Brain Hemispheric Dominance and Academic Achievement of Senior Secondary School Students: An Ordinal Logistic Regression Analysis

Every person perceives and processes information in different ways. Understanding the patterns of Brain hemispheric dominance among students, which are indicative of their preferences in processing information can help in improving teaching-learning situations in the classroom. The aim of this study is to find out the Brain hemisphere dominance of senior secondary school students and to investigate whether it may be used to predict their academic achievement scores in Biology. The study sample consists of Grade 12 Biology students from various senior secondary schools in Sikkim, India. The findings indicate that majority of the students have left hemispheric dominance, followed by right hemispheric dominance and whole brain dominance. A statistically significant p value implies a good fit of the regression model. Also, the regression model explains 36% of the variance in the academic achievement scores. This directs the academic community to the fact that students have unique brain dominance patterns, and if teaching-learning situations are structured in accordance with their preferences and thought processes, this may have a significant impact on their academic achievement scores and foster better learning.