of traditional approaches (based on psychological perspectives which are often narrow and restrictive) to learning styles and to offer additional perspectives on the complexity of learning. The study of the hemispheres of the brain and its triune nature indicates…

Ever since the early days of its existence, the field of psychology has been trying to achieve two different and somewhat contradictory objectives: to understand the "general principles" of the human mind and to explore the "uniqueness" of the individual mind. The latter direction has formed an independent subdiscipline within…

Investigated whether there are unique and common elements between Johnson's (1978) theory and other related theories of decision making and learning among college students exploring academic and occupational alternatives. Results indicated there were some common elements in the ways students approach learning and career decision making along with…