INTJ + PhD
I’m sure you’ve heard of the Myers-Briggs or MBTI personality assessment test based on Jung 16 types. And the similar Kiersey temperament sorter. You can take a 72 question Jung Typology test or the Kiersey temperament sorter for free. I think they’re only partial tests, but to my knowledge relatively accurate if you reply to question not as you would like to see yourself but how you actually act and think in situations.
Learning styles are also assessed through the MBTI
The 126 item Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), Form G, is the most reliable method for assessing student learning style. The MBTI provides data on four sets of preferences. These preferences result in 16 learning styles, or types. A type is the combination of the four preferences. The most common MBTI type for business undergraduates is the ESTJ, the Extraverted-Sensing-Thinking-Judger.
The author doesn’t say much about other disciplines, but gives a number of teaching tools to address the different types encountered. The 4 pairs of characteristics are Introverted/extraverted; intuitive/sensing; thinking/feeling; judging/perceiving.
I first heard about the MBTI test in a research seminar when I was doing my MA a while back. We were introduced to the typology to identify what type of researcher we were. I turned out to be an INTJ, which is labelled a Mastermind in the RATIONAL category by Kiersey. I’ve retested myself a number of times and come up with quite similar results, with my I (for Introverted) becoming a bit more E (extroverted) with time. Normal according to the metrics. It seems that INTJ ’s are rare, 1 to 2% of the population, and a majority found in higher education and various thinking spheres. I guess PhD studies were inevitable!!
You can imagine what ‘rare” entails, misunderstood when young and sometimes later in life too 
I remember one time I told the team under my supervision, “If I come to the conclusion that I am not needed or don’t fit in this system, I will fire myself”. I did get weird stares but what I meant was that the parts are less important than the whole and I was hired to take care of the organization, not individuals per se. As a therapist, even when working with individuals the family and social systems to which they belonged were most important in finding the keys to improved wellbeing.
We INTJs think in systems, love concepts and have fun envisioning and planning for the future. And most of all testing theories. Googling a bit more, I came across an edtech professor who introduces himself through his type …guess which one? Yes INTJ, explaining to prospective supervisees his personality quirks and suggesting students know their own type for a better communication match. He was clear on the limits of what the MBTI could offers but could also see the benefits in understanding preferred modes of thinking and behaving. For one it was a more efficient means of getting the word across. Efficiency another INTJ must!
An INTJ is
Theme is strategizing, envisioning, and masterminding. Talents lie in defining goals, creating detailed plans, and outlining contingencies. Devise strategy, give structure, establish complex plans to reach distant goals dictated by a strong vision of what is needed in the long run. Thrive on putting theories to work and are open to any and all ideas that can be integrated into the complex systems they seek to understand. Drive themselves hard to master what is needed to make progress toward goals.
Pretty good description of what my son calls driven behavior. I often see myself take models and theories and pull them apart, see if I can apply them to various situations. I’ve been going back and forth with Doug@Borderlands and a bit with Chris who comments there too. A whole section here is devoted to commenting on sensemaking and deconstructing epistemologies and developping new conceptual territories. You would think that in PhD studies it would be a welcome attribute. Well, to a certain extent it is working to my disadvantage. The educational technology department in which I study has repeated numerous times model building was expected in an APPLIED PROGRAM, which seems to preclude theoretical dissertation work. What is happening to PhD programs these days? In psychology there are PsyD and PhDs: one is clinical (practice oriented) the other more theoretical/philosophical. I’m doing a PhD not an EdD! There is a great though older (1997) debate on the subject here. It seems the practice/theory divide is problematic at the conceptual level, and second as a determinant of what a program offers be it Ed.D or Ph.D. It is perhaps time to review the labels in light of what is really happening in various programs.
This is to me, a major dilemma at the moment–practically at the end of my course work. It has eaten up much of thinking space and peace of mind, sapping my energy in the pursuit of these final requirements, making me very very unhappy there. After many years of mulling this over, I think I have a solution. Can’t say right now, but just feeling the vice relax around my brain, makes me feel much better.
Am I saying that as an INTJ in education, mental models should be taken into account ? Maybe. But that would be naive in the face of a department’s mental model wouldn’t it! I am a systems thinker and can see how much the environment in which I study is stuck with its own model and politics. I feel like a hexagonal peg in a square hole! Either I chop off a few asperities to fit or find a less cartesian environment. To be continued…
