Entry scores matter for teacher education

The debate over entry qualifications for initial teacher education courses is set to intensify with new research showing a correlation between entry scores and study performance and making a case that teacher education programmes do not improve students’ positive classroom characteristics.

According to Helen Boon from James Cook University, “prospective teacher recruits need to have higher entry scores than are currently required by some universities, irrespective of other dispositional attributes, if they are to graduate and enter the profession.”

Associate Professor Boon surveyed 190 bachelor and grad dip students to find:

# “no significant differences between undergraduate and post-graduate students’ self-efficacy, resilience and persistence and no significant differences in these characteristics between those who completed their degrees and those who did not.

#  “character traits had no effect upon timely degree completion. … Higher grades and goal directedness were the strongest predictors of a timely completion.”

Entry scores make a difference in whether a student is likely to successfully complete their teaching degree. Those students with higher scores and those who already have a degree are more likely to complete. Those with lower scores are more likely to drop out,” she writes.

This is hot stuff. The orthodoxy holds it is the skills ITE students graduate with rather than their starting scores that matter. But Aspro Boon states; “my research shows that entry levels do indeed make a difference. It also shows, perhaps surprisingly, that current teacher education programs do not seem to be influencing the major characteristics important to teachers that recruits bring into the course at entry point.

Growth in teacher education numbers is certainly accompanied by lower completion rates. As yesterday’s attrition-sequence data shows, by last year 74.8 per cent of the 2005 cohort had completed teacher education degrees down to 62 per cent for the 2010 cohort.


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