By Donna Dunning
Introverted and Extraverted Personality Type Preferences
Everyone has experienced that painful training session or classroom that doesn’t suit his or her preferred way of learning. Although there certainly are good and bad teachers, in many cases, an unpleasant learning experience can be the result of a mismatch between learning and teaching style.
I learned a lot about personality preferences and learning styles as my kids progressed through school. When my son (ISTJ preferences) was in his early learning years I attended a parent-teacher conference. As the teacher voiced her concerns I began to hear Extraversion/Introversion learning differences.
Breadth not Depth
The teacher commented that when given a number of learning stations to explore and experience, my son tended to go to one station and stay there. I asked the teacher if it was important for students to move between stations and if staying at one station was a problem for her. She looked surprised and said there were no rules that students should move, but she expected students would want to explore all of the areas.
I knew my son would prefer to stay with one activity and experience it in-depth before moving on, so I mentioned to the teacher that if the behavior wasn’t against the rules, then it certainly wasn’t a problem for my son or me. I told her that he might want to move onto other stations when he was done with the one that held his attention. If she wanted him to experience all stations, she could certainly tell him that he was expected to move.
Having Lots of Friends
Next, she was concerned that my son had only one friend in class. Although he was polite and not offensive to anyone, he tended to interact with only one friend and was not highly sociable. My response? Is this a problem? Is there an expectation of a certain level of social interaction in the classroom? It was OK for me that he had a friend and tended to spend time with him.
I have empathy and respect for my kids’ teachers. Obviously this teacher had expectations about how young learners should spend their time and energy. However, the behaviors she was concerned about seemed quite comfortable and normal behaviors for a young child with my son’s preferences. I hope she learned to see and respect how he preferred to learn.
I’m sure it is not fun when your student’s parent is an educational psychologist.
If you have an ISTJ student, or have these preferences, here is more information on typical ISTJ learning preferences.
If you would like more information on personality type and learning, check out my booklet,
Introduction to Type and Learning in print or pdf format.
This is quite fascinating. I’ve been really paying attention to the way I learn recently, because my mother and I work together, and she has been teaching me programming in the way that it works best for her to learn, which sometimes makes me frustrated. If I ask what a certain concept means or how a certain programming language works, she begins by explaining little details about the concept or the language and expects me to put together an idea of how they work based on the details she gives me. Whereas I prefer to be given an overall view and then to proceed to the details of how things work from there. It is very difficult for me to understand what something means or how it works based on little details. It has helped my frustration level a great deal to recognize that she’s teaching me the way her mind works.
Thanks for your comment Christy. I agree it is helpful to understand that people approach learning differently. As well as lowering frustration, it also can provide a way to ask for or seek out what you need so you can maximize your learning. Coincidentally, my next learning post is about how some people like to focus on facts and details first while others prefer to overview a topic and understand concepts first.
When my daughter was in second grade, the school moved to a “new and improved” instructional model. Students had a “home” class and then were grouped by ability level for reading and math instruction (which last for most of the school day). My daughter spend the vast majority of the school day in a small group of children on the high end of the spectrum with a fabulous teacher who provided for different learning styles and kept all the children highly engaged. Heaven (to my INTJ mind). Hell for my child. She HATED school that year. She longed to be in her home class with ALL of the students rather than being segregated.
I never gave learning styles much though when I have had P/T conferences. My child is a freaky kid: gifted in many ways, a pleasant person, and a very good student (does her work, etc). Conferences usually fall along the lines of: “I love having L’il D’Nem in Class” “She sometimes talks too much, but otherwise is a delightful student.”
I have to wonder about the contrast from what my parents had to have gone through. I was NOT a good student (never did my work), was not a very pleasant person (kept to myself, awkward socially). Knowing what I know now, I wonder what those conferences were like…… what was said….. hmmmmmm…..
I think it would have been helpful to have known more about temperament when I was growing up. Maybe things would not have been so difficult if I had understood.
Hi Sue, Thanks for sharing this story. It is fascinating how one person’s ideal learning setting can be unpleasant for the next person. Knowing type preferences can certainly help us understand and accommodate these individual differences.
I remember being very frustrated when I grasped the overall view right away but needed the details in order to be able to do anything, and the person teaching me kept telling me more about the overall view.
Kristina, I understand that, too. I usually grasp the general concept very quickly when it’s presented, and then I’m ready to move on to specifics while people are still discussing what I understood in their first sentence.