Field independence, cultural context and academic achievement: a commentary

Background. This review of literature on cross-cultural aspects of perceptual disembedding skills takes as a starting point a commentary on the Spanish work on held dependence-independence and scholastic achievements (Tinajero & Paramo, 1997). Aims. To place findings from cross-cultural psychology on field independence in the context of current literature on multicultural education. Methods. A review of literature, and in particular a review of the authors' studies in this field. Results. It appears that because of the wide variation in abilities in perceptual disembedding between cultures, and the malleability of cognitive styles in migrant children, the concept of cognitive style is more usefully deployed as an indicator of process and change in migration and multicultural education than as a description of basic cognitive processes. Those factors which have influenced change in the direction of children's greater perceptual disembedding skills (urbanisation, migration, exposure to computers and computer games) may also be related to some of the factors responsible for the increase in mean levels of intelligence seen in children in the developed world. The paradox of very high mean scores on the Children's Embedded Figures Test found in studies of Japanese and Chinese 9- to Ii-year-olds, in the absence of identifiable factors which could explain why children in group oriented cultures have such marked abilities in perceptual disembedding, is considered. Conclusion. Multicultural educational practices should not be framed on the presumption that particular ethnic groups possess a particular kind of cognitive style. It is the teacher in the multicultural classroom who should have a field independent cognitive style, so that he or she can accommodate different learning styles in classroom tasks.