Keywords: MBTI

Jensen, George and John DiTiberio. Personality and the Teaching of Composition.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is based in the psychology of Carl Jung. There are sixteen different personality types based on a combination of oppositions of legitimate thinking processes. The four oppositions are:

Extroversion - deals with the outer expience
Introversion - deals with the inner experience

Sensing - uses concrete perception through the senses
Intuition - makes an abstract perception through the imagination

Thinking - tries to make decisions objectively, based on a principle or objective
Feeling - more likely to make decisions based on personal values

Judging - approaches a task with the idea of getting it done
Perceiving - approaches the task with the idea of doing it thoroughly

Jensen, George and John DiTiberio. Personality and the Teaching of Composition. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corp., 1989.

The authors hope to develop a model of personality that will help to explain some of the variations in writing processes and texts. The authors suggest that this model is more than a research tool: "Its more significant applications to the classroom and writing clinic can allow teachers to understand how individuals differ, to appreciate their varied gifts and potentials, and to make some general predictions about how an individual student will write best and develop into a mature, productive writer" (2).

The model employed comes from two sources: Jung's theory of personality type and the work of Katharine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers. Jung, Briggs, and Myers all wanted to understand how individuals differed, but were careful about not valuing one personality type over another. Further, they were careful about not labeling people as having static personality traits; rather, they noted preferences for particular cognitive processes. Jensen and DiTiberio continually remind readers to understand the interrelatedness of the types they discuss; moreover, they warn teachers and others against reductionist tendencies.

Chapter one, "Jung's Model of Personality Type," discusses the history of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and goes over each category included in the MBTI, which is an instrument meant to measure personality preferences. The MBTI is divided into four dichotomies: extraversion and introversion (basic attitudes toward life), sensing and intuition (ways of perceiving), thinking and feeling (ways of judging), and judging and perceiving (orientations to the outer world). The authors define each dimension separately, but also go on to look at how dimensions interact.

The authors shift in chapter two to "Individual Writing Processes," explaining that Jung's model might provide insight into how to teach process. They mention some studies (e.g. Britton et al) which indicate that "how teachers teach the writing process and how writers actually write are often at odds" (34) and suggest that "once personality type is considered, many apparent contradictions in research findings and theoretical controversies among practitioners can be resolved" (35). The authors go on to illustrate how differences in writing processes may be tied to different personality preferences. For instance, extraverts, who tend to focus outward toward interaction with people and things, might value collaborative work throughout the writing process and freewriting practices that allow them to discover ideas as they write. Introverted types, on the other hand, who are more drawn toward inner experience and reflection, might prefer to write in isolation or to plan ahead before writing a draft. When focusing on Jung's personality types, teachers and researchers can become more aware of how different preferences can affect writing processes.

In chapter three, the authors discuss how "Differences in the Process of Writing Development" can also partly be explained through Jung's model. The cognitive models that dominate composition research and teaching tend to view writing development as a linear, sequential process, while Jung's model "can suggest individual patterns of development" (78). Jung sees writers developing in at least two ways. First, "they probably develop as their preferred processes mature and they apply these ever-increasingly, more mature preferences to writing" (102). Second, "writers mature more fully as they develop their unpreferred cognitive processes and use these to produce a more rounded text" (102).

In chapter four, "Helping Writers to Develop," the authors say that first, teachers should encourage students to develop their strengths, "to apply their preferred processes to writing before attempting to produce well-rounded prose" (106). Teachers should not assume that students arriving in college classrooms have already developed these strengths, which might have been stunted by poor instruction or misconceptions about what constitutes "good" writing. Next, after students have developed their strengths, instructors can challenge students to develop their unpreferred processes. In a chapter on writer's block and writing anxiety, Jensen and DiTiberio say that students may become more comfortable with writing if instructors encourage them to write in a process more in tune to their personality preferences. And perhaps students would experience fewer blocks if instructors encouraged students to primarily use their preferred processes, but also "to consult and develop their less preferred processes" (130).

The final chapters deal with teacher evaluation of student writing and teacher interaction with groups of students. Studies conducted by the authors found that teachers' own personality preferences can have an effect on what they value in writing and how they evaluate student writing. The authors suggest that Jung's model "can be used to alert teachers and raters to some sources of their biases and the egocentric ways they may respond to texts" (134). Finally, Jensen and DiTiberio urge that teachers, in terms of personality types, must appreciate the diversity of the group they teach rather than characterize that group.