Learning Styles and Cognitive Processes of Students in Performing Problem-Solving Tasks in Mathematics

Abstract

The study aimed to determine and describe the cognitive processes and learning styles of 12 eight graders in performing problem-solving tasks. The cognitive processes of students with different learning styles were studied in terms of the cognitive behaviors they manifested as they were given problem-solving tasks. These cognitive processes were understanding the tasks, specializing, generalizing, conjecturing, justifying, and looking back. Forty-one of the original 75 students from two sections of a government-owned secondary school in Quezon City were classified as active, reflective, sequential, and global, based on learning styles as revealed by the Felder and Soloman's Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire. Consequently, three students from each learning style were randomly chosen as participants of the study. The three phases of the study involved audio taping the students while doing the problem-solving activities and interviewing them afterwards, coding all the transcribed scripts while analyzing students' problemsolving processes, and methodological triangulation in order to come up with a conclusion of the cognitive processes done by students of different learning styles. The findings revealed that cognitive processes in problem solving were manifested variedly by the four types of learners in terms of the observed cognitive behaviours. Finally, some pedagogical implications were cited in order to make the teaching of problem solving more functional.