Instructor's Manual for

Personality: A Systems Approach

PLANNING THE COURSE

• Overview of the Planning the Course Area
• Course Planning and the Organization of the Book
• Test Placement and the Course
• An Electronic Date Calculator for the Semester
• Sample Assignments
• The Course Syllabus

Course Planning and the Organization of the Book

The Standard Organization

It is admittedly a very basic point, but I do much of the planning for the course around the book’s organization – that is, around the book’s four sections, which in turn are subdivided into 12 individual chapters (a Table of Contents is at the bottom of this page).

Recall that the four sections are:

• Examining Personality (Chapters 1-3)
• Personality’s Parts (Chapters 4-7)
• Personality Organization, and (Chapters 8-10)
• Personality Development (Chapters 11-12)

I schedule an exam after each of the first three sections during the semester, and then use the final exam to cover Personality Development. That makes the final exam implicitly cumulative, as the book is cumulative in its treatment of the personality system. For example, the last section on personality development assumes knowledge of such concepts as the Big Five (from Chapter 8: How the Parts Fit Together), self-control (from 10: Dynamics of the Self) and of many different other parts and dynamics of personality.

So far, instructors I have spoken to who have used the book all divide the course by the basic units of the book. Still some (including myself) have considered variations in the book’s order of chapters, and in using less than the complete textbook. I describe the variations I have heard discussed here in case one or more of them might be appealing.

Possible Variations In Order of Coverage

1. Reversing Chapters 2: Research in Personality and 3: Perspectives on Personality.

Most instructors using the book prefer to cover Chapter 3: Perspectives on Personality before they cover 2: Research in Personality. Reversing the two chapters has a number of advantages. The idea here is that students will be engaged more effectively by covering the theory chapter first, before the methods chapter. Moreover, chapter 2: Research in Personality then leads right into Chapter 4: Motives and Emotions, where I have been careful to highlight a number of the methods described earlier in 2: Research in Personality.

I still teach methods first …I like to teach methods, I have some good demonstrations, and I believe I can engage students with that chapter. In particular, I focus on the individual differences aspect of the chapter – the section “What Does it Mean to Measure Personality?” in particular – and I think the way I do it helps students to think more deeply about the “Who am I?” question introduced in chapter 1: What Is Personality.

2. De-emphasizing Chapter 6: Mental Abilities and Navigating the World

Not everyone feels comfortable covering mental abilities, especially, I think, because some instructors are concerned that students will feel uncomfortable discussing the topic, or the topic may be perceived as elitist, and be discouraging to some students.

I conceived and wrote Chapter 6 in such a way as to minimize these concerns. Rather than focusing on a single kind of mental ability, the chapter examines many different kinds of mental abilities (e.g., creativity and emotional intelligence, among others).

Nonetheless, if the semester gets tight in terms of classroom time, I often ask students to cover this chapter on their own.

3. Placing Chapter 8: How the Parts Fit Together Before

the Beginning of the Unit: Parts of Personality

Other instructors have mentioned this possibility to me, though as far as I know, no one has actually given it a try. The idea is that having a model of the parts of personality – be it the Big Five approach, or the Systems Set division into four areas (energy development, knowledge guidance, action implementation, and conscious management), or the Trilogy-of-Mind (motivation, emotion, and cognition) can serve as an advance organizer for the parts of personality the students then go on to learn. I think this is a good point. My concern is that it breaks up the coverage of personality organization later on, and that it may focus too much on a specific structural organization, but it may work well for some instructors.