Construction of the situational judgment tests for teachers

ABSTRACT

Situational Judgment Tests for Teachers (SJTTs) were developed as an alternative to the existing evaluation programs for selecting student teachers. A Situational Judgment Test for Middle-school Teachers (SJTMT), a Situational Judgment Test for Primary-school Teachers (SJTPT), and a Situational Judgment Test for Early-childhood Teachers (SJTET) have been developed by 30, 20, and 10 senior teachers, respectively. We recruited a total of 5,039 Taiwanese university students as participants, to evaluate the reliability and validity of these SJTTs. The reliability coefficients of the booklets in the SJTMT, SJTPT and SJTET fell between .19 and .74. In regards to validity, a Rasch analysis revealed that most of the SJTTs’ items fit the uni-dimensional Rasch model. Additionally, students who enrolled in teacher education programs have significantly higher scores on the SJTTs than those who did not attend these programs, providing known-group validity. An online SJTTs system was also set up to serve all the universities in Taiwan. This study discusses the construction and the practical application of SJTTs for the selection of student teachers.

KEYWORDS:

• Rasch model
• situational judgment tests for teachers
• student teachers
• teacher education

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the participants for providing their data to contribute to this study. We would also like to thank the research team members, Ming-Hui Hsu, Hui-Ning Kuo, and Wen-Ju Yao, for their contribution during this project.

Additional information

Funding

The authors appreciate the funding support from the Higher Education Sprout Project of the Ministry of Education, Taiwan [grant nos. HESP-0218], the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan [grant nos. 102-2911-I-003-301 and 102-2511-S-003-001-MY3], and the Department of Teacher and Art Education of the Ministry of Education, Taiwan [grant nos. 105A0110 and 107A0033].

Notes on contributors

Tzu-Yang Chao

Tzu-Yang Chao, Ph. D., is a Senior Research Faculty in the Research Center for Psychological and Educational Testing, National Taiwan Normal University. His research interests include measurement theory, situational judgment tests, teacher education, and the traits of well-performed teachers.

Yao-Ting Sung

Yao-Ting Sung, Ph. D., is a Chair Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology and Counseling, National Taiwan Normal University. His research interests include computer assisted testing, psychological and educational testing, and career information analysis and application.

Jia-Li Huang

Jia-Li Huang, Ph. D., is a Professor in the Office of Teacher Education and Careers Service, National Taiwan Normal University. Her research interests include teacher education, curriculum and pedagogy, and educational sociology.