Programs and Practitioners: We Do What We Are

Teaching has sometimes been described as a function of personality. Although clearly an oversimplification of a complex and difficult activity, the concept nevertheless has considerable merit; what we as teachers can do or are willing to try in the classroom and in our relationships with our colleagues, our students, and our institutions is in many ways determined by what we are as people. In a similar way, what we as individuals involved in faculty development can or are willing to do with or for faculty, administrators and students is as much a function of our personalities as of the skills we bring to our tasks. This article will explore one possible way of relating programs and practitioners by examining the relationship between a variety of approaches to faculty development and Carl Jung\u27s four personality types (1) and then suggest ways these speculations might have practical application to program planning and development. (1): As discussed below, these four types are characterized by either thinking, feeling, sensing or intuiting. Jung, of course, actually identified eight types, because any of these four can be manifested in either a basic extroverted or introverted personality orientation. This article will not attempt to differentiate between these two fundamental personality characteristics, although it does seem reasonable to suggest that, to the extent that the extroverted type is more concerned with the external object than with him or herself as subject, faculty development, as a change activity, will most commonly be populated by extroverted personality types