Temperament Styles

Gifts That Students Bring to the Learning Environment

Originally posted Sept. 7, 2007
By Claire Goss, M.Ed, California Licensed Educational Psychologist

All children have learning gifts hidden within — gifts waiting to be opened. Each gift, precious and one of a kind, is to be treasured and appreciated not only in the classroom, but for a lifetime. A child’s gifts are the complex combinations of special talents and personality characteristics that are his or hers alone. It is easy to look at children and see differences in size, shape, and color. But children differ inwardly as well, in how they relate to people and how they approach tasks. Children also vary in fundamental ways that influence how they learn and how their personalities develop. It is this “how” that is defined as temperament.

Temperament describes individual styles of behavior. These personal characteristics can be seen when students are learning to read and comprehend, when they are performing mathematical operations, writing, interacting with peers and family members, or choosing a book, TV program or a movie. Research has found that temperament styles are biologically based, apparent early in life, and characteristic of individuals over time and in different situations.

A useful way of looking at individual differences is by identifying a child’s temperament, which is defined by four dominant types:

  • The Extraverted or Introverted Child — whether a child focuses on the inner world of thoughts and ideas or on the outer world of people, events, and things;
  • The Sensing or Intuitive Learner — how a child experiences and learns about life and the world;
  • The Thinking or Feeling Child — how a child makes decisions about what they experience and learn;
  • And the Judging or Perceiving Child — a child who strives for predictability and order or one who is more comfortable with flexibility and spontaneity.

In more than 37 years working with students, teachers, and families, I have found that understanding a child’s temperament can help him or her succeed in school academically, as well as socially/emotionally. As an example, a child who had difficulty making social decisions on the playground also had difficulty learning to read. This was due to them lacking an inner structure in the way they approached tasks. It is important that parents, teachers and students not judge temperament preferences as being “good” or “bad”, but rather work with those preferences as a basis for understanding a student’s behavior, learning styles, and his/her decision-making processes.