Abstract:
The purposes of this research were 1) to analyze students thinking styles, learning styles and the teachers teaching styles in English courses; 2) to analyze the matching between thinking styles and learning styles; 3) to analyze the matching among students thinking styles, learning styles and the teachers teaching styles; 4) to analyze the effects of matching among students thinking styles, learning styles and the teachers teaching styles on the students achievement in English learning. The research sample group was 564 grade 8 students from schools affiliated with the Office of the Basic Education Commission of Thailand within the Bangkok Metropolitan Service Area and 18 teachers teaching the sample students. The research instrument consisted of students thinking styles test; the students learning styles questionnaire, the teachers teaching styles questionnaire, and the English learning achievement test. Data analysis was done through descriptive statistics, namely indices of frequency, percentile and arithmetic mean, Crosstabs analysis, chi-square test, and One-Way ANOVA. The research findings could be summarized as follows. 1) The majority of the students had their thinking styles in function perspective as a judicial, in form perspective as hierarchical, in level perspective as global, in scope perspective as internal, and leaning perspective as conservative. Most students had learning styles as participating, collaborative, and dependent styles respectively. The majority of the teachers had teaching styles as delegator, facilitator, expert and personal model respectively. 2) The five thinking perspectives could be classified into 4 profile groups: in-depth details thinking, process thinking, achievement-focused thinking, and indistinguishable thinking. It was found that students having all 4 profile groups of thinking style mostly had participant learning style. 3) The majority of the students classified in the group of achievement-focused thinking had a participant learning style and were mainly taught by expert teachers. And 4) The achievement of learning English and the matching groups of thinking styles, learning styles, and teaching styles were significantly different at .05. The students having achievement-focused thinking, participant learning style, and being taught by expert teachers had higher arithmetic mean in English learning achievement than those having in-depth details thinking, collaborative learning style, and being taught by facilitator-style teacher, and also higher than those having achievement-focused thinking, independent learning style, and being taught by the delegator-style teachers.