This study is divided into two parts: the construction and validation of teacher and student instruments translated into Chinese and the main study. After establishing the validity and reliability of the instruments, the purposes of the main study were to: (a) investigate the relationships among teacher and student hemispheric preferences, student spatial and verbal abilities, student science achievement, and student attitudes toward science class and (b) identify science teaching strategies and match them to teacher and student hemispheric preferences. Four elementary school science teachers and 133 fourth- and fifth-grade students were selected from a school in Taiwan. Data were analyzed using quantitative and qualitative procedures.
The major conclusions of the study are: (a) Science teaching strategies seem to be related to gender differences. Male teachers preferred right-brain teaching strategies, whereas female teachers preferred left-brain teaching strategies; (b) Verbal ability, science achievement, and attitudes toward science class seem to be related to student hemispheric preferences. Students with a stronger whole-brain preference tended to exhibit better verbal ability, better science achievement, and more positive attitudes toward science class. Male and fourth-grade students with a stronger whole-brain preference tended to exhibit better science achievement and more positive attitudes toward science class, respectively; (c) Student hemispheric preferences seem to be related to gender and grade level differences. The right hemisphere seems to develop earlier in male students and the left hemisphere earlier in female students. For female students, brain lateralization seems to develop earlier and they tended to exhibit a stronger whole-brain preference. Fifth-grade students tended to exhibit stronger right-brain and left-brain preferences compared to fourth-grade students suggesting greater brain lateralization in older students. Fifth-grade males tended to exhibit a stronger right-brain preference compared to fourth-grade males; fifth-grade females tended to exhibit a stronger left-brain preference compared to fourth-grade females; (d) Spatial and verbal ability seem to be related to gender differences. Male students tended to exhibit better spatial ability; female students tended to exhibit better verbal ability; and (e) Science teaching strategies were not generally related to student hemispheric preferences. Science teaching strategies were partially related to student hemispheric preferences for 2 teachers.