Cognitive Preferences

Synonyms

Cognitive style; Conceptual understanding; Learning style

Cognitive Preference is a particular form of cognitive style that has at times in the last 50 years been a significant component of aspects of research on science learning. It was particularly prominent in research in the 1960s and 1970s because of strong logical links between the construct and the changes in emphasis to conceptual learning that characterized the dramatic developments of science curriculum and curriculum projects in the late 1950s and 1960s in the Anglophone world.

“Cognitive Style” (or, sometimes, “learning style”) describes the notion that individuals have consistent patterns in the forms of information they seek and the ways they then gather and process this information. While there is continued debate about the extent to which any individual consistently behaves in this regard and as to the extent to which such consistency is a singular or multiple dimension of the individual’s characteristics,...