The relationship between teacher personality and teacher quality: lifting a tip of a veil of a teacher’s X-factor?

The ideology of inclusive education signifies that every child should be able to attend a regular school, unless there are insoluble barriers which make this impossible. This principle is voiced in treaties such as the Salamanca Statement and the No Child Left Behind Act. Accordingly, many countries nowadays aim at integrating students with special educational needs (SEN) in mainstream education. A specific challenge for teachers who apply for inclusive education is teaching students who show challenging behaviour in the classroom1. A growing number of teachers report feelings of professional inadequacy in teaching students with behavioural difficulties. Feelings of professional inadequacy are said to occur when a teacher lacks pedagogic and/or didactic skills to act adequately in demanding classroom situations. Teachers of students with behavioural difficulties are found to be particularly at risk for experiencing occupational stress. Moreover, these teachers are more likely to end their career in education earlier than teachers who are teaching students with other SEN or without. Many teachers of students with behavioural difficulties tend to pay too much attention to controlling student behaviour rather than to teaching. At the same time, in this respect, students with behavioural difficulties are a population at risk as well. Regardless of the underlying cause of their behavioural problems, students with behavioural difficulties gain less academic progress than students who go through a normal development. Strikingly, this academic delay appears to increase rapidly over the years. For all the feelings of professional inadequacy, there are also teachers who are somehow able to bring out the best in all their students. These teachers are able to engage students, meet their differing needs and increase their potential. These teachers are commonly said to be equipped with a teacher’s X-factor; an enigmatic, yet unexplained talent causing a teacher’s excellence in the classroom. A widely accepted key determinant of successful schooling is teacher quality. Accordingly, the competencies of expert teachers have already been studied in detail. However, recent evidence points at personality as an underlying core factor from which these competencies may arise. In the literature, personality is defined as relatively enduring patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviours. Much literature has already been published on the relationship between personality and job performance. Virtually all studies on the subject report strong correlations between the Five-Factor Model of Personality and job performance. However, until recently, these relations were not explored in the field of education. A first study of this kind was conducted by the authors. The results of this study were presented at last year’s ECER in Istanbul. The personality dimensions of Conscientiousness (facets of competence, self-discipline, ambition) and Neuroticism (facets of depression, vulnerability, shame) were found to discriminate expert teachers from non-experts. Furthermore, significant relationships were found between teacher personality and teacher quality in teaching students with behavioural difficulties for Conscientiousness, Neuroticism and Extraversion (assertiveness). With the aim of contributing to finding ways to accurately recruit expert teachers of students with behavioural difficulties, a cohort of in-service teacher-trainees was studied on their personality and performance in teaching students with behavioural difficulties. The authors wondered whether the relationships found in the previous study could be established or replicated in teacher education

Personality traits as an aspect of teacher quality in teaching students with behavioural problems

This study aimed at validating a method for selecting expert teachers of students with behavioural problems. Participants were Dutch primary school teachers, head teachers and special needs support teachers. Data were gathered through an observation instrument developed for the benefit of the study, a self-efficacy scale and a nomination procedure. Factor-, reliability-, descriptive-, correlation- and sensitivity analyses were performed. Significant positive correlations were found between the instruments, indicating that these measure related but not identical dimensions of teacher quality in teaching students with behavioural problems. Via application of selection criteria, 8 expert teachers were selected

Triangulating measures of teacher quality in teaching students with behavioral problems

Teaching students with behavioral problems is a challenge for many teachers in inclusive education. To assess a teacher's quality in teaching students with behavioral problems and to explore what differentiates them from less effective teachers, this study aimed to validate a method for measuring this type of teacher quality. Based on classroom observations, special needs support teachers (n = 12) rated the extent to which teachers met the need for competence, autonomy, and relatedness of students with behavioral problems. Primary school teachers (n = 137) completed a self-efficacy questionnaire related to teaching students with behavioral problems. Head teachers (n = 12) and the same teachers participated in a nomination procedure. Factor, reliability, descriptive, correlation, and cluster analyses were performed. Significant positive not fully overlapping correlations were found between the instruments. A group of 10–15 expert teachers of students with behavioral problems were selected. Future directions for research are discussed