Arab Educational Information Network

The study aims to detect the nature of the factorial structure of thinking styles in the light of Harrison and Bramson theory in two samples of Saudi female students at high school and university. In addition to the differences in thinking styles that they prefer according to academic specialization and academic stage. To verify the research objectives, a comparative descriptive approach was used. The two samples were chosen randomly stratified (600) students, including (300) high school students in Jeddah and (300) undergraduate students at the University of Jeddah, using exploratory factor analysis, mean, frequencies, percentage, and ANOVA as statistical methods of data analysis. The results showed that there was a difference in the factorial structure of the thinking styles in the two samples of the students, and the existence of preferred thinking styles in the two samples, where they agreed to prefer three styles: the ideal style; the realistic and then the analytical style. The samples differed in the arranging of practical and synthetic thinking styles; and agreed that the dominant thinking profile is the profile of one-dimensional thinking followed by two-dimensional and at the last level came the three-dimensional thinking profile. There was no statistically significant effect on both the study specialization and the study stage on all thinking styles, and there was a statistically significant effect of the binary interaction between the study specialization and the two styles of ideal and analytical thinking. (Published abstract)