The Keirsey Temperament Sorter II is an online questionnaire that contains 70 items. It offers students the opportunity to take a personality inventory free and see how the theory and inventory work. Results can then be used to discuss other ways of viewing individual differences among students. Students complete the questionnaire and immediately receive a profile that provides a rough indicator of their temperament. Temperament is a pre-disposition towards a particular configuration of habits but the author cautions: ?One can use the temperament as a way of putting people in boxes or stereotyping. However, the right way is to view temperament theory as a language to talk about commonalties and differences between people.?
Type of Material:
Quiz/Test
Technical Requirements:
The site works without plug-ins. The site is viewed and interacted with through a web browser.
Identify Major Learning Goals:
This site allows students to explore different personality types according to Keirsey?s Theory. One learning goals is to understand that people have varying personality or character types and temperaments, which may influence how they approach learning and working with other people. Understanding individual differences in temperament may be useful to teachers as they try to motivate their students.
Target Student Population:
Any adult learner including college-age students: Could be either undergraduate or graduate ? appropriate for ed psych, learning theories, teaching methods and diversity ? depending upon how the site is used.
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:
Any user should understand that these kinds of measures of temperament or personality are only indicators, and that what individuals do with their lives is not limited to descriptions in the categories.
Content Quality
Rating:
Strengths:
Numerous interpretations of temperament indicators are available at this site for students to use to interpret the results of their questionnaire responses, including examples of famous people. The Keirsey Temperament Sorter II can be quickly used. It correlates .75 with the Myers-Briggs method of assessment and there are online versions available in 10 languages in addition to English. Distribution of temperament types based on the results from 6,262,923 people who have taken the Keirsey Temperament Sorter II are available.
Concerns:
Users who want to take the Keirsey Temperament Sorter II must provide demographic information up front, including their email address. Providing this information may mean that users will receive email solicitations. This is a commercial site and one of the purposes is to sell books on Keirsey?s theory. The author indicated that he is about to reconfigure this site but we hope that he will leave enough information to continue to educate users about temperament. No statistics on reliability or validity are offered because the author states that ?Sorters are not "tests" per se, so a validity statistic wouldn't make much sense.?
Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool
Rating:
Strengths:
Students can take the inventory and learn how they would be identified under Keirsey?s Temperament Theory. In addition, once students complete the inventory they can get suggestions for methods of studying for the type of individuals with their particular characteristics. While the books written by Dr. Keirsey provide more complete information, this site is certainly complete enough for use in many course assignments. However, we believe this should only be used as a starting point to learn about temperament, rather than as the only lesson or approach to individual learning differences. The Keirsey Temperament Sorter II could be used in courses where students work in groups. For example,
I ask my students to go to this website on their own and complete the 70-item questionnaire. I also ask them to read the information provided on the website to learn more about temperament and about their own profile. Later in class we see how many people fall into each category. Students are asked to share what they learned about temperament (their own or in general) that was new and interesting to them. We then brainstorm ways this might be useful information for teachers. We also discuss possible abuses of this information. They may be asked to write about how this kind of information might be used or misused by a teacher.
Concerns:
There are a lot of links to examples of people under Keirsey?s theory and the number of links can become confusing. While there are a lot of links, the information provided is interesting although perhaps overwhelming for learners new to the concepts discussed. Perhaps Dr. Keirsey?s revision of this site will attend to organizational issues.
Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty
Rating:
Strengths:
The site is easy to use and taking the quiz/inventory is fun
Concerns:
The amount of tex in support to the personality inventory and related topics is sometimes overwhelming. It is easy to get lost once you start exploring the links within the site.
Creative Commons:
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