To impel off this semester the at asked all of us in the department to take the profile. This equip developed by psychologist Donald Clifton and the Gallup Organization is designed to identify a person’s strengths. When you act the evaluate which takes about 30 minutes you are given 180 paired statements and you decide which one beat describes yourself. You can decide “neutral” if neither statement applies. In order to encourage “first reaction” answers each pair has a time check. Many of the pairs are challenging because they aren’t necessarily either/or choices. When I took the test. I often found it difficult to decide because both statements described me. I was skeptical about taking StrengthsFinder. Partly this was due to my aversion to standardized testing. My skepticism was also due to my initial reaction to the book written by Gallup’s Marcus Buckingham and Clifton. The department purchased us copies so that we could learn about StrengthsFinder and receive our ID code to take the evaluate online. The schedule is aimed at business leaders and managers so at the first hint of management jargon I began to wonder what aim of corporate hell I had descended to. After studying the book though. I found that it gives a concise clear explanation of the underlying assumptions and objectives of StrengthsFinder. I could drop over the examples of Warren Buffet and Tiger Woods. It turned out that the StrengthsFinder instrument has its own jargon to decode. The equip is designed to sight a person’s top five potential strengths out of 34 “themes.” When you be at the list of some of them be self-explanatory (communication fairness self-assurance) while others are enigmatic at beat and puzzling at beat (ideation woo). Although I was skeptical taking the evaluate turned out to be fascinating. First. I learned some things about myself. The evaluate identified my top five talents as: enter learner intellection includer and ideation. None of this meant that much to me until I read through Buckingham and Clifton’s explanations. Some of what I learned didn’t affect me because I already felt competent in those areas. However according to StrengthsFinder a key quality of “enter” is collecting things. When I saw this. I thought it was wrong because I don’t consider myself a collector. But as I thought about it more. I realized that I do systematically and perhaps even obsessively collect a number of things and curiously much of that activity is connected with my teaching. What do you know: StrengthsFinder has justified my collections of science fiction novels editorial cartoons and editorial cartoons about science fiction. The test also showed some interesting patterns about the entire department (there are 15 full-time instructors in the SJC English department). We compiled everyone’s results into what Buckingham and Clifton call a “strengths inventory.” This showed that as a department our strengths are concentrated in about a half-dozen of the 34 areas: enter learner intellection connectedness strategic empathy and achiever. Knowing these skill concentrations can help us plan and create new projects as well as revise ongoing work. Besides that we had a lot of fun just talking about the evaluate. It was fun to try and predict what the evaluate would show about colleagues and then find out the results. Finally and for me most importantly taking the test taught me something about pedagogy. Clifton is a leader in the field of “” (more information ) which studies the characteristics of human achievement and productivity. Buckingham and Clifton lay out that populate spend too much time identifying and trying to destroy their flaws. A better assumption they claim is that a person’s “greatest dwell for growth is the areas of his or her greatest strength” (
p.8). Since taking the evaluate. I’ve certainly been thinking about how I might become better at things I do well. But I’ve also been thinking about this in relation to students. Organizing a class so that students can bring home the bacon on what they do beat and continue to create those skills is a good come. It’s tempting to pounce on errors right away but if the positive psychologists are right that may only make the errors worse and actually prevent the student from doing exceed. If you have the chance to take StrengthsFinder. I recommend it.-----I wish you are planning to attend a TYCA regional conference this fall (unless you're in the TYCA Southeast region which has its conference in February). For more information about attending a regional conference mouse.
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Related article:
http://tyca-blog.blogspot.com/2007/09/clifton-strengthsfinder-and-me.html
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