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innovative students. It seems logical that the faculty member may heavily influence

cognitive climate in a course, as they provide instruction through their own cognitive

style. However, relinquishing control of the class to students provides opportunities for

cognitive style climate of the students to intervene. More research is needed to first

identify perceived cognitive style climate of a course and second determine how

cognitive style climate influences student stress, motivation and engagement.

 Classes B, E, F and G found no significant explanation of student stressed based

on a cognitive style gap between the student and the faculty member. There were no

patterns found in demographic variables, or construct scores of stress and cognitive style

gap to indicate that these courses were different than classes that did have significant

relationships between cognitive style gap and student stress. Furthermore, Classes E and

F had faculty members with cognitive style scores similar to the cognitive climate of the

class, so one could not argue that cognitive style climate was a factor in these two classes.

Considering that in objective 3, findings indicated that students with at least a 20 point

cognitive style gap did not have higher levels of stress than students with less than a 20

point gap, it is not surprising that some classes did not find that increasing cognitive style

gap contributed to higher stress levels.

 For student motivation, Classes A, B, and C each found that students with an

innovative efficiency cognitive style gap had lower total motivation scores in these

classes taught by an adaptive faculty member. The amount of variance of student

motivation explained in these models ranged from 13% to 19%. This finding coincides

with results of objective 3 indicating that students taught by adaptive faculty members

and have more than a 20 point cognitive style gap also have lower levels of motivation.