engleski

Teacher selection and its domain-specific repercussions for primary gifted education

The aim of this study was to explore predictive validity of a set of ability and personality constructs for the pre-service teachers' teaching preferences and the hypothesized acquisition of specific educational expertise. The study included analyses at the individual, and at the school context level. At the individual level, the study participants included 100 students in their fifth and final year of university teacher studies. Verbal, numeric, and spatial tests were used as measures of ability. The big five personality questionnaire and an inventory of vocational preferences were used to gain insight into the current pre-service teacher selection and its domain-specific repercussions for future general primary and gifted education. To compare and complement the findings at the individual level, the yearly school plans were analyzed for 105 primary schools in search of repercussions of teacher abilities and traits for education. The results at the individual level revealed the predictive importance of pre-service teacher abilities and traits for general, and the domain-specific bias in gifted education operationalized as the children's productive behavior covering everyday, scientific and artistic creativity domains. The results from the schools corroborated these findings. The findings were interpreted in relation to the contemporary educational perspectives on creativity and gifted education, currently working teachers and their choices, the undergoing selection of students for teacher studies, the teacher pre-service and in-service teacher education, and the empirically proven teachers' influence on student outcomes.

teacher selection ; art bias ; gifted education ; children's creative behavior

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