A study of the relationship between the thinking styles of the vocational schools’ students and their academic performance

چکیده مقاله

A B S T R A C T This study aimed at investigating the relationship between the legislative, executive and judicial thinking styles of the vocational schools’ students and their academic performance. This is an applied research and both qualitative and quantitati ve methods were used. A sample of 250 students, 125 girls and 125 boys, were selec ted through simple random sampling from among the sophomore students of the vocational s chools in Ilam province, Iran , in the academic year 2009-2010.To analyze the data, des criptive statistics, Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient and multivariable regression were used. The findings revealed that the students who possessed executive thin king style obeyed and performed the orders in terms of practical thought .Howeve r; these students got lower grades compared to other students in specified courses such as ma thematics, fundamentals of IT and computer programming. The students who possessed judicial thinking style got better grades compared to other students in terms of practical thou ght and academic progression in the specified courses. These thinking styles(legislative, ex ecutive, and judicial thinking styles) had the potential to predict the standard variable and this potentiality was 0/05 for the executive thinking style and 0/01 for judicial and legislati ve thinking styles. As for the students who possessed legislative thinking style there was a significant relation between their academic performance and their thinking style. Furth ermore, the correlation coefficient of girls and boys was not significant in terms of gender . Analysis of different thinking styles showed that there was a linear relationship between the st andard variable (the students' performance) and predicting variables (legislative, exec utive and judicial thinking style