A teacher is one of the most essential roles in society. There are many aspects of teaching that require certain personality traits to succeed as a teacher. At the same time, there are many different types of teachers and teaching styles. These differences in teachers and teaching styles are most often driven by the personality of the individual. Knowing your specific personality type is an important step in understanding whether you have what it takes to succeed as a teacher.
A DISC assessment lets you understand your personality and how it can affect your ability to be a successful teacher. Identifying your Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Compliance traits is invaluable in assessing if you have the disposition to teach, or how to compensate for certain traits to improve your teaching.
The best way to understand how you will perform as a teacher is to understand your unique personality and how it will influence the different roles you’ll undertake in a teaching environment.
Choosing The Right Teacher Personality Test
When it comes to personality tests, there are myriad psychological profiling tools available that look at everything from your unconscious motivations and inherent biases to your favourite colours and food. Some of them have been tested rigorously in academic research environments while others are conceived as fun quizzes pulling data from your social media profile. Whatever personality test someone uses, it is important they have a goal in mind in how it will help them understand themselves or those they are evaluating.
Using a personality test, either as a potential teacher yourself, or as an employer looking to better understand teaching applicants, requires a bit of due diligence. In order for any test to have value for its users, a test must be both reliable and valid.
Reliability for a test means that the results are reproducible over many iterations and consistent in their outcomes. This has many challenges because there may be significant variation in the types of people taking the test, as well as possible bias in the rating process. On the other hand, validity has multiple components which speak to the test’s accuracy.
A test must have content validity, criterion validity, and construct validity. Without delving too deep into the semantics of it, these are basically looking at whether a test is relevant, useful, and fair. While taking a test on your own is a choice anyone can make to understand their personality better, employers using these tests must be aware of potential legal implications related to protected groups and equal employment opportunities if these tests are used to screen potential or current employees.
Best Personality Tests For Teachers
Some of the most common tests used in assessing potential teachers are the DISC Behavioural Assessment, the Five-Factor Model, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the 16 Personality Factor Questionnaire, the HEXACO model, the Revised NEO Personality Inventory, the Keirsey Temperament Sorter, and a number of others that have been developed over the last several decades to try to best understand human personalities and the factors that enable certain people to thrive in certain environments. Thankfully, these tests have all been tested in either academic or institutional environments and are all scientifically proven to be both reliable and valid on all fronts. While there are so many options for personality tests, there is also significant overlap among them and taking each one would give you redundant, though sometimes confusing, results. Ideally, a single test among these will give you the answers you’re looking for without having to spend hours answering multiple choice questions or interpreting obscure inkblots.
The DISC personality profile, or DISC behavioural assessment, was initially developed in 1940 by Walter Clark in trying to understand organisational dynamics. The questionnaire was designed to measure four key factors that shape our personalities and coincide with four key personality types:
- Dominance – competitive, aggressive, decisive and results-oriented. They prefer to move fast, take risks and get things done now. These types also like to be in charge, control and have the power.
- Influence – talkative, sociable, optimistic and lively. They are people-oriented, spontaneous, energetic and enthusiastic. These tend to be positive and good at influencing others.
- Steadiness – calm, patient, and modest. They are loyal and often make excellent team players. They tend to be patient listeners, trustworthy, and balanced between tasks and people.
- Compliance – exact, logical and analytical. These types require lots of structure and rules. Their ability to think deeply about issues helps make them excellent problem-solvers.
There are many advantages of the DISC assessment that apply specifically to the teaching profession. The test was designed to understand how people’s personalities guide their interactions with others. As a teacher, knowing your personality type is essential in understanding how you will interact with your students and your colleagues. It also helps you to understand your leadership style and how you prefer to communicate. It lets you play to your strengths while minimizing your weaknesses by giving you a deeper understanding of your natural tendencies. If your school wants to evaluate new employees, our Extended DISC® Assessments are an effective method of improving recruitment as they can measure unconscious behaviour to exclude the impact of the environment and can be completely customised to your unique needs and applications.
What Type Of Teacher Are You?
Depending on your personality type, or combination of personality types, a DISC Behavioural Assessment can help you identify your teaching style and how you relate to your students. Understanding your personality type can guide you to improved classroom management, communication, motivation, and behaviourally-informed teaching.
A Dominant personality profile teacher has excellent time and classroom management, favoring students who value your knowledge, while disciplining those who act up or don’t meet the grade.
An Influential personality profile teacher inspires their students using charisma and engagement. They often teach creative subjects and relate to their students through discussion and games. They often relate well to students, colleagues, and parents equally well.
A Steady personality profile teacher is usually patient with their students, often teaching natural sciences or history through structure and process. They appreciate students engaged in learning as a team effort between student and teacher, while sticking to their tried and true methods.
A Compliant personality profile teacher has a rigid worldview, often holding their students to a high standard. They enjoy research and analysis, while having deep insights that sometimes go over the head of those they teach, but their teaching is driven by their in-depth knowledge.
Related Questions
Are online teacher personality quizzes meaningful?
For most any personality quiz, you get out of it what you put into it. If the questions aren’t too serious, you take the results with a grain of salt. Still others just scan your social media profile and produce silly answers for you to ponder. These quizzes may be meaningful to you, but they are generally meant to be for fun.
What character traits are typically required for successful teachers?
Teachers can be successful with all types of character traits. The key to being a successful teacher is understanding your personality and how it relates to your teaching style. Generally, being patient, empathetic, an effective communicator, and a good listener are important traits of successful teachers.
