Personality Preferences Affect Faculty Evaluation of Writing
by Jill Frey

Two faculty members reading the same paper may give the writer widely differing responses because evaluating writing is subjective. In the article "Personality Preferences and Responding to Student Writing," Jane Smith notes that a teacher's education and training, departmental policies, and the amount of time available for grading all play a part in how faculty may respond to student writing in the following three phases of evaluation:

• reading to answer three questions: "What does the student know? What does the student need to learn? How effective is the paper as a response to the assignment?" (79);
  
• deciding what deserves comment, either orally or in writing, and making comments to the writer;
  
• assigning a grade.
  

Another factor that can also affect evaluation of writing, according to Smith 's research, is a teacher's personality type as shown in personality inventories such as the Myer's Briggs Type Indicator. These inventories reflect a person's preferences on four indices: introversion/ extroversion, sensing/intuition, thinking/feeling, and perceiving/judging.

According to Smith's article, teachers who favor extraversion value talking as a means of thinking and may enjoy conferences with students on their writing. They may leap into grading and writing comments before finishing the text, writing marginal comments as they go, for instance, instead of reading the paper through and reflecting before commenting. They respond well to writing that is "broadly explorative" in content and papers that have students deal with the real world (80).

Those faculty with introversion as their preference need time to reflect and will probably find a quiet and private place to grade papers, either at home or behind a closed office door. To be prepared ahead of time, introverted teachers may want notes or a plan from students before a conference on a paper. They value focus and thorough development, not a broad topic or humor, which they may find general or shallow, Smith says (80).

Sensing teachers want "a practical, realistic way to grade and will work patiently [. . .] because they value accuracy and consistency" (82). They attend to the actual text and what the student wrote and do not make inferences about the student's intentions. In grading they are concerned about "clarity, accuracy, factual support, and attention to mechanics" (82). Sensing teachers tend to give precise directions and make use of checklists in evaluation. Their attention to detail, particularly about sentence level errors, may make students infer that their content or meaning is not important to the teacher.

Intuitive teachers use imagination, according to Smith, and try new approaches to grading. They prefer theoretical writing and may find detailed, concrete writing boring. Intuitive types tend to give general directions, unlike the specific directions of the sensing teachers. Intuitive types also make inferences about the writing and may influence the direction of the writing in ways the student had not intended.These types are good at putting the ideas of the paper first and dealing with surface errors later in the process. They tend to prefer theoretical writing even at the "expense of careful documentation" (83). A potential weakness of intuitives is that students may think the teacher does not care about errors.

Concerned with the writing, not the writer, thinking types see evaluation as objective.They focus on the student's learning rather than on personal relationships and prefer criteria given in advance. Thinkers believe students "want and need criticism to learn" and look for a logical structure in writing and "evidence of logic and objective thought" (84). They may be too critical of students, focusing on problems and finding it hard to praise.

Even more subjective than others with their need to nurture and their preference to avoid the hard decisions, feeling teachers often "dread grading because of the potential to hurt or disappoint the student" (84). Feeling types value personal examples, voice, and emotional appeal and find purely objective, logical writing less interesting than writing with a human side. They work to support the personal relationship with the student that they believe is motivating, to praise students, and to suggest, rather than give directions. They explain things they mark on a paper rather than simply correcting an error. (These feeling types make good writing center tutors; in fact, all of the tutors this year have feeling as a preference.) The weakness of the feeling type is that their personal response to the content may interfere with their objective evaluation of the writing itself.

With their tendency to exclude information and make decisions efficiently, judging teachers prefer a "systematized approach to grading" (85). They may decide after only a few paragraphs that the paper is a C. Judging teachers expect a paper to follow the plan set up in the first paragraph and dislike a paper that deviates from their mental outline of it. They prefer a paper with a clear conclusion, rather than an open-ended one, and do not like unusual approaches to an assignment. They limit their topics.

Perceiving types value "thoroughness over decisiveness" and may read a paper completely before marking (86). They resist a routine for grading and may resist departmental grading standards, seeing them as a "restriction on their open-ended evaluation style" (86). Because they value exploration of the subject and "enjoy the unexpected," they tend to be involved in their students' writing processes (87). However, they may be less willing than others to provide clear directions to students for improvement.

How can teachers avoid the weaknesses of their type biases? Teachers can become familiar with their preferences and understanding how they can affect grading and the kinds of student writing that appeal to them. Faculty can also consider the impact of their students' preferences (see Students' Personality Preferences).

Smith also recommends that faculty (1) discuss grading preferences with others, especially those of different types; (2) evaluate student papers with colleagues and discuss similarities and differences; and (3) examine papers they graded in the past, as well as their rubrics or checklists, for examples of type bias (89).

Work Cited
Smith, Jane Bowman. "Personality Preferences and Responding to Student Writing." Most Excellent Differences: Essays on Using Types Theory in the Composition Classroom. Ed.Thomas C. Thompson. Gainesville, FL: Centerfor Applications of Psychological Type, 1996. 79-89.

Students' Personality Preferences     Writing Processes Differ
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