Principal criteria for hiring teacher candidates

The criteria of the quality of teaching must be identified by the principal and incorporated at the point of hire with the potential teacher for the school during the teacher interview. Although NCLB criteria influenced and guided many teacher hiring decisions over the past decade, principals still want to hire “good teachers” who may not meet the highly qualified licensure requirements. The purpose of this study is to provide a deeper understanding of the teacher hiring criteria of principals through a qualitative case study design data generation. This study finds foundation in job performance theory (Campbell, McCloy, Oppler, & Sager, 1993) and the theory provides this study with its conceptual framework. Specifically, job performance theory in this study applies to the selection of a teacher by the principal at the conclusion of the interview. The hierarchy of needs theory (Maslow, 1987) and social learning theory (Bandura, 2001) are examples of two theories with which researchers have aligned their personnel recruitment and retention studies. The qualitative data generated from this study includes the principal's hiring criteria, the evidence of the hiring criteria observed during a teacher-for-hire interview, the analysis of the teacher-for-hire protocol document, and the analysis of the principal either bridging or buffering to the Core Beliefs in the hiring decision