Personality traits in learning and education

Abstract

Personality traits judged relevant for the context of learning and education are identified as a subset of a comprehensive set of 1203 trait descriptive adjectives, constructed by Brokken (1979). The identification procedure is described and relevant statistics are provided. Self- and peer-ratings (N = 400) on the resulting subset of 194 trait adjectives were subjected to principal components analysis. The eigenvalues indicate two factors as being sufficient to capture most of the education relevant meanings. The trait terms judged non-relevant to the context of learning and education were correlated with the two Varimax rotated educational trait factors. The results me circularly expressed in the forms of an Educational Trait Circumplex. The contents of the two factors are discussed relative to the findings in the literature, and the two factors are evaluated against the framework of the Big Five factors.