Date of Award

Fall 10-2013

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Department

Education

First Advisor

Dr. Graham Weir

Second Advisor

Dr. Deb Ayres

Third Advisor

Dr. Sherrie Wisdom

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine if a commercial teacher selection tool, the Ventures for Excellence Teacher StyleProfile, had a statistically significant relationship with teacher evaluation and performance feedback data gathered during a teacher’s first year of teaching in the Midwest School District. A review of the literature confirmed the importance of teacher selection. School improvement initiatives have verified the need to improve the process of teacher selection as a critical variable in the improvement of instruction and student performance. These initiatives have fostered the exploration of utilizing commercial assessment tools to objectify and improve the hiring process. The online Teacher StyleProfile yields a teacher-centered score and a student-centered score. The researcher anticipated that prospective teachers with a higher student-centered score would receive superior evaluations and performance feedback. The 60 hypotheses in this study tested the relationship of the teacher-centered score and the student-centered score in relation to evaluation and performance feedback data collected during a teacher’s first year teaching in the Midwest School District. The site of the study was a school district located in the Midwest that serves approximately 5,800 students. A random sample of 45 elementary and 45 secondary teachers were selected from a population of 64 elementary and 72 secondary teachers employed between FY’08 and FY’13. The study was quantitative utilizing the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient. iii An analysis of the 60 hypotheses revealed one medium statistically significant correlation between the student-centered score of the Teacher StyleProfile and the classroom management portion of the teacher evaluation at the secondary level. An important finding of the study related to the teacher evaluation data revealed that the principals in the Midwest School District frequently rated teachers highly inferring little differentiation in performance. The literature indicated that this is a common occurrence with teacher evaluations. These findings merit further study along with a continued focus on applying quantitative measures to the evaluation of teacher selection tools and evaluation processes.

Rights

Copyright 2013

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