Impact of Big five personality traits on Academic Achievement of Prospective Teachers

Abstract

There are some specific trends and regularities of behavioral patterns in individuals which determine their personality traits. This study was aimed to determine the impact of big five personality traits on academic achievement of prospective teachers. A quantitative study was conducted by using the casual comparative research design. A sample of 759 prospective teachers was selected through proportionate stratified random sampling technique from two public universities. Big Five personality traits inventory (BFI) was adopted to collect data. Data was analyzed by applying inferential statistics. The findings showed the significant impact of personality traits like conscientiousness, openness to experience on prospective teachers’ academic achievement i.e. CGPA, while the impact of rest of the three variables i.e. extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism on academic achievement was not statistically significant. Findings also revealed that female prospective teachers were more emotionally stable than male prospective teachers. Accordingly, academic achievement of prospective teachers was predicted (20%) by big five personality traits, therefore it is recommended that teacher education Institutes arrange training sessions or workshops for providing guidance to educators and prospective teachers, to understand that every student possess different level of personality traits which have a great impact on their academic achievement.