Personality Traits and Teaching Style of Management Teachers: An Empirical Study

1. INTRODUCTIONTeaching is an essential human interaction activity; therefore it is also influenced by the personal qualities of an individual. These qualities are personality preference and styles of an individual and these include the learning and teaching styles. Each human activity is an integral and intrinsic part of the individual. This has a unique style of an individual for different situations. Allport (1961) stated, "Style reflects the oblique mirroring of personal traits. These traits either improve performance or distort it depend on its operative intensity stylistically. "Professors have their own teaching styles and also believe that the style they use is appropriate as per their need and situations, as they understand that management education cannot be "all things to all people" (Thompson, 1997). Teachers always have interactions with students. Students come from diverse backgrounds and cultures. These students have different learning styles. The Students' learning styles and teachers' teaching styles' interaction takes place in a different environment which is the classroom.In higher education, a variety of teaching methods are used rather than the traditional lecture method. The students also prefer courses which offer them different teaching method and assessment (Chamorrow-Premuzic et. al., 2007). Management education spans many areas from organizational behaviour to human resource management to marketing, finance, accounting, information system etc. It is not possible to have teaching and learning in the same manner for each areas. Therefore, a debate on appropriate methods and styles would always remain at the crux of effective teaching (Provitera and Esendal, 2008). Effective teaching is also influenced by various factors such as diversity of students, classroom environment, system support, discipline of the instruction, course and its objectives and individual preferences, learning styles and personality traits.Various studies have been conducted in the areas which focus on students and teachers. These include research on student personality and preferred teaching method (DeNovelles and Lawrence, 1974; Keirsey and Bates, 1978; Chamorropremuzic, 2007), students' learning styles and teachers' teaching style (Kent and Fischer, 1997; Stitt-Gohdes, 2001; Tucker et. al., 2003), teachers' learning style and teaching methods or teaching styles (Cano et. al., 1992; Pankratius, 1997) and teachers' personality and classroom environment (Kent and Fischer, 1997). Thus there is the dearth of research in these areas while the empirical base on teaching styles classifying the members of particular personality to use a particular teaching style is also scarce.2. LITERATURE REVIEWThe literature review has been divided into three parts. The first part is about personality concept and research in that area. The second part explains about teaching styles and their implications, whereas the third part focuses on the research in the area of teaching style and personality match.2. 1 Concept of PersonalityPersonality is the unique and relatively stable pattern of behaviour, emotions and thoughts shown by an individual. It makes one individual differ from other. It relates to people's characteristic tendencies to behave think and feel in certain ways (Arnold et. al., 1995). Various authors define personality. For example Carl Rogers defined personality as "personality is an organized, consistent, pattern or perception of the 'I', around which the individual interacts and has experiences. (Pareek, 2007). Gordon Allport defined it as "the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine his unique adjustments to his environment". Personality would usually be defined as the combinations of various traits. Trait is a characteristic way in which an individual perceives feels, believes or acts. (Pareek, 2007). This trait can be identified from the behaviour of people, as behaviour is shaped by personality. …