Drs. Bill and Lynn Kirby have recently
retired from UW-SP's School of Education and have very generously allowed me to
copy their materials on learning and personality styles so that these valuable
resources remain active. Bill and Lynn were both
trained in the True Colors
TM
system and so preferred that method of
personality classification to others. I
have revised some of the information and I have
taken out personal references to their styles,
but left the rest of the material in tact. Thank
you Bill and Lynn.
Myers Briggs
(MBTI) and Keirsey's Temperaments
Adapted by
Leslie Wilson from the work of Lynn and Bill
Kirby with permission
Why bother?
Understanding personality types can be a very
useful tool in all aspects of life --
personal, social, professional. This information can
be especially helpful in professions that
require high levels of interpersonal
interactions. With this knowledge you
can become more aware of your own characteristics
and traits, strengths and weaknesses. You can
also better understand the different talents and
perspectives of others as
understanding personality types can smooth
working and personal relations through improved
levels of communication and interactions.
There are a few things that are very important
to understand about personality
distinctions.
-
However, there
may be personality traits that are more suited for certain aspects of
designated jobs. For instance, if a person
were extremely introverted and private, even
though he/she may be able to be an excellent
salesperson, this may be an unpleasant job
for him/her due to his/her need to draw
energy from within. Indeed, both the
military and business have used personality
indicators to helping place workers in
optimal vocational situations for over 1/2
century.
-
Everyone has
all the personality characteristics,
but we
develop preferences. These preferences
become somewhat set around the early to
mid-twenties, and may be due to either
genetic predispositions, contact with
strong role models, or parental or
environmental demands. But,
it is important to remember that everyone
has the ability to use all 4 sets of polarities -
both I and E, S and N, T and F, and J and P.
There is no such thing as a personality or
learning style disability.
Some of the particulars:
The Myers-Briggs
Type Indicator is related to work by Carl Jung, and has 16
distinct, but interrelated, personality types. These types
are based on four main variables:
-
introvert/extrovert (I/E)
-
sensor/intuitive (S/N)
-
feeling/thinking (F/T)
-
judger/perceiver (J/P)
Most people
develop preferences for one or the other of each
of these pairs, for instance being more extraverted than
introverted. Within the MBTI classifications
there are16 possible combinations from four
sets of traits.
Here is Bill
Kirby's interpretation of
looking at
and describing the 16 types.
For more
information on the variables, see the Kirby's
Notes on Myers-Briggs personality variables
and David Keirsey's comprehensive website
on the
Myers-Briggs variables.
Collapsed
versions of the MBTI:
David Keirsey
has worked extensively in this area and has a
very comprehensive website devoted to promoting
his work. You can take an abbreviated version of
his test on the Internet,
The Keirsey Temperament Sorter II. The
official Keirsey
site (or see the
Frames
version of the site, which is organized in a
more understandable way) presents information
about the 16 types and gives profiles of each
type.
There are two other
free online tests you might be interested in
taking: one from
HumanMetrics (73 questions). From this information,
and by reading the varied descriptors you can estimate your type, which is typically
expressed in four letters, such as ESTJ or INFP.
TypeLogic (a commercial site offering
products for sale) gives good descriptions of
each of the 16 types, as well.
Like many other
personality style developers Keirsey collapsed
the original MBTI 16 types into four main
temperaments, Guardians, Artisans, Idealists,
and Rationals. He based this on the combinations
of certain pairs of letters, as such:
-
Guardians = Myer-Briggs letters
of xSxJ
-
Artisans =
Myer-Briggs letters of xSxP
-
Idealists =
Myer-Briggs letters of xNFx
-
Rationals =
Myer-Briggs letters of xNTx
For some people
thinking in terms of simplified 4
temperaments is a quicker and
easier way to understand other people. Keirsey
has put together a very nice
chart
describing his temperaments and giving
examples of famous people who share them.
Teachers, may use personality inventories,
theories, related research, and representative
learning strategies as a tool to monitor their
interactions with students and to make sure they
are offering balanced instructional choices.
However,
using these materials comes with a warning.
Because students are in the process of becoming
and at different developmental stages they are
exploring the varied aspects and dimensions of
their personalities before settling on their own
set of preferences. The job of good teachers is
not to make students like them, but rather the
job of teachers is to learn to reach students
and make an attempt to learn about the students'
different realities and stylistic preferences.
The best
teachers use personality and related learning
style theories to help students reach their full
innate potential, and to offer varied and
diverse instructional choices that are balanced
to a number of learning styles. This approach
helps students explore the nooks and crannies of
their unique metacognitive structures, it aids
students in finding study skills and
intellectual habits that are effective at
individual levels, and this process helps
facilitate life-long learning. These are the
reasons why personality theories and learning
styles are important things for teachers to know
and understand.
Resources
- Please
Understand Me II by Keirsey
- Type
Talk by Kroeger and Thuesen
- Type
Talk at Work by Kroeger and Thuesen
- Gifts
Differing by Myers-Briggs, I.
-
People types and tiger stripes by
Lawerence, G
-
Understanding yourself and others: An
introduction to temperament by Berens,
L.V.
-
Dynamics of personality type: Understanding
and applying Jung's cognitive processes
by Berens, L.V.
-
Bill
Kirby's MBTI Matrix
- The True
Colors cards (link to
True
Colors home page)
adapted from the materials of William H.
Kirby, original copyright, 1997
