A Temperament for Teaching? Associations Between ...

684764 EROXXX10.1177/2332858416684764Bastian et al.A Temperament for Teaching? research-article2017

AERA Open January-March 2017, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 1?17

DOI: 10.1177/2332858416684764 ? The Author(s) 2017.

A Temperament for Teaching? Associations Between Personality Traits and Beginning Teacher Performance and Retention

Kevin C. Bastian University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

David M. McCord Western Carolina University

Julie T. Marks University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Dale Carpenter Western Carolina University

The "greening" (i.e., inexperience) of the U.S. teacher workforce puts a premium on districts and schools hiring effective and persistent beginning teachers. Given the limitations of characteristics currently available at the time of hiring (e.g., academic ability, preparation type), we built off previous research in economics and psychology to investigate associations between personality traits and first-year teachers' performance and retention in North Carolina public schools. Using the 5-factor model of personality, we find that conscientiousness is significantly associated with higher value-added estimates, higher evaluation ratings, and higher retention rates. Additionally, general self-efficacy, a subdomain of conscientiousness, is significantly associated with teacher value added and evaluation ratings. These conscientiousness results are consistent with a rich body of evidence connecting conscientiousness-related measures to employee performance and retention across professions, and they suggest that districts and schools should consider using personality trait measures, along with other valid indicators, as a way to improve teacher hiring decisions.

Keywords: personality traits, teacher effectiveness, teacher retention

twenty-five years ago, the modal teacher experience category in the United States was 15 years. Today, first-year teachers are the largest experience category, and approximately 25% of the teacher workforce has 1,000 New York City mathematics teachers, but they have complete noncognitive data for only 333 teachers. Likewise, in the meta-analysis by Klassen and Tze (2014), nearly 80% of the reviewed studies included ................
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