Student Personnel Research in Teacher Education

Abstract

In his review, Durflinger (1963b) endorsed a point of view toward the recruitment and selection of teachers as presented by Lindsey (1961) in New Horizons for the Teaching Profession. This report, developed under the auspices of the National Commission on Teacher Education and Professional Standards (NCTEPS), stated that the teaching profession has responsibility for determining the student characteristics required in the preparation of effective teachers. Knowledge of such characteristics should guide recruitment and selection activities. current reviewers accept this point of view but recognize that it is not held universally (Rugg, 1965). Gage (1964) has observed that the variable called teacher effectiveness may be regarded as the dependent variable in the whole chain of variables with which student personnel workers in teacher education are concerned. He says, The recruitment, selection, admission, retention, counseling, placement, and certification of teachers are all aimed at maximizing teacher Hence, in strict logic, at least, if not in actual practice, all the aspects of student personnel work in teacher education must wait for their validation upon the definition and measurement of teacher effectiveness. Dunnette (1963), writing about the prediction of job success, tells us that we should cease searching for single or composite measures of job success and proceed to undertake research which accepts the world of success dimensionality as it really exists. He says, It would seem wiser to investigate the separate relationships between each of the predictors and each of the available measures-of job success. Gage (1964) stated that teaching includes such different roles as disciplinarian, adviser, counselor, motivator, information giver, explainer, demonstrator, housekeeper, record keeper, curriculum planner, and evaluator. In preparing the present chapter, the reviewers take the position that it is not reasonable to expect to identify the criterion of effective teaching, whether it be a single factor or a composite of weighted and summed factors. search for predictors is more likely to be successful if criterion characteristics are dealt with one at a time. These criteria may be associated with different activities performed by teachers, or they may be necessary steps along the way to becoming a teacher, such as graduation from college with all that this implies about grade point averages, persistence, and occupational decisions. After examining the NCTEPS position, the problem of effectiveness criteria, and the relevant research literature of the past three years, the