Personality Types, Preferred Learning Styles and Subject Specialism of Prospective Teachers

A significant challenge facing educators today is improving instructional design to coincide with educational needs of diverse student population while simultaneously increas-ing student satisfaction throughout the learning process. Educa-tors can help meet this challenge by persistently refining curriculum and aligning teaching methodology with learning styles and personality preferences of students. The purpose of this study was to report on learning styles and personality type preferences of prospective teachers by using Dangwal and Mitra's Learning Styles Inventory (LSI) and Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) respectively. The population consisted of 500 prospective teachers including 50% (n=250) from humanities stream and 50%(n=250) from science stream. The participants were asked to fill out the LSI and MBTI, Form –M questionnaires and were classified on the basis of their self reported preferences. The data suggested that there was considerable diversity in the learning styles of prospective teachers 42.8% were characterized as Imaginative, 37.6% percent were classified as Analytical, and 10.4% were characterized as Precision and 9.2% were Dynamic. The majority of prospective teachers were ESTJ, ISTJ, ESFJ or ENFJ. The mean differentials between the prospective teachers from humanities and science streams on the learning modes namely abstract conceptualization (AC) and concrete experience (CE) were statistically significant at.05 level of significance. However, no significant difference in the personality types of prospective teachers from humanities and science streams was observed w.r.t. MBTI scores on E-I, S-N, T-F and J-P dimensions of personality types. In humanities stream, significant relationships (p<0.01) of Thinking-Feeling (T-F) and Judging-Perceiving (J-P) dimensions were found with Abstract Conceptualization (AC) and Concrete Experience (CE). While in science stream, only Thinking-Feeling (T-F) dimension exhibited significant positive correlation (p<0.01) with Abstract Conceptualization (AC) and a significant negative correlation (p<0.01) with Concrete Experience (CE).The findings have implications for prospective teachers who seek to improve instructional experience.