Thinking Styles and Integration Among Deaf or Hard of Hearing and Hearing University Students

Institutional integration plays a significant role in students' academic performance, university persistence, psychosocial development, and self-conceptualization. How to enhance students' integration therefore warrants serious concern. The present study explored how thinking styles related to integration among 657 deaf or hard of hearing and 655 hearing university students in mainland China, The Thinking Styles Inventory-Revised II and the Institutional Integration Scale were administered to all participants. It was found that among all participants, those with Type I thinking styles (i.e., more creativity-generating, less structured, and cognitively more complex) tended to be more integrated, while hearing students with Type II styles (i.e., more norm-favoring, more structured, and cognitively more simplistic) tended to be less integrated. An important implication of the findings is that university teachers may be able to promote integration of their students by cultivating Type I intellectual styles among them.