"Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision."
~ Ayn Rand
~ Ayn Rand
Seen through the lens of my experience in this graduate program, several ideas have emerged as the bandleaders for practically every concept to which I’ve been exposed. In the next few paragraphs I’ll describe these unifying ideas and show how they’re related.
Before I begin, I should take the time to mention than I am extremely interested in personality and behavioral preferences as they relate to understanding human activity, particularly my own. As early as kindergarten, I realized I was different. Other people seemed to seek a mundane and mediocre existence. They strove for things I considered trivial. But in the process they seemed happy with their choices. How could they be happy with such shallow pursuits? When I entered the Coast Guard Academy, they administered the Myers-Briggs personality type indicator test, as a way for each cadet to better understand themselves, and as a way to reflect their personality preference against that of others in pursuit of better leadership.
I was intrigued to discover that my personality preference was found in less than one percent of the general population. I was also intrigued to discover that eleven percent of high ranking military leaders, corporate presidents, and elected officials possessed my personality type. So while my personality traits dropped me at one end of the overall bell curve, others like me had a higher than average track record with leadership and success. Since that moment I've taken every opportunity I could to better understand my personality, and that of others. Over the years I've augmented various versions of the Myers-Briggs assessment with a wide range of tests including the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, the NEO Personality Inventory, and even the Rorschach Inkblot test.
What was it about this personality type that made us unique? In their landmark work, David Keirsey and Marilyn Bates describe the type as the scientist and peripherally as the Promethean (Keirsey & Bates, 1978). We are people who question everything, but then test the answers we find, and try to make the answers adhere to a set of rules. If the answers can’t be contained by an existing set of rules, we develop and implement a new set of rules to contain the answers. Then, just as Prometheus brough fire to humanity, we bring our generalized answers and new rules to our fellows.
One of the most interesting assessments came to me as the result of my involvement with the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) here in San Diego. I received an offer for a free assessment from a company called Insights. Their Discovery Profile is based in large part to how personality traits relate to the color wheel. In their model, Red represents the Director personality, Yellow the inspirer, and so on. My test results showed me to be a Coordinating Observer, which is slightly Green (the coordinating part) and mostly Blue (the observer part). In the introductory section, the profile describes me thus:
"Edward is intensely curious and is always seeking to find coherence in endless amounts of data. He is adept at homing in on the essence of complicated, confusing situations. Edward tends to expect that sound organization, structure, and scheduling will benefit everyone."
~ Insights Discovery Profile 3.0.1, 1/21/2007
Sounds like those people were right inside my head! In my many years living with my preferential behavior, I’ve thought long and hard about the best way to synthesize the answers to my questions so they can be modeled for others. What emerged from my self-assessment were three ideas that have dovetailed nicely with many concepts presented throughout the Educational Technology experience.
Those ideas are The Bridge, The Ladder, and The Swiss Army Knife. In the next two sections, I’ll expand upon these ideas as they apply to my experience in EDTEC. To lay the groundwork for discussion, I’ll describe them briefly. The Bridge represents the connection between new knowledge and old, the elusive ability to step across into the unknown without falling. The Ladder represents the process by which new knowledge is built upon old, and then retains a grasp at a higher level to itself become old knowledge. The Swiss Army Knife represents multiple perspectives, allowing movement in whatever direction necessary to access knowledge and learning. If graphed in three dimensions, The Bridge would be width, The Ladder would be height, and The Swiss Army Knife would be depth.
Insights, (2007). Edward Beale Personal Profile. Discovery. 1, 6.
Keirsey, D, & Bates, M (1984). Please understand me (5th ed.). Del Mar, CA: Gnosology Books Ltd.
Additional References can be found within the various Standards refections.
Influential Instructor: Edmund R. Foy
I started high school physics during Ed Foy's first year teaching high school. He'd come from a college teaching adult continuing education, and expected us to learn like adults. What a concept for 17 year olds. He recommended me for a summer internship at the Fermi Labs in Chicago, and incorporated some of my questions as extra credit on the tests. He recognized my potential and refused to minimize my inquisitiveness. Ed Foy is one of the best instructional Bridge builders I've ever met.
