Haberman Star Teacher Interview as a predictor of success in urban teacher preparation

In urban schools, along with skills for effective teaching, successful teachers must also possess values and belief systems conducive to teaching effectively in diverse settings (Becker, Kennedy, & Hundersmarck, 2003; Haberman, 2008; Metzgar & Wu, 2008). As demonstrated in CAEP standard 3, there is a critical need for EPPs to admit candidates who have both the dispositions to be effective teachers in urban schools and the propensity for success within the preparation program. The Haberman Star Teacher Interview is a commercial teacher selection instrument designed for use in selecting teachers for urban schools. This study examines the validity of the instrument as a selection instrument for teacher preparation programs. The selection instrument was administered to 109 students before entry into an urban teacher preparation program at an urban university in the U.S. Midwest. Inter-rater agreement and principle components analysis provided evidence of reliability and structural validity of the multi-part Haberman scores. Logistic regression analyses supported the validity of using the Haberman scores to predict later program attrition, but not in the manner recommended by its developers. Within this paper, the authors recommend the cautious use of the instrument in urban teacher preparation. Application of scoring and program implications are discussed.

Transferability of Skills across Sectors and Heterogeneous Displacement Costs

We use rich German administrative data to estimate new measures of skill transferability between manufacturing and other sectors. These measures capture the value of workers' human capital when applied in different sectors and are directly related to workers' displacement costs. We estimate these transferability measures using a selection correction model, which addresses workers' endogenous mobility, and a novel selection instrument based on the social network of workers. Our results indicate substantial heterogeneity in how workers can transfer their skills when they move across sectors, which implies heterogeneous displacement costs that depend on the sector to which workers reallocate.

Commercial Teacher Selection Instruments: The Validity of Selecting Teachers Through Beliefs, Attitudes, and Values

One influential hypothesis for what makes teachers effective contends that the best teachers share a particular set of values about education, such as commitment, caring, or persistence. To translate affective beliefs, attitudes, and values into practicable teacher selection, many schools have turned to commercial teacher hiring instruments. This article synthesizes 24 studies of the most prominent teacher selection instrument, Gallup’s Teacher Perceiver Interview (TPI). Overall, we find a modest relationship (r̄=.28) between the TPI and some measure of teaching quality. The article explores complications that arise for schools from using beliefs, attitudes, and values to select among teacher candidates and discusses their implications for the educational-values hypothesis.