What is students' ideal university instructor personality? An investigation of absolute and relative personality preferences

Kim, Lisa; MacCann, Carolyn

doi:10.1016/j.paid.2016.06.068

Cited by 15 publications

(19 citation statements)

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“…Longitudinal studies have found that individuals change in their level of personality and the most personality trait change occurs during young adulthood (Roberts et al 2006 ). Thus, students may be looking for and most benefit from people who are similar to them at different stages of their lives, as a match between student and teacher personality can be beneficial for student educational experiences (Kim and MacCann 2016 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Teacher Personality on Teacher Effectiveness and Burnout

2019

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The question of what makes a good teacher has been asked by practitioners, policymakers, and researchers for decades. However, there is no guiding framework about which qualities are important for teachers. Thus, it is necessary to examine these qualities using a recognized framework and to summarize the previous literature on this topic. We conducted a meta-analysis on the 25 studies (total N = 6294) reporting the relationships between teacher Big Five personality domains (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and emotional stability) and two teacher job-related outcomes (i.e., teacher effectiveness and burnout). Furthermore, the influence of three moderators was assessed, namely, the type of teacher effectiveness measure (i.e., evaluations of teaching, student performance self-efficacy, classroom observation, and academic achievement), source of personality report (i.e., self-report vs other-report), and the instructed educational level (i.e., elementary, secondary, and tertiary). Overall, teacher Big Five domains (except for agreeableness) were positively associated with teacher effectiveness, especially for evaluations of teaching. Furthermore, teacher emotional stability, extraversion, and conscientiousness were negatively associated with burnout. Other-reports of teacher personality were more strongly associated with outcomes than self-reports. There were no differences in the strength of the associations between the educational levels. The need for using common descriptors in teacher research as well as practical implications of the findings for teacher personality measurement is discussed.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Teacher Personality on Teacher Effectiveness and Burnout

2019

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“…The FFM describes differences in people's personality in terms of their positions on five broad dimensions of Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism, also called Emotional Stability, captured by the acronym OCEAN (for a review: see John, Naumann, & Soto, 2008). Multiple studies have shown that students' preferred or most liked teachers are perceived as similar to themselves on different personality characteristics (Chamorro-Premuzic, Furnham, Christopher, Garwood, & Martin, 2008;Furnham & Chamorro-Premuzic, 2005;Kim & MacCann, 2016;Tan, Mansi, & Furnham, 2017). For example, university students' self-reports on Conscientiousness, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness and Extraversion positively predicted their preferred teachers' personality descriptions on the corresponding domains in the socially desirable direction, even more than demographic variables like age or gender (Chamorro-Premuzic et al, 2008;Furnham & Chamorro-Premuzic, 2005;Tan et al, 2017).…”

Section: Personality Similarity Between Teachers and Studentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A teacher like me? Different approaches to examining personality similarity between teachers and students

et al. 2021

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Research suggests that people tend to like others more if they are similar rather than dissimilar to themselves. Likewise, students may tend to prefer teachers with whom they share similar personality characteristics. To test this hypothesis, we examined the role of personality similarity between students and teachers in predicting how much students liked their teachers. Secondary school students ( N = 634) provided self-reports and reported on their teachers’ personality using a Big Five personality scale. Their teachers ( N = 31) also provided self-reports. These reports were then used to compute three indices of similarity; i.e. perceptual similarity, actual similarity, and perceptual accuracy which were used to explain teacher liking. Multilevel linear models showed that perceptual similarity (computed as the profile agreement across student self- and teacher-ascribed Big Five traits) had the largest effect on teacher liking. Teachers described as more agreeable and conscientious were liked by their students more. Findings highlight the importance of considering students’ perceptions of personality similarity with their teachers for understanding how students feel “connected” to their teachers and positively interact with them.

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“…Instructor characteristic bias may also influence SET responses. Instructor personalities that are outgoing and engaging have positively correlated with SET results (Clayson, 2013;Kim & MacCann, 2016), and instructor physical attractiveness has also positively correlated with evaluations on ratemyprofessor.com (Felton, Mitchell, & Stinson, 2004). Instructor title seems to have affected ratings that resulted in sessional lecturers obtaining higher ratings than full-time faculty (J.…”

Section: Potential Biases Affecting Responsesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Somebody has to teach the ‘broccoli’ course”: Administrators Navigating Student Evaluations of Teaching (SET)

Vargas-Madriz

Nocente

Best-Bertwistle

et al. 2019

Canadian Journal of Higher Education

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What is students' ideal university instructor personality? An investigation of absolute and relative personality preferences

Cited by 15 publications

References 53 publications

A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Teacher Personality on Teacher Effectiveness and Burnout

A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Teacher Personality on Teacher Effectiveness and Burnout

A teacher like me? Different approaches to examining personality similarity between teachers and students

“Somebody has to teach the ‘broccoli’ course”: Administrators Navigating Student Evaluations of Teaching (SET)

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