The Enneagram Intelligences: Understanding Personality for Effective Teaching and Learning [Paperback]

Janet Levine (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0897895622 | ISBN-13: 978-0897895620 | Publication Date: January 30, 1999

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 has analyzed the system and refined it for use by educators and students in the quest to facilitate teaching and learning.

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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"[A] remarkable book. The belief that we can improve teaching and learning by understanding differences among personality types is as old as Aristotle. Levine has pulled together, for the first time, the enneagram intelligences into a comprehensive set of descriptions covering every possible student and teacher. Her descriptions are complete and comprehensive with compelling examples drawn from teachers and students in their own words. There are practical, useful tips to help educators work effectively within the strengths and limitations of each enneagram personality type.... The Enneagram Intelligences provides valuable insight into the different ways we act, teach and learn."-Daniel S. Cheever, Jr. President, Simmons College

Book Description

Pioneers a study of the impact of personality on education in both teaching and learning styles, and other areas of institutional life such as the faculty roles and rewards debate.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Praeger (January 30, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0897895622
• ISBN-13: 978-0897895620
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #802,879 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Janet Levine is an author (of four books) and a decades long freelance journalist. You can find details of her current and past work on her website http://janetlevine.com. She was born in South Africa and together with her American born husband and two sons immigrated to the United States in the early 1980s. She is a lifelong human rights activist, and a teacher in the broadest sense of the word: in the classroom she teaches and learns, when she writes she teaches and learns, and she has founded organizations that teach and where members can learn--basically her life is all about giving and taking and sharing ideas. Levine played her part in the anti-apartheid movement, is a well-published and well-reviewed author, and a fulfilled teacher. She also enjoys travel, gardening, taking photographs, hanging out...and meditating. Levine loves to connect with her readers and her blog allows her to do so.

Currently she is working on her second novel, "Conflagration: A Love Story", set in South Africa in the year 1960. The narrative is driven by the power of two burgeoning forces--the macrocosmic force of the grasping fist of apartheid tightening its grip on the throat of the South Africa people and the microcosmic force of the illicit and dangerous yet unstoppable love affair of Liv and Rosie--while the primeval land preens its beauty amid the turbulence of human passion and calls forth its true sons and daughters to sing of its beauty.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Concise, Applicable, Readable and Intelligent, May 2, 2000

By 

GraberDC (Denville, NJ United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Enneagram Intelligences: Understanding Personality for Effective Teaching and Learning (Paperback)

While the audience aimed at for this book appears to be educators, Ms. Levine's book on the enneagram is valuable for a wider audience. As she points out, we are all teachers and students in many aspects of our lives, and The Enneagram Intelligences give a clearer picture on how to effectively communicate and convey ideas, and how to understand the biases of ourselves and our students that can help or hinder this process.

Ms. Levine uses the "oral tradition" of enneagram presentation by using real people to describe their type and how it affects their perspectives on learning and living. I personally found her many descriptive examples of the characteristics of each type to be quite illuminating on identifying and understanding the worldview of each of the types. Her examples are much clearer than those in Helen Palmer's works, probably because Ms. Levine focused specifically on the area of education and learning styles. I especially gained insight on how my own enneastyle filters my perceptions and actions.

This book is especially valuable as a general work and as a reference guide to be referred to many times. I highly recommend it!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A tapestry of ideas, insights, emotions about teaching, April 15, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Enneagram Intelligences: Understanding Personality for Effective Teaching and Learning (Paperback)

Janet Levine has performed a significant service to teachers and learners of all types with this remarkable book. The author remains true to the oral tradition of Enneagram teaching, as she allows teachers and students of each type to speak in their own words about their thoughts, feelings and sense of themselves in the world. For people encountering the Enneagram for the first time, the energies and strategies of each type come alive in these pages, as the workshop experience of hearing panels of each type speak, is captured and encapsulated on these pages.

Teachers of all ages can delve right in, finding ways to apply insights from the Enneagram, an elegant, accurate model of nine personality types, in their professional lives. As we interact with colleagues and with students, the Enneagram forms a framework for exploring our core assumptions, motivations and reactions to situations. As Janet Levine presents these strategies, the Enneagram emerges as a vivid "tapestry" of human behavior that encompasses many facets of our whole personality. Our Enneagram Intelligence includes cognition, the ways we acquire and process information, and extends beyond this into the ways we live our lives.

As a teacher, researcher and author who is applying the Enneagram in her practice, Janet Levine brings experience, understanding, passion and compassion to the work she describes in this volume. As a pioneer in this field, she informs and inspires readers to take insights from this book forward to design their own educational experiments and transform classroom dynamics. As Levine writes, "The Enneagram model is playing a part in the revolution in education." (p. 282) Let this book sharpen your self-awareness and expand your vision, as you gaze into the Enneagram, a "lens for the 21st century."

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Superior tool for understanding teaching and learning, April 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Enneagram Intelligences: Understanding Personality for Effective Teaching and Learning (Paperback)

Janet Levine's recently published book entitled "Enneagram Intelligences" is must reading for teachers and educators who want to reflect on their teaching praxis and on the influence of their own and their students' personalities on the common endeavour of teaching and learning in which they are engaged. The book has already had a major impact on the teaching staff of my school. I have been reading Enneagram studies for several years now and have attempted to make this powerful personality technology available to the teachers on my staff. My efforts have not always proved successful. After reading Levine's book, I decided to use her particular application of the Enneagram in structuring a workshop for my staff. The results were wonderful. The book's stress on the Enneagram from a teaching perspective spoke very eloquently to those who define themselves primarily as teachers. Unable to decide on an Enneagram point for months, many teachers responded immediately to the characterizations in "Enneagram Intelligences" and were able to define themselves in the typology and arrive at a better understanding of their teaching strategies. Particularly useful are the interviews with various teachers as well as the short section on different grading strategies employed by the nine Enneatypes. The examples of different Enneagram strategies chosen by Ms. Levine are excellent. They speak directly to teachers and make this personality technology accessible and revelatory. The book has an immensely practical and immediate application in teaching. The sections that deal with the very different ways that students approach learning and especially assessment based on their Enneagram style had a profound effect on the teachers to whom I introduced her work. A number of them have placed orders for the book. We are exploring ways of making Ms. Levine's work on Enneagram Intelligences the focal point for a renewal of our school culture. This is an excellent book about a powerful new way of understanding the role of personality in teaching and learning.