Abstract:

Chinese students and American students were often portrayed as two different learning groups with the former being more passive in the classroom, and the latter more active. The authors speculated that thinking style might have an influence on the classroom behaviors of students, and at least partly explain the different learning styles of the two student groups.An existing thinking style measure and a self-developed learning behavior measure were implemented to three sample groups: American students, Chinese students in China, and Chinese students in the U.S. These samples were recruited from universities located on the Northeastern part of USA and the Southeastern part of China. One-way ANOVA was used to compare the mean differences of the cultural groups on the learning behavior measure. It was found that American students were generally more active in the classroom, while Chinese students, both in China and in the U.S., were less active in the classroom. However, American students and Chinese students did not differ in such variables as appearance of participation and independent thinking, which challenges the biased view considering Chinese students as “passive knowledge receivers”. The hierarchical regression was then used to investigate the relationship between thinking style and learning behavior. It was found that thinking style significantly predicts learning behavior in the classroom after controlling for cultural group and academic motivation. However, the effect size was relatively small with thinking style accounting for 4% variance in the learning behavior. It was also found that motivation moderated the relationship between thinking style and learning behavior. Finally, the Baron & Kenny criteria and bootstrapping method were used to test the mediation effect of thinking style. The results revealed that thinking style mediated the relationship between cultural group and learning behavior in the classroom. It was suggested that thinking style at least partially explains the behavioral differences in the classroom presented by Chinese and American students. The results of this study have the potential to contribute to the field of educational psychology by illuminating the relationship between thinking style and learning behaviors in the classroom. Nevertheless, the results should be interpreted with caution, since only self-report measures were used in this study, and the sample groups should not be considered representative to the populations in either country.

Key words: classroom behavior, thinking style, cross-cultural comparision

摘要：

对长期以来具有争议的中美学生存在课堂学习行为差异的现象，研究者推测中美学生由于具有思维风格的差异，造成他们对课堂内容的处理方式的区别，从而影响他们不同的课堂行为反应。研究对来自于中国学生、中国留美学生和美国学生三组样本的数据进行分析。结果表明在控制了文化组别和学习动机因素后，思维风格仍能显著预测课堂学习行为，并能部分地解释中美学生之间存在的课堂学习行为差异。

关键词: 课堂学习行为, 思维风格, 中美比较研究