THE INFLUENCE OF PERSONALITY TYPE ON THE EXTENT COOPERATING TEACHERS PROVIDE PSYCHOSOCIAL ASSISTANCE TO STUDENT TEACHERS

Abstract

The No Child Left Behind Act emphasized the need to do what university teacher preparation programs have been doing for years - look for ways to improve the development of preservice teachers. Because there are many aspects of preservice teacher preparation, research should begin at the most important aspect of such preparation. In agricultural education, literature points to student teaching being the most important aspect, particularly the student teachercooperating teacher interaction within student teaching. The purpose of the study was to determine if personality type, as measured by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI®), influences the psychosocial support cooperating teachers of agricultural education at the University of Missouri-Columbia and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign provided their student teachers. Both student teachers and cooperating teachers are more S, T, and J, according to the MBTI®. According to both student teachers and cooperating teachers, cooperating teachers are providing psychosocial assistance to student teachers, but differently across the five psychosocial functions. Personality type was not found to be influential in predicting psychosocial assistance.