Teacher Hiring Research Articles

Ethnolinguistic vitality among Japanese-Brazilians: challenges and possibilities

This paper explores ethnolinguistic vitality among Japanese-Brazilians (Nikkeis). First, an 18-item questionnaire was administered to 33 individuals who attended a seminar on bilingual studies held in São Paulo. Then, two bilingual Nikkei teachers who participated in the questionnaire and who grew up to be bilinguals themselves were invited for a more in-depth one-on-one follow-up interview. This study confirms the importance of parental involvement as well as various social infrastructures that give rise to quality teacher training and community establishment. Key issues identified were: (1) linguistic and cultural capital ascribed to Japanese language and cultural knowledge, (2) persistence of the native-speaker myth, (3) the complex constellation of Nikkei, and (4) the lack of partnership between the Brazilian Government and Japanese-sponsored institutions. From our participants' narratives, we discovered that society still strongly reinforces beliefs that language teaching should be delivered by native L1 speakers, and that this ascription of native speaker superiority is impeding the training and hiring of Nikkei teachers. It is crucial to establish Brazilian-Japanese governmental partnerships to realize effective Japanese language education in Brazil. Finally, further collecting and disseminating of Nikkei teachers' voices is called for in order to challenge the hegemonic discourse prevalent in language teaching today.

How important are school principals in the production of student achievement?

AbstractAs school leaders, principals can influence student achievement in a number of ways, such as hiring and firing of teachers, monitoring instruction and maintaining student discipline, among many others. We measure the effect of individual principals on gains in math and reading achievement between grades 4 and 7 using a value‐added framework. We estimate that a one standard deviation improvement in principal quality can boost student performance by 0.289 to 0.408 standard deviations in reading and math, while the principal at the 75th percentile improves scores by 0.170 to 0.193 relative to the median principal. Our results imply that isolating the most effective principals and allocating them accordingly between schools can have a significant positive effect on reducing achievement gaps.

PROTOCOL: The Effects of School‐Based Decision Making on Educational Outcomes in Low and Middle Income Contexts: A Systematic Review

PROTOCOL: The Effects of School‐Based Decision Making on Educational Outcomes in Low and Middle Income Contexts: A Systematic Review

The First Competitive Examinations for Teacher Selection: The Construction of Order without Didactics

The main purpose of this article is to analyze the competitive examinations (concursos) developed for the hiring of public school teachers in Brazil in the XIX century. An analysis of these competitive examinations explaining the characteristics that the government required of people whom it wished to hire as teachers represents an important approach to recovering the history of teachers, which the history of teacher training programs and Didactics itself seems to hide. The research on which this article is based has the goal of discussing the history of the subject from the standpoint of analyzing the exams for teacher selection, namely the content, skills, and characteristics required of an individual to be hired as a teacher in a public school. Considering that Didactics is the subject from which future professionals acquire everything that they must know and the skills necessary to be a professional, we dig into the history of this school subject related to the history of Normal Schools (teacher training schools) in Brazil. We also present the analysis of the competitive examinations for teacher selection, considering the content, skills, and characteristics required for an individual to be hired as a teacher in a public school. In our attempt to analyze this process, we highlight legislative acts from 1809 to 1880 related to the hiring of teachers in the Primitivo Moacyr collection. These sources contain the respective exams and procedural documents for the following years: 1876, 1878, 1881, 1883, 1884, 1885, and 1886. All evidence appears to indicate that although the competitive examinations, including all official apparatus, were conducted as a matter of appearances only, their legitimacy was still provisional, as suggested by both the procedural documents and some legal documents. We conclude that the knowledge required to hire teachers was not Didactics but behavior because, in countries such as Brazil where the “welfare state” was never completely constructed, the school served as the first “reception room” of the state, and the elementary school teacher, always a woman, was the “receptionist”.

Arte Nova e Eclectismo no palacete projectado por Ernesto Korrodi para a família Bouhon

No início do século XX, o design de interiores resultava do trabalho desenvolvido por arquitectos, decoradores, pintores ou entalhadores. Embora então integrado no universo das artes decorativas, acreditamos que já existia como prática profissional regulada por uma rede coerente de princípios de concepção e pelo entendimento do espaço interior como teia global de relações que se estabelece entre planos, ornamento, iluminação e mobiliário. No final do século anterior, perante a necessidade de proceder a uma reforma do ensino industrial, o governo português abrira um concurso para contratação de professores estrangeiros. Evidenciamos o papel de Ernesto Korrodi (1870-1944). As suas obras decorrem de uma atitude paradoxalmente ecléctica e moderna, apoiando-se por um lado, numa reinterpretação de soluções referenciadas no período medieval ou na Renascença; por outro, em fórmulas sediadas nos movimentos Arts and Crafts, Arte Nova (Art Nouveau) ou Secessão. Nos seus projectos persistem determinadas dependências e hierarquias, mas estas se cruzam com as necessidades despertadas pelas inovações técnicas, o que faz com que se preocupe também com a resposta à eclosão de novas funções e mobiliário na casa, a par das exigências higienistas do momento. O presente artigo consiste na análise da casa da família Bouhon, localizada na cidade da Covilhã, Portugal. Se a Arte Nova marca as suas fachadas, no interior deparamo-nos com espaços mais depurados, marcados por apontamentos decorativos, incorporados na azulejaria e nos tectos estucados ou em caixotões. O ornamento contribui, deste modo, para a dignificação dos planos das paredes, lambris e tectos, assumindo um papel fundamental na composição espacial.

Exploring Differences in the Distribution of Teacher Qualifications Across Mexico and South Korea: Evidence from the Teaching and Learning International Survey

Background/Context Although substantial evidence from the United States indicates that more qualified teachers are disproportionately concentrated among academically and economically advantaged children, little cross-national research has examined the distribution of teacher qualifications across schools and students. As a result, we know little about how different institutional contexts, policies, and priorities influence children's access to qualified teachers. Research Question Our research questions are: (1) Are the qualifications of lower-secondary teachers within and across Mexico and South Korea distributed uniformly across schools? (2) If not, does the distribution of teacher qualifications in each country favor less or more advantaged children? (3) How can dissimilarities in teacher-related policies and educational priorities help to explain differences in the distribution of teacher qualifications across Mexico and South Korea? Research Design We employ secondary analysis of data from the Teaching and Learning International Survey, which was conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2007/2008. We use these data to describe the distribution of various teacher qualifications across communities of different sizes and across schools with varying levels of parental education. We also explore cross-national differences in institutional priorities and teacher-related policies. We compare Mexico and South Korea because while these two countries are similar in the level of teacher hiring and assignment, they are quite different in terms of their general commitment to educational equity. Findings/Results We find that the distribution of qualified teachers in South Korea is skewed toward disadvantaged children, while Mexican teachers tend to be distributed in a way that favors more advantaged students. Specifically, in South Korea students living in rural areas and those in schools with lower average parental education have greater access to better educated and more experienced teachers. The opposite occurs in Mexico. Conclusions/Recommendations We argue that these differences are due to both explicit policies and a greater commitment to educational equity in South Korea, relative to Mexico. Moreover, these differences are likely to be related to large cross-national differences in educational performance and equity.

The Challenge of Education and Learning in the Developing World

Across many different contexts, randomized evaluations find that school participation is sensitive to costs: Reducing out-of-pocket costs, merit scholarships, and conditional cash transfers all increase schooling. Addressing child health and providing information on how earnings rise with education can increase schooling even more cost-effectively. However, among those in school, test scores are remarkably low and unresponsive to more-of-the-same inputs, such as hiring additional teachers, buying more textbooks, or providing flexible grants. In contrast, pedagogical reforms that match teaching to students' learning levels are highly cost effective at increasing learning, as are reforms that improve accountability and incentives, such as local hiring of teachers on short-term contracts. Technology could potentially improve pedagogy and accountability. Improving pre- and postprimary education are major future challenges.

Public Employee Quality in a Geographic Context

Recruiting high quality employees is one of the key functions of public human resource managers and a critical component of effective public service delivery. This is particularly true in education but little is known about public sector or teacher hiring patterns in areas that are predominantly rural, poor, and isolated from other locales. This article begins to fill that gap. We find that rural educational agencies employ the new teachers of lowest observed aptitude, implying that organizational outcomes associated with these districts may differ in systematic ways that reinforce longstanding gaps in quality. As such, human resources strategies for increasing the attractiveness of geographically and culturally isolated regions for high quality public service are needed. These strategies are likely to require different policy prescriptions than those utilized to enhance the attractiveness to employees in urban areas.

Evaluating Prospects: The Criteria Used to Hire New Teachers

Teacher hiring decisions have far-reaching effects. Accordingly, it is important that prospective teachers be scrutinized carefully. The process that yields new teacher hires also deserves careful analysis. This article reports on key findings derived from a larger study that examined the overall organization of the hiring process and how criteria were weighted in both the screening and selection phases of the process throughout school divisions in Manitoba, Canada. The study, which used a Likert-like scale questionnaire, obtained information from superintendents in three-quarters of Manitoba’s school divisions. Using a multi-criteria decision making analysis approach, the findings suggest three general themes, namely: (a) there is significant variation among divisions regarding the degree of centralization of hiring, (b) evaluations made during interviews are the most important factor in deciding whom to hire, and (c) orthodox measures of academic proficiency are de-emphasized. The findings suggest that while candidates obviously deserve careful scrutiny, so too does the process that purports to yield the best results from any given group of applicants.

TeacherInsight and the Selection and Hiring of Bilingual Speakers of English

Although the use of structured interview protocols for selecting and hiring teachers is not new, the use of online screeners such as the TeacherInsight interview is relatively recent and becoming more common. These online tools are being used not only to screen candidates for full‐time teaching positions but also to filter out candidates for substitute teaching and student teaching internships. This article traces the development of the TeacherInsight interview, examines studies linking high performance on the interview to student achievement and successful teaching, and discusses its impact on prospective teachers, especially bilingual and second language users of English. The proprietary nature of the TeacherInsight, lack of feedback to applicants, and its use as a high‐stakes assessment tool lead to questions about the predictive validity of this tool, the consequences of its use, and its place in the teacher selection and hiring process.

The Timing of Teacher Hires and Teacher Qualifications: Is There an Association?

Background Case studies suggest that late hiring timelines are common in large urban school districts and result in the loss of qualified teachers to surrounding suburbs. To date, however, there has been no large-scale quantitative investigation of the relationship between the timing of teacher hires and teacher qualifications. Purpose This study examines the pervasiveness of late teacher hiring in urban and suburban school districts and explores the association between the timing of teacher hires and teacher qualifications, including certification, master's degree, and selectivity of undergraduate institution. Research Design Nationally representative cross-sectional data collected by the National Center for Education Statistics are used. Data Analysis The study uses data on school districts, public schools, and teachers from the 1999–2000 Schools and Staffing Survey. Secondary data are analyzed using multiple regression, including labor market fixed effects, to estimate the relationship between the timing of teacher hires and teacher qualifications. Results On average, districts hire 45% of their new teachers late—during the second half of summer and once the school year has already begun. Late hiring is more pervasive in urban and low-socioeconomic-status districts where over half of new hires take place during this late period. In urban districts, fully one fifth of new hires are made once the school year has already begun. The proportion of teachers hired late, however, does not predict the Barron's ratings of teachers’ undergraduate institutions, certification, or master's degree. Conclusions Although descriptive results indicate that late hiring is pervasive and more pronounced in urban districts, analyses do not provide evidence supporting the notion that earlier hiring is associated with hiring better credentialed teachers. Despite these null results, it is important to remember that late hires are still likely to cause problems for students, as well as for teachers, schools, and districts.

Does Charter Status Determine Preferences? Comparing the Hiring Preferences of Charter and Traditional Public School Principals

The academic success of any school depends on its teachers. However, relatively little research exists on the qualities principals value in teacher hiring, and we know almost nothing about charter school principals’ preferences. This article addresses this gap in the literature using survey results for a matched sample of charter and traditional public school principals. We compare regression-adjusted survey responses of charter and traditional public school principals to examine whether charter school principals report placing more emphasis on teacher hiring than principals in traditional public schools and whether principals’ preferences for teacher qualifications and characteristics vary between charter and traditional public schools. While we find some mean differences in principals’ reported hiring focus and preferences across charter and traditional public schools, regression results indicate that these differences are driven not by charter status but by school characteristics, such as average teacher experience and school enrollment.

Use of ePortfolios in K-12 teacher hiring in North Carolina: Perspectives of school principals

This study explored the perceptions of principals involved in the hiring process of K–12 teachers in 11 counties in southeastern North Carolina. Forty-nine principals responded to a survey on ePortfolio use in the hiring process: the pros and cons, desirable artifacts, stage of use, preferred delivery method, and improvements that can increase their usage. We examined each of these questions and whether certain factors (prior use, technology skills, and years as a hiring agent) predict principals' ePortfolio use. Our findings suggest that ePortfolios provide improved and current information about teacher candidates that is easily accessible and organized. Collectively, this allows principals to assess teacher candidates’ suitability for employment. Although, there are problems associated with ePortfolio use during hiring, which are detailed below, the results suggest that principals most frequently use ePortfolios during the interview process, prefer delivery via a website address, and that prior use is the best predictor of future ePortfolio use.

“The Issue Is the Control of Public Schools”: The Politics of Desegregation in Prince Edward County, Virginia

issue is not people versus public schools ... issue is control of public schools. question is: Will public education be controlled by people who pay for it, or by fideral courts, which under pressure of organized minorities threaten to dominate it? --J. Barrye Wall, The True Story of Prince Edward (1) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Before a packed crowd of over 700 parents, teachers, and students, R. R. Moton High School alumnus Willie Shepperson revealed high stakes involved with public school desegregation. At April 28, 1969, Prince Edward County school board meeting, he outlined county's troubling educational and racial history and assured school officials that blacks, like whites, did not want interracial marriage. Instead, he argued, the issue is equalization. Shepperson's pronouncement was a step forward from earlier NAACP equalization suits of 1930s and 1940s, in which lawyers pushed federal courts to uphold aspect of separate but equal by equalizing material resources. Integration held more promise for African Americans' full participation in educational decision-making by enabling them to operate outside of Jim Crow racial geographies and power structures. To Shepperson and other Prince Edward County parents, this articulation of equality signaled a shift from a focus on racial integration to something more desirable: power to determine their children's education. Warning school officials that blacks were being pushed to limit, Shepperson implored school board to act quickly to right racial wrongs done so consistently in county. (2) central issue, in what Moton High School principal Alfred O. Hosley called the straw that broke camel's back, was firing of popular white English teacher Thomas Burwell (T. B.) Robinson Jr. In minds of African American community, Robinson's immediate dismissal without just cause opened door to a host of other examples of an uneven balance of power in school decision-making--including hiring and firing of teachers, curricular choices, and resource allocation. Speaking to a growing sense of political and educational empowerment, Shepperson powerfully communicated to Prince Edward County school board black students' demands for African American control over school policies and hiring procedures. (3) Like Shepperson, newspaper editor and publisher J. Barrye Wall realized significance of who controlled public schools. Wall used Farmville Herald to promote racial segregation. He argued that whites did not oppose public education of blacks; they opposed that the Negro children of Prince Edward are suffering fate of being pawns in hands of pressure politicians, more intent upon integrating races, thereby stirring racial tensions, than in educating and developing Negro people. Of county's 14,379 residents, sixty-three percent were white and thirty-seven percent were African American. Yet public schools remained over 97 percent black, illuminating a huge disparity between county population and public school representation. It was no surprise that heated debates over how school decisions would be made, and by whom, would mark subsequent years of school desegregation, and they would call into question roles of power and choice across changing racial landscape of South. (4) Prince Edward County epitomized importance of racial politics in field of public education. In 1951, a Moron High School strike, led by sixteen-year-old Barbara Rose Johns, drew public attention to conditions in overcrowded and grossly underfunded black segregated high school. Refusing to change its Jim Crow schools, all-white school board stalled any financing of school improvements. Black students and parents signed a petition making Prince Edward one of five communities that composed NAACP-sponsored Brown v. …

Problematic Preferences? A Mixed Method Examination of Principals’ Preferences for Teacher Characteristics in Chicago

Purpose: Relatively little is known about how principals make decisions about teacher hiring. This article uses mixed methods to examine what characteristics principals look for in teachers. Research Methods: Data were gathered using a mixed method approach, including in-depth interviews with a representative sample of 31 principals as well as an online survey of 368 principals in the Chicago Public Schools. Data analysis techniques included both qualitative analysis to look for patterns and themes and exploratory regression analysis of surveys to examine variation in preferences across school and principal characteristics. Findings: Results indicate that principals focus on behaviors and skills rather than qualifications. Principals report looking for teachers who care about students, have content knowledge, are willing to go beyond contractual obligations, and have classroom management skills. Principals, in general, talk extensively about caring, classroom management, and willingness to “give extra,” while most say little about content knowledge or teaching skills. Preferences vary substantially across low- and high-achieving schools. Implications: Whether the skills and behaviors that principals report focusing on during the teacher-hiring process are those that will benefit their students most is an important question, particularly because even ineffective teachers are rarely dismissed from public schools.

Effective Schools: Teacher Hiring, Assignment, Development, and Retention

The literature on effective schools emphasizes the importance of a quality teaching force in improving educational outcomes for students. In this article we use value-added methods to examine the relationship between a school's effectiveness and the recruitment, assignment, development, and retention of its teachers. Our results reveal four key findings. First, we find that more effective schools are able to attract and hire more effective teachers from other schools when vacancies arise. Second, more effective schools assign novice teachers to students in a more equitable fashion. Third, teachers who work in schools that were more effective at raising achievement in a prior period improve more rapidly in a subsequent period than do those in less effective schools. Finally, we find that more effective schools are better able to retain higher-quality teachers. The results point to the importance of personnel and, perhaps, school personnel practices for improving student outcomes.

Who Benefits from KIPP?

AbstractThe nation's largest charter management organization is the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP). KIPP schools are emblematic of the No Excuses approach to public education, a highly standardized and widely replicated charter model that features a long school day, an extended school year, selective teacher hiring, strict behavior norms, and emphasizes traditional reading and math skills. No Excuses charter schools are sometimes said to target relatively motivated high achievers at the expense of students who are more difficult to teach, including limited English proficiency (LEP) and special education (SPED) students, as well as students with low baseline achievement levels. We use applicant lotteries to evaluate the impact of KIPP Academy Lynn, a KIPP school in Lynn, Massachusetts that typifies the KIPP approach. Our analysis focuses on special needs students that may be underserved. The results show average achievement gains of 0.36 standard deviations in math and 0.12 standard deviations in reading for each year spent at KIPP Lynn, with the largest gains coming from the LEP, SPED, and low‐achievement groups. Average reading gains are driven almost entirely by SPED and LEP students, whose reading scores rise by roughly 0.35 standard deviations for each year spent at KIPP Lynn.

The Effect of Facebook on Teaching Applicants' Employability in Georgia

The purpose of this study was to determine if Facebook had an impact on the employability of prospective teachers in K-12 public education in the State of Georgia. The participants in this study included one hundred and ten administrators (all involved in the hiring of teachers) across the state of Georgia. These administrators were asked to answer a short survey that measured their usage of Facebook when investigating prospective teaching applicants applying at their school. The results of the study indicate that even though a growing number of administrators are using Facebook, at this time there is not a significant amount of administrators currently using Facebook to investigate prospective teaching applicants in Georgia. However, over half of the administrators surveyed said they would consider doing so in the future. This increase in usage could impact prospective teachers that utilize Facebook.

Beyond Incentives: Do Schools Use Accountability Rewards Productively?

We use a regression discontinuity design to analyze an understudied aspect of school accountability systems—how schools use financial rewards. For two years, California's accountability system financially rewarded schools based on a deterministic function of test scores. Qualifying schools received per-pupil awards amounting to about 1% of statewide per-pupil spending. Corroborating anecdotal evidence that awards were paid out as teacher bonuses, we find no evidence that winning schools purchased more instructional material, increased teacher hiring, or changed the subject-specific composition of their teaching staff. Most importantly, we find no evidence that student achievement increased in winning schools. Supplemental materials for this article are available online.

Context matters: principals' sensemaking of teacher hiring and on‐the‐job performance

PurposeSchool principals make sense of multiple messages, policies, and contexts within their school environments. The purpose of this paper is to examine specifically how school leaders make sense of hiring and subjective evaluation of on‐the‐job teacher performance.Design/methodology/approachThis qualitative study drew from 42 interviews with 21 principals from a mid‐sized Florida school district. Two rounds of semi‐structured interviews (one to two hours each) were conducted with the informants over two summers (2005‐2006). The multi‐year study allows the authors to assess the consistency across principal participants.FindingsPrincipals' personal beliefs, background, and experiences were found to shape their conceptions and preferences for teacher characteristics. School type (e.g. elementary, secondary, levels of poverty) also influenced principals' perceptions of and preferences for specific applicant and teacher characteristics. Principals in the sample, however, showed surprising consistency towards certain characteristics (caring, subject matter knowledge, strong teaching skills) and job fit (person‐job). Sampled principals reported that each vacancy is different and is highly dependent on the position, team, and individuals. Regardless of the position or school setting, federal, state, and district mandates strongly influenced how principals made sense of the hiring process and on‐the‐job performance.Practical implicationsThe findings underscore the complexity of the human resource functions in education and raise important questions of how school leaders reconcile personal preferences and building‐level needs with demands from the district, state, and federal levels.Originality/valueThe authors' findings offer important insight into the complex conceptualizations that principals hold and the balances that must be struck in the face of policy and hiring constraints. How principals make sense of teacher quality, however, has not been examined. This study contributes to the extant research and makes a theoretical contribution to studies using a cognitive frame to understand school leadership.