Who is the Desired Applicant for Schools and Colleges of Education?

Acceptance for schools and colleges of education is based on the existing standardized traditional admission system, which focuses mainly on cognitive competencies. High academic scores are insufficient to make a good teacher. Endless discussions on who the teachers college desired applicant is led us to the present challenging study. This study discusses the use of personal attributes for assessing applicants who wish to study for teaching credentials. A set of qualitative tools and methodology were used to elicit each individual's personal attributes and to determine their weight, using a qualitative research design. Currently used tools do not supply a sufficiently detailed database to differentiate between applicants. When tools are interesting, meaningful, and taken from real life, tacit knowledge is easily revealed (Sabar-Ben Yehoshua, 1990). Applicants in this study document their reflections and their academic, vocational, or personal growth as a major part of the raw data for analysis. The new model delicately differentiates both between individuals and groups, providing an applicant profile pool of competencies, useful for admission committees, as well as for empowering student-teachers' strengths during their studies. This study emphasizes a shift from generating scores to profiles, for the consideration of admissions committees. It included 99 post army/national service participants: 68 women and 31 men, aged 20–25. These procedures can easily be applied by teacher education faculty members. The predictive validity of the presented model requires further study in a longitudinal trial