| The purpose of this study was to determine whether university faculty's understanding of and concern for the ways adults engage in learning affect adult student satisfaction with their instruction. Further, this study investigated whether certain personality characteristics of faculty, which relate to their preferred teaching style, affect adult student satisfaction.;Thirty-six Arts and Sciences faculty, University of Missouri - St. Louis, were the subjects. All subjects taught noncredit programs through the university's Continuing Education-Extension Division, either on campus or at company worksites. Two instruments were completed by the study sample: Hadley's (1975) Educational Orientation Questionnaire (EOQ) and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). A third instrument measured the dependent variable, adult learner satisfaction: a noncredit instructor evaluation form routinely submitted to participants in the university's Continuing Education courses.;Statistical analyses of the data included the nonparametric analogue for the two-independent sample t-test, known as Mann-Whitney U, and Fisher's Exact test statistic, a nonparametric analogue for the chi-square.;Results of these analyses did not enable rejection of any of the null hypotheses; neither educational orientation nor psychological type had an effect on student satisfaction ratings for the sample. However, certain relationships among the sample characteristics were statistically significant. Specifically, there was a significant difference between andragogs and pedagogs in terms of gender: 78.6% of the andragogs were female compared to only 40.0% female among the pedagogs (p $<$.05). A second statistically significant relationship was detected between educational oriention and the judging-perceiving dimension of the MBTI: while 78.6% of the andragogs came out as perceiving types, 70.0% of the pedagogs came out as judging types (p $<$.01). Combining these two results, it was apparent that andragogical faculty were more likely to be female and perceiving types, while pedagogical faculty were more likely to be male and judging types. |
