The Enneagram Intelligences: Understanding Personality for Effective Teaching and Learning

First taught in the United States in 1971, the Enneagram is now used in counseling settings, corporations, university classrooms (including Stanford Business School) and other educational institutions. The Enneagram system is a model of human development which describes nine patterns of personality. Each type is distinct with its own point of view and focus of attention based on nine psychological strategies. Janet Levine, a long-term educator, and with many years experience using the model, has through research and refinement, pioneered an application for educators and students in their quest to facilitate teaching and learning. This is an in-depth description of the system, and a practical guide.

The Enneagram Intelligences pioneers a new field, a study of the impact of personality in education on both teaching and learning styles, and other areas of institutions—for instance, the faculty roles and rewards debate. The Enneagram model describes with great accuracy why we behave the way we do. The book is a practical guide to understanding personality and applying that knowledge in all educational dynamics. Through the words and observations of educators, we gain insight into the Enneagram. We can see and understand the 360 degrees of human possibility, and are no longer limited to our forty degree take on reality. This liberates us into a new understanding of ourselves and others, a new way of perceiving differences.

Levine's book does for personality and teaching and learning styles what other great innovations such as those of A.S. Neill, Maria Montessori, Rudolf Steiner, John Dewey, Isabel Myers and Katherine Briggs, and Ernest Boyer have done for education in general: move forward the frontier of understanding, shift the paradigm, change the perceptual lens.