Teacher

This Web resource introduces the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), one of the most common personality assessment tools. The report from this assessment can help an organization determine who may show leadership behaviors and which personalities would form a positive working environment. This type of assessment is most appropriate when hiring from a pool of candidates within a school. Online administration takes approximately 20 minutes. 

The Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal, which takes about an hour, measures crystallized intelligence—the ability to acquire, retain, organize, and conceptualize information—and is normed for sectors, including education, and for different roles, including managerial and executive positions. This instrument can help assess both analytical and conceptual thinking skills. 

The Graduate and Managerial Assessment (GMA) from 2006 was designed to assess those with higher ability and senior manager potential, aimed at the top 12.5 percent of the population. The GMA consists of three sections—verbal, numerical, and abstract. It measures crystallized intelligence (the ability to acquire, retain, organize, and conceptualize information) and, unlike the Watson-Glaser appraisal, also measures fluid intelligence (information processing and reasoning ability). It requires a qualified test administrator to conduct the analysis. 

In an article for School Administrator magazine, Lucy Steiner and Sharon Kebschull Barrett examine how understanding competencies—habits of behavior and underlying motivations, which can help predict how newly hired employees will do their jobs—can help administrators, such as those in Minneapolis, hire the leaders they need to turn around even the most troubled schools.

This toolkit from Public Impact is designed to help district officials identify and hire teachers who have the capacity and will to implement school turnarounds. This resource clarifies the critical competencies—habits of behavior and underlying motivations—that enable people to be successful in attempts to transform schools from failure to excellence quickly.

Designed around the job models of an Opportunity Culture, this toolkit includes job descriptions, behavioral competencies, and companion tools to select, evaluate, and develop teachers and staff.

This book by Signe and Lyle Spencer summarizes several decades of experience using the Behavior Event Interview method for selecting job candidates who are more likely to succeed in a particular role, based on the research of David McClelland, a pioneer in competency research and testing. The book includes a competency dictionary with scoring criteria for the competencies that predict superior performance in many jobs, including teaching. 

The U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board wrote this report to the president and Congress to help federal agencies improve how they assess job candidates. In addition to summarizing existing research on the effectiveness of various assessment methods, including work sample demonstrations, the report examines how training and experience is assessed, identifies challenges in obtaining accurate and useful information from applicants, and provides strategies for improving assessments. 

The University of Western Australia presents examples, advantages, disadvantages of work sample tests and instructions on how to create a work sample test. The work sample tests described here can be used to evaluate a variety of candidate characteristics and skills including critical thinking, organizational ability, ability to focus under a time constraint, and public speaking. 

The U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board wrote this report to the president and Congress to help federal agencies improve how they assess job candidates. In addition to summarizing existing research on the effectiveness of various assessment methods, the report examines how training and experience is assessed, identifies challenges in obtaining accurate and useful information from applicants, and provides strategies for improving such assessments.