A recent study published in the Frontiers in Psychology examined how teachers’ beliefs and practices were related to their personality in preschool settings.
Among a sample of 544 preschool teachers in Hong Kong, which included pre-service and in-service teachers, Wong (2019) used questionnaires to examine how teachers’ beliefs in developmentally appropriate practices were related to their personality.
The questionnaire included the Myer–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), which is a personality inventory that measures four dimensions of personality, namely “Extroversion-Introversion,” “Sensing-Intuition,” “Thinking-Feeling” and “Judging-Perceiving.” Moreover, the Teacher Beliefs and Practices Survey was used to measure teachers’ beliefs and their instructional activities about developmentally appropriate practices. The findings were as follows:
- The predominant personality type profiles of preschool teachers were ” Sensing-Feeling-Judging”. The in-service teachers in the sample were characterized by the dominance of sensing (86.7%), feeling (64.0%), and judging (83.4%).
- Extroverted and intuitive teachers tended to hold stronger beliefs in developmentally appropriate practices, in contrast to introverted teachers and sensing teachers.
- Teaching experience also contributed to preschool teachers’ beliefs in, and use of, developmentally appropriated practices, which might minimize the limitations linked to the sensing type personality found in the majority of preschool teachers.
However, the author remarked that although random sampling was used, the sample was only from one tertiary institution. Therefore, readers should be cautious about the generalizability of the results.
Source (Open Access): Wong ,P.Y. (2019) Teaching beliefs on developmentally appropriate practice among Chinese preschool teachers: the role of personality. Frontiers in Psychology. 10:2822. Doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02822