Even though a great deal of empirical evidence reported in the literature tends to support close associations between intellectual styles and academic achievement, our review obviously indicated that there are some unsolved problems that need to be further explored. Some scholars (e.g., Rayner & Riding, 1997) have also suggested that the practical validities should be further demonstrated, including the relationship between intellectual styles and academic achievement.

First, solid longitudinal data are necessary in understanding the relationship between intellectual styles and academic achievement. Most relevant evidence is based on simple research designs and cross-sectional investigations. Longitudinal data might be more advantageous for understanding the relationship between intellectual styles and academic achievement. At the same time, whether or not there is a statistically significant relationship between styles and achievement might be affected by some incidental factors, including particular instructional conditions, and learners’ personality traits, abilities, achievement motivation, and attitudes towards learning (Fan & Zhang, 2009). These might play a mediating or moderating role or both in the associations between intellectual styles and academic achievements. Particularly, some of them such as learners’ personality traits and achievement motivation might change in different learning stages or life periods (Caspi, Roberts, & Shiner, 2005). A longitudinal design would also be helpful in analyzing the interactions between intellectual styles and the abovementioned additional variables on academic achievement from a developmental perspective.
Second, domain specificity (e.g., subject matter) and individual characteristics (e.g., gender, school level, and parental styles) should be emphasized more within the context of examining the relationship between intellectual styles and academic achievement. Existing literature shows that some domain specificities of the contributions of intellectual styles to academic achievement were found. For example, field dependence, convergence, and assimilation are often reported to positively contribute to academic achievement in mathematics (e.g., Abdollahpour et al., 2006). Gender difference in field dependence/independence and judicial thinking style are also reported in many studies (e.g., Tinajero & Páramo, 1997; Savage, 1983). As another example, Type II thinking styles (Zhang, 2002) are found to have positive influences on academic achievement among middle-school students (Fan et al., 2010), but have negative contributions to academic achievement among college students (Cano-Garcia & Hughes, 2000). Concerning these domain specificities and individual features, a systematic research design might obtain solid evidence for the relationship between particular intellectual styles and academic achievement. For example, a comprehensive comparative study on different styles’ contributions to math achievement (or that of other specific subject matters) can further clarify if there are true domain differences of styles in math learning.

In addition, some direct research work related to those unsolved issues proposed in this chapter such as style match/mismatch, style awareness, and style contribution in different learning environments would definitely contribute to the understanding of the relationship between intellectual styles and academic achievement.

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From Weiqiao Fan & Yunfeng He (2011). Intellectual Styles and Academic Achievement. In Zhang, L. F., Sternberg, R. J., & Rayner, S. (Eds.) (2011). Handbook of Intellectual Styles: Preferences in Cognition, Learning, and Thinking. Springer Publishing Company: New York.