Topic: Use of personality tests in workplace training

Objectives: To explore the core elements of the test taker’s experience when confronted with personality test feedback and to identify whether the use of a personality test during workplace training leads to transformative learning.

Introduction to research study: One can argue whether the output of a personality test can possibly describe a person. Also, it is debated whether personality tests always measure what they say they would measure, and whether they do this in a consistent way. However, a certain trend can be observed in the practice of using personality tests as a tool for self and team development during workplace training courses across Europe. With over 2,500 different tests on the market creating a $400 million-a-year industry (Paul, 2005; Talbot, 1999), personality tests have long made their way into the spheres vocational education and training (VET).

This research study focuses its attention on the context of personality test use within the VET setting in general, and more specifically on the test taker’s perception of its use during a workplace training initiative. The questionnaire is completed beforehand, and the participants receive their personality test feedback during the training course. With their feedback booklet, the participants first explore their own profile – how it is composed and what it means in terms of preferences and ways of working – and then look at the team perspective and team composition.

Research question: What happens when personality tests are used during workplace training? How can we best describe the test taker’s cognitive and emotional experience and learning process that takes place in this situation? Can we speak of transformative learning?

Theoretical framework: This study builds on a theoretical framework of transformative learning espoused by Mezirow (1991, 2000, 2009) that emphasises personal transformation and growth, and where the unit of analysis is primary the individual. Based on an extensive study of women who returned to school after a long period of time, Mezirow coined the concept of transformative learning in the effort to develop a comprehensive theory of adult learning. Within transformative learning, critical reflection is a central concept (Fenwick, 2000); it is seen as the process of reconsidering experience through reason, and reinterpreting and generalizing the experience to form mental structures. Cranton (2006) differentiates between three different types of critical reflection: content, process and premise reflection. Individual experience, critical reflection and dialogue all form part of transformative learning according to Taylor (2009). Individual experience is the starting point of the learning process and it comprises prior experience as well as the classroom experience, whilst dialogue forms the medium of critical reflection.

This study will build on the transformative learning framework in general and the aspect of critical reflection more specifically to answer the research question. The study will draw from the findings of several European and international studies in which critical reflection was researched within different settings of adult education (Kember et al, 1999; Miettinen, 2000; Reynolds & Vince, 2004; Taylor, 2009).

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