Screening Teachers in Indonesia: Does Ex-Ante Teacher Characteristics Assessment Predict Teaching Effectiveness?

Abstract

Selecting good teachers is vital as it can lead to a pool of teachers who will continuously strive to improve their teaching quality. Therefore, strengthening the assessment tools for screening effective teachers at their point of entry into the profession is important to improving teaching quality. While abundant studies have been conducted on improving teacher screening strategies in developed countries, only few have examined the process in the contexts of developing countries. Our study aims to enrich the literature on improving teacher screening in developing countries by testing sixty-two teachers using a set of teacher assessment instruments that measure both cognitive and non-cognitive skills. We discovered a significant and positive correlation between teacher competence in numeracy and student numeracy achievement. Furthermore, assessing teaching practices using a lesson demonstration is positively associated with students’ achievement. However, we found a significant but negative relationship between teacher competence in literacy and student literacy outcomes. We also reported a similar pattern in the correlation between teachers’ portfolio assessments and students’ learning outcomes. The negative correlation in literacy measurements may be explained by the difficulties experienced by teachers in Indonesia in translating their knowledge into practice, as there are no specific subjects designated to Indonesian language and reading comprehension. From a policy perspective, the government and education institutions can strengthen their teacher recruitment mechanisms by adopting instruments that can predict teacher effectiveness. Furthermore, these screening instruments should be combined with ex-post assessment tools as those assessments will provide a comprehensive overview of teacher capabilities, not only in terms of prospective teacher characteristics but also in terms of their actual classroom teaching performance after a certain period of teaching practice.