Understanding Personalities to Inform Pedagogy
For two decades, research has indicated that almost half of the factors contributing to a student’s academic success revolve around relationships with others – particularly teachers, and to a lesser extent peers – in addition to the school or college environment (Australian Council for Educational Research 2003). By gaining insight into your own mix of personality styles and that of your students, your ability to communicate effectively and build healthy relationships is greatly increased.
7-Aug-24
By Pete Read (CEO) and Dr Leila Khouja Walker (Chief Product Officer)
Communication choices
Building healthy relationships between teachers and students is a critical success factor in those students’ academic success. This should come as no surprise.
Education in a school or college is often described as the transfer of knowledge, usually between teachers and their students, but also between students. And not forgetting, in some cases, from student to teacher.
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Regardless of the direction of transfer, the conduit for knowledge is more often than not ‘communication’. And for effective transfer to occur, a good understanding of how best to communicate is required – whether verbal or non-verbal, written, spoken or through images.
But where do you start?
Bearing in mind the importance of Self Awareness, Self Acceptance and Self Management in positive personal development outcomes (cf. Section 3 of our white paper), it is essential to understand how people ‘see’ and ‘hear’ you – to get to know yourself from the perspective of others. And then, to be open to how others wish to be ‘seen’ and ‘heard’. In other words, by gaining insight into your own unique mix of personality styles – and how it affects your communication preferences – and then that of others, your ability to communicate effectively is greatly increased. You will be able to make more informed choices about how you communicate, what you communicate, when you communicate and with whom.
Pedagogy through the lens of personality styles.
Many personality insight systems have been developed over the years – going back as far as Hippocrates who came up with the first around 400 BC.
Most of the most enduring and robust systems – including Hippocrates’ – are based on four sets of related personal characteristics, each of which everyone exhibits to a greater or lesser extent, influencing both how other people perceive and interact with them, and how they themselves think, communicate and behave.
Teachers often default to the belief that students have learning preferences. When planning lessons, this manifests in providing a mix of learning activities – knowing some activities will suit some students better than others, but by offering a mix the hope is to cover all preferences fairly.
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That seems to be a sensible approach. However, an alternative is to take the time to look more closely at why some students prefer certain pedagogical approaches to others.
A glimpse into a student’s mix of personality styles – what we at Persona Education call their ‘Persona’ – will provide the teacher with insights not only into their communication preferences, but the rationale behind this and how it relates to effective pedagogy.
Knowing why one student likes to learn surrounded by books and browser tabs, while another prefers to absorb knowledge by asking someone else to explain, can help teachers better communicate with students, respond appropriately to individuals and support areas that need further development.
Framework example: Persona Insights.
A good example of this approach is encapsulated in our Persona Insights framework, based on behavioural science research (David Merrill & Roger Reid 1981; Peter Urs Bender 1997).
The framework was developed specially for young people, with grant funding from the UK government R&D institute, Innovate UK (UKRI). Like Hippocrates’ system, the Persona Insights framework is also based on four personality styles, which are descriptive, positive and rapidly internalised.
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The four styles are derived from observing two fundamental aspects of thinking, communication and behaviour: Assertiveness and Responsiveness.
● Assertiveness reflects how much someone tends to make statements or ask questions
● Responsiveness reflects how much someone tends to focus on people or tasks
Combining these two aspects provides an insight into anyone’s mix of styles.
● Rational Task focused; asks more questions
● Decisive Task focused; makes more statements
● Animated People focused; makes more statements
● Sociable People focused; asks more questions
We call this unique mix their ‘Persona’.
None of the styles is any better or worse than the others! And remember, people change over time. Importantly, a young person’s personality is not yet ‘fixed’. It is very likely to change – sometimes rapidly – as they navigate their life journey.
Different aspects are also likely to feature more strongly depending on the context they find themselves in:
● Social context
● Learning context
● Work context
Another important consideration is how focused someone’s personality is. Everyone has a unique mix of styles, and some people have a more focused mix, meaning their communication and behaviour will change less than some other people’s, in response to different circumstances or stress levels.
Applying the pedagogy of personality styles
Whichever personality insights framework you favour, it is then possible to infer pedagogical guidance that helps teachers better understand their students, plan lessons and activities that suit their preferences, motivate them to learn, and communicate effectively with them. Continuing with the Persona Insights framework example, here is a summary of communication guidance for teachers, to use once they have developed a good feel for a student’s mix of personality styles.
The full version is available in Persona Life Skills.
You may already have a good idea of which main style – or styles – is most evident in each of your students, just by being mindful of how they tend to communicate, the type of activities they seem to prefer... and which they find most challenging.
If so, be open with them, show that you are aware and accepting of their preferences, and use the guidance above to steer your teaching or coaching in a personalised way. .
If you enjoyed this article you might also like:
White paper: 2024 Guide to Student Personal Development in Secondary Schools and Colleges
Life Skills in the Curriculum – 10 Habits for Developing Social-Emotional Skills in Every Classroom
Delivering the Social-Emotional Element of Student Personal Development
Persona Education offers free access to its Persona Life Skills online learning platform for secondary schools and colleges interested in developing their pupils’ social-emotional life skills, to boost wellbeing, academic and employability outcomes.
About the authors:
Pete Read co-founded Persona Education in 2019 to bring the benefits of personality insights to young people. Before co-founding Persona, Pete built several consulting and software companies in Europe and Asia, one of which was rated the no.1 consulting company to work for in Asia-Pacific by Vault.com, winning best-in-class on diversity, gender equality and LGBTQ+ equality.
Dr Leila Khouja Walker has been working in the education sector for 25 years. An ex-teacher and pastoral deputy head, she is now a respected edtech and pedagogy thought leader, leading development of the personality insights powered personal development platform Persona Life Skills, at the Bristol based edtech company Persona Education Ltd.
www.persona-life.com
