| Why should teachers be involved with students' personality development? | 1. Our student's don't come to us with personalities that are fixed and unalterable; and schooling can have a positive impact on personality development.
2. Our jobs involve much more than teaching reading, math, history, and other forms of content. It also includes helping students develop positive personality traits associated with school achievement and satisfaction with school, as well as success later in life. |
| Describe some guidelines we can use to support students' personality development. | 1. Learn about students as people.
2. Model positive personality traits.
3. Use concrete examples to teach positive personality traits.
4. Discuss positive personality traits and their relationship with success and achievement.
5. Use an authoritaTIVE classroom management style.
Note that we will be focusing on the cognitive component of personality development, because it is largely through awareness and understanding that students can positively alter their personality. |
| How can we learn about our students as people? | Our students are obviously unique, and in order to best promote their development, we need to know about their unique personality characteristics.
We can make formal efforts to learn about our students with simple QUESTIONAIRRES that ask about their favourite foods, hobbies, sports, and other aspects of their lives. Doing so communicates that we're interested in them as human beings and promotes a positive relationship with them.
Also, as we INTERACT with students, we will learn a great deal about who is extraverted, open, agreeable, shy, and other personality traits, and we can adapt our instructions accordingly.
For example, giving students with low extraversion more reassurance and personal space to answer questions, and over time, they can at least partially overcome their shyness. Or instead of solving the problem, ask students to DESCRIBE something about the problem first. |
| What is meant by 'goodness of fit' (Rothbard, 2011; Rudasill, Gallagher, & White, 2010)? | Goodness of fit refers to our ability to adapt our work/lesson plan with our students in a way that they are more willing to respond and be active in class. |
| How important is it that we model positive personality traits? | Arguably, modelling positive personality characteristics is the most effect action we can take in promoting the same characteristics in our students.
Modelling openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability takes no extra effort, and over time it can increase the likelihood of students developing those same characteristics.
With habitual practice and reflection, modelling them will be second nature and we have nothing to lose in doing so. They will make a difference in at least some students, and even if they didn't, we are still happier people as a result of our modelling. |
| Provide an example of using concrete examples to teach positive personality traits. | Awareness of one's personality is important because students often don't realise that they posses undesirable personality traits. Very few people would describe themselves as disagreeable. Often, we all like to think of ourselves as open, agreeable, conscientious and emotionally stable.
However, we can't simple tell students that they are, for example, disagreeable. But we can ILLUSTRATE and DISCUSS desirable and undesirable personality characteristics, and this is what we mean by "use concrete examples to teach positive personality traits."
For example, we can formally teach and highlight positive personality traits such as conscientiousness and agreeableness in our lesson plan design. This will capitalise on the cognitive component of personality development.
In fact, seeing behaviours and consequences concretely illustrated is more effective than hearing them describe by teachers. For example, it becomes harder for students to be disagreeable when they understand that disagreeableness leads to negative outcomes, and they know that other students are aware of both the trait and the consequences. |
| How do we discuss with students about positive personality traits and their relationships with success and achievement? | With awareness and thought, students can work to develop positive personality traits. Concrete examples provide a reference point for discussions of personality traits and their impact on success, and discussions centered on the examples are the mechanisms we can use in our attempts to increase students' awareness and understanding.
For example, disagreeable people aren't "stuck" with being disagreeable forever. Realising that agreeableness can lead to improved social relationships, they can try to develop this desirable trait. Further, if students understand that openness and conscientiousness are associated with academic success, there also more likely to attempt to develop these characteristics.
Again, we have nothing to lose in making our students aware of desirable personality traits and attempting to help them understand how these traits link to academic and social success. |
| How do we develop and implement an authoritative classroom management style? | We saw that an authoritative parenting style is generally more effective that those that are authoritarian, permissive, or uninvolved. The same tends to be true for classroom management.
The interaction styles of EFFECTIVE TEACHERS are SIMILAR to those of EFFECTIVE PARENTS and the description of authoritative parenting strongly parallels recommended classroom management practices (Emmer & Evertson, 2013); Evertson & Emmer, 2013).
This suggests that we should set boundaries for our students, provide reasons for our rules, enforce the rules consistently, and explain how rules help protect the rights and feelings of others. Over time, these practices contribute to positive personality traits such as openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. |
