Much the way the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator profiles
people's personality types, a test developed by Dan Salter,
assistant professor of counselor education,
assesses environmental settings.
Photo: Greg Grieco
Much the way the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator profiles
people's personality types, a test developed by Dan Salter,
assistant professor of counselor education,
assesses environmental settings.
Photo: Greg Grieco
By Catherine Motivans
College of Education
So you took the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and found that you were an extrovert. But does that personality characteristic shine through in all settings, at all times? Not necessarily, said Dan Salter, assistant professor of counselor education in the College of Education.
"As they are currently used, Myers-Briggs profiles are somewhat one-dimensional," Salter said. "Simply knowing a person's type does not always predict how he or she will behave in a given situation. Even the most extroverted individual 'tones it down' at the library or at a funeral. Because environmental settings do influence the behavior of different personality types, accounting for this factor is critical to the continued use of psychological-type theories."
As a doctoral student at Ohio State, Salter began developing aspects of environmental characteristics using terms that paralleled Myers-Briggs personality-types, including introverted vs. extroverted; perceiving vs. judging; sensing vs. intuitive; and thinking vs. feeling environments. Now, more than a decade later, the Salter Environmental Type Assessment (SETA) is a recognized tool that can be used to assess environmental settings, much like Myers-Briggs identifies psychological type profiles. Used together, the two can provide powerful insight into how one's personality fits the different "personality" types of living, workplace and academic environments; what Salter calls "type congruence"-- or how well you fit with those around you.
Putting his theory into practice, Salter surveyed 256 college women and asked them to think about a former college class in which they either felt "at home" and did well or "out of place" and did poorly. When he examined the interplay between personality types and the environmental settings the women had identified, he found that regardless of whether a woman was introverted or extroverted, they preferred extroverted classroom environments, which encourage student involvement and two-way communication in classroom activities. Intuitive classrooms, which encourage creativity and different ways of thinking, also were seen as positive by these women, regardless of whether they had intuitive or sensing personality preferences.
"For all the attention given to learning styles in education, especially as indicated through psychological-type constructs, the atmosphere of a classroom may be a stronger determinant of a female student's academic experience," Salter said.
On the other hand, Salter's research also found that "thinking-oriented" women, who tend to use cause-effect and logical reasoning, showed little preference for or against either thinking or feeling classroom environments. "Feeling-oriented" women, who tend to rely on values and who express concern for how their decisions affect other people, indicated a strong preference for feeling classroom settings, which encourage students to share personal experiences and work collaboratively with their peers. They also clearly did not like "thinking" classrooms.
"This classroom climate doesn't work well for most female learners yet continues to be a typical setting in which many college-level courses, particularly those associated with the hard sciences, are being taught," said Salter, who believes his findings are consistent with new scholarship research on the education of women.
"We know we have to move away from traditional lecture classes if we want to be inclusive of all students," Salter said. "More opportunities for collaborative learning and group projects, which may combine extroversion and feeling, can be built into the flow of the class. Hands-on experiences and personal case studies also can became part of course expectations."
Five researchers and students flew to Antarctica last week, where they will spend the next two months placing earthquake sensors on ice more than two kilometers thick to image the underlying crust.
They designed the sensors for a project called ANUBIS, or "Antarctic Network of Unattended Broadband Seismometers," part of a global effort to understand the geology beneath the ice and its role in the world's climate system.
Scientists will use the data obtained from the stand-alone network of sensors to measure the composition of the rock and its interaction with the overlying glaciers. One of the team members will send periodic e-mail messages back to Penn State that will be excerpted in future editions of the Penn State Newswire, a daily e-mail send from the Department of Public Information to more than 6,000 subscribers.
The nearly 20-hour flight to McMurdo, the U.S. scientific outpost on Ross Island, marks the seventh trip for project leader Sridhar Anandakrishnan, research associate with the Earth System Science Center.
Anandakrishnan said he is drawn to this lonely continent because it is unspoiled.
His teammates are Don Voigt, research assistant with the Department of Geosciences; Rick Henry, senior geosciences student; Peter Burkett, geoscience graduate student; and Bruce Long, electrical engineering graduate student.
For more information on the expedition, point your Web browser to http://anubis.essc.psu.edu/
For a free subscription to Newswire, send an e-mail message to pat5@psu.edu.
The Center for Gravitational Physics and Geometry has launched "virtual" seminars by posting its weekly lecture series on the Web. The seminars, which address fundamental issues in physics, astronomy and mathematics, are presented by researchers from Penn State and other institutions worldwide.
"Since collaboration is increasingly of a global nature, I see this becoming a mainstream tool for research," said Jorge Pullin, associate professor of physics and coordinator of the Web site.
The site, http://vishnu.nirvana.phys.psu.edu/relativity_seminars.html, features the slides and streaming audio of each talk. The center also uses the Web to broadcast weekly video and telephone conferences.
The concept of the center's "virtual" series originated with Vincent Crespi, assistant professor of physics, who plans to implement a similar site for the Center for Materials Physics seminars.
The practice of medicine has become the cost-effective provision of health care services, rather than a matter of curing the sick, according to researchers.
"Medicine has become monetized, which is not necessarily all good or all bad," said Mark W. Dirsmith, professor of accounting in The Smeal College of Business Administration.
Doctors must consider who is going to pay for treatment and make decisions in consultation with HMOs.
"One good thing is that cost containment has been achieved," Dirsmith said. But that benefit occurs largely at progressive hospitals -- while the poor, the underinsured, the old and the young are going to hospitals that are not profit-based, perhaps not as progressive or up-to-date, but are more willing to provide service.
For the complete story, check the Web at http://www.psu.edu/ur/NEWS/news/ASAmoney.html