Measuring Teacher Engagement: Development of the Engaged Teachers Scale (ETS)

The goal of this study was to create and validate a brief multi-dimension scale of teacher engagement—the Engaged Teachers Scale (ETS)—that reflects the particular characteristics of teachers’ work in schools. We collected data from four separate samples of teachers (total N = 823), and followed five steps in developing and validating the ETS.  The result of our five steps of analysis was a 16-item, 4-factor scale of teacher engagement that shows evidence of reliability, validity, and usability for further research. The four factors of the ETS consist of: cognitive engagement, emotional engagement, social engagement: students, and social engagement: colleagues. The ETS was found to correlate positively with a frequently used work engagement measure (the UWES) and to be positively related to, but empirically distinct, from a measure of teachers’ self-efficacy. Our key contribution to the measurement of teacher engagement is the novel inclusion of social engagement with students as a key component of overall engagement at work for teachers. We propose that social engagement should be considered in future iterations of work engagement measures in a range of settings

Measuring teachers' enjoyment, anger, and anxiety : The Teacher Emotions Scales (TES)

The emotions of teachers are considered relevant not only for their own well-being but also for the functioning of classrooms. Nevertheless, research on teacher emotions has been slow to emerge, and scales for their assessment via self-report are generally lacking. In the present research we developed four-item scales for three emotions considered most relevant in the context of teaching: enjoyment, anger, and anxiety (Teacher Emotions Scales, TES). Based on data of 944 teachers, we tested German and English language versions of the TES for reliability, internal and external validity, and cross-language equivalence, while exploring the utility of both a general and a student-group specific variant. All scales proved to be highly reliable, and confirmatory factor analysis supported internal validity by showing that three-factor models (enjoyment, anger, and anxiety) were superior to single-factor or two-factor (positive vs. negative affect) models. The external validation analyses provided consistent evidence for theoretically meaningful relations with teachers' general affect, burnout, job satisfaction, and teacher self-efficacy. These findings were robust across multiple studies. In addition, consistent relationships with student ratings of teaching behaviors were found. Analyses of measurement invariance revealed that the English and the German language versions were fully structurally equivalent und displayed metric invariance

Examining Teacher Recruitment Strategies in England

Teachers around the world are in short supply; in England, teacher recruitment has been described as a ‘crisis’. For national education systems, the goal of an effective teacher recruitment strategy is not simply to attract more applicants, but to attract high quality applicants who are well-suited to teaching and are likely to remain in the profession. The goal of this article is to examine teacher recruitment strategies in England and to propose ways to improve these strategies. We begin by reviewing personnel recruitment theories and research from education and related fields. Next, we analyse publicly available teacher recruitment strategies and messages from two key education organisations in England. We then compare teacher recruitment strategies with strategies and models developed in health professions (as presented by the National Health Service [NHS]). We conclude by proposing how teacher recruitment strategies in England could be more strongly grounded in relevant theoretical and empirical work

The Power of Feedback and Reflection : Testing an online scenario-based learning intervention for student teachers

This study aimed to test whether an online scenario-based learning activity increases student teachers’ self-efficacy and emotional, motivational, and cognitive classroom readiness before they start their first teaching practicum. Specifically, we explored whether the effectiveness of the intervention depends on the inclusion of expert teacher feedback and the opportunity to reflect on the scenarios. A total of 238 Australian student teachers (64.3% females, mean age = 23.84 years, SD= 6.64) participated in the study. The student teachers were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions: waiting-control group (scenario-based learning activity), intervention group 1 (scenario-based learning activity, feedback) and intervention group 2 (scenario-based learning, feedback, reflection). The findings from a path model indicated that both intervention types significantly enhanced cognitive classroom readiness. A significant effect on self-efficacy was found for intervention group 2. Overall, our research demonstrates the potential of an easy-to-implement online intervention in enhancing self-efficacy and classroom readiness

Understanding the reasoning of pre-service teachers: a think-aloud study using contextualised teaching scenarios

This qualitative study sought to understand the reasoning of pre-service teachers through think-aloud interviews with teacher education students at the beginning of their postgraduate degree (six elementary and six secondary). Interviews focused on contextualised and challenging teaching scenarios with a range of response options previously confirmed through the use of situational judgement test (SJT) methodology. The authors\u27 three-step analysis revealed seven concepts that highlighted the motivations and beliefs underlying the reasoning of pre-service teachers. Practical implications include professional development around decision-making during teacher education programs. Future research will explore the use of SJTs in developing key non-academic attributes for effective teaching