Eliciting Mental Models

Mental models are the tacit assumptions, generalizations or images that affect people's behavior and actions. The educational system is influenced by the mental models of teaching and learning held by teachers. There has not been a study of teacher's mental models that employs imagery as a tool for deliberately elicting teachers' mental models of teaching and learning. This work explored the use of an imagery method: "Eliciting mental models" for accessing and analyzing the images and mental models of teaching and learning held by 16 teachers. In this study there seemed to be a relationship between Jungian psychological type and the content of both the imagery and mental models of these teachers. The literature review on imagery, the Myers Briggs Type Indicator and mental models in relationship to teaching and learning should be of interest to educators, faculty development specialists, trainers and therapists. Researchers interested in the Myers Briggs Type Indicator or in the imagery field may want to use the "eliciting mental models" process to further explore the relationship between images, mental models and psychological type.