differences in student engagement investigating the role of the dominant cognitive processes preferred by engineering and education students差异在学生参与调查的作用占主导地位的认知过程的首选工程和教育学生.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Education Research International Volume 2011, Article ID 414068, 8 pages doi:10.1155/2011/414068 Research Article Differences in Student Engagement: Investigating the Role of the Dominant Cognitive Processes Preferred by Engineering and Education Students Ian Ball and Chris Perry Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood, Victoria 3125, Australia Correspondence should be addressed to Chris Perry, chris.perry@.au Received 27 September 2010; Accepted 8 November 2010 Academic Editor: Miriam David Copyright © 2011 I. Ball and C. Perry. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This paper reports on a study of the differences in the dominant cognitive processes preferred by groups of engineering and education students and examines the implications of these differences for the assessment of student engagement with university courses. Concern is expressed that the items commonly used to capture student engagement data do not adequately cover the full range of the dominant cognitive processes preferred by tertiary students. The paper sets out a brief overview of student engagement along with the theory of dominant and auxiliary cognitive processes, as developed by Jung and later by Myers. Evidence is presented of the differing frequencies of the eight cognitive processes, as assessed by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, that are preferred by cohorts of students undertaking courses in engineering and education. The implications of these differences are discussed in the context of subject disciplines in university environments. 1. Discussion