Abstracts Education

The Relationship Between Learning Style and Personality Type of Students Majoring and Minoring in Agricultural Education at The Ohio State University

by Tracy Jonathan Kitchel

The purpose of the descriptive and correlational study was to describe the relationship between the learning styles and personality types of students majoring and minoring in agricultural education at The Ohio State University from 1990 to 1999. The relationship studied was between scores of personality type on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and the learning styles score on the Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT). The data collected also served to describe certain personality and learning characteristics of the sample.As a group, the sample was mostly field independent, with personality type preferences with the extraversion, sensing, thinking, and judging types. Related to MBTI combinations, the most frequent group was ISTJ, followed closely by ESTJ. Almost half of the group showed a preference for the ST function.Positive, low, and significant associations were found between the S-N opposite and the GEFT, and the J-P opposite and the GEFT. In interpretation, the more sensing the sample tended to be, the more field dependent the sample tended to be, and the more judging the sample tended to be, the more field dependent the sample tended to be.When associations were calculated between the GEFT and the MBTI opposites, correlation coefficients among the MBTI opposites were subsequently calculated. Those results indicated a low, positive, and significant association between the S-N and T-F opposites. The data also indicated a moderate, positive, and significant association between the S-N and J-P opposites, indicating that the more the sample was sensing, the more thinking and judging the sample tended to be.