A STUDY OF THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN PREDICTED EFFECTIVENESS OF TEACHER CANDIDATES AND ACTUAL EFFECTIVENESS AFTER ONE YEAR OF TEACHING EXPERIENCE

The purpose of this study was to determine if student perceptions of teacher effectiveness as measured by two selected instruments would correlate significantly when measured during the student teaching experience and after one year of teaching experience. A second purpose was to determine if administrator perceptions as measured by two selected instruments would correlate significantly with student perceptions during the student teaching experience and after one year of teaching experience. Student perceptions were measured by the 7-A Student Questionnaire (7-A SQ) and the Purdue Teacher Evaluation Scale (PTES). Administrator or supervisor perceptions were measured by the Student Teacher Reference (STR) form and a validated Administrator Evaluation (AE) form. Eleven hypotheses were investigated to answer the basic questions of this study. These questions were: (1) What is the relationship between scores from the PTES and 7-A SQ taken during the student teaching experience and scores from the PTES and 7-A SQ taken after one year of teaching experience? (2) What is the relationship between scores from the student perception instruments, 7-A SQ and PTES, and scores from the administrator perception instruments, STR and AE, both during the student teaching experience and after one year of teaching experience. Student and administrator perceptions from the actual teaching experience were gathered during the last quarter of the first year of teaching experience. Statistical procedures included use of the Pearson correlation, dependent t-test, and step-wise regression analyses. The research hypotheses were tested at the .05 level of significance. The major findings of this study were as follows: (1) Scores of the 7-A SQ during the student teaching experience significantly correlated to scores found one year later, but the PTES scores did not. (2) The two most significant predictors of Administrator Evaluation scores were STR scores and 7-A SQ scores. Findings of this study support the conclusion that information sources are valuable in determining teacher effectiveness. If, however, only one source of information were available when considering a first year candidate, the most predictive source would be the student teaching supervisor rating