- HEC 2016

Submission to the Higher Education Conference 2016
Title: Individual characteristics of teacher education students: Re-examining the “negative selection” hypothesis
Abstract: (147 words)
Teachers’ individual characteristics are considered to be relevant for teachers’ professional competencies,
successful teaching, and the development of students’ competencies.
Previous research regarding the selection within the teaching profession and between teacher education and other study programmes has mainly considered sociodemographic, cognitive, interest, and personality aspects. Our study will contribute to this research, addressing the questions (1) whether teacher
education students of different academic levels and majors differ in their individual characteristics and educational background and (2) whether teacher candidates show different individual prerequisites than
comparable students in other programmes.
We use data from a panel study of first-year students (telephone interviews 2011/2012, N = 13,114),
conducted within the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). Our empirical results partly support
and partly contradict the “negative selection” hypothesis. They lead to the conclusion that it is crucial to
distinguish between different teacher education programmes and fields of study.
Keywords:
teacher candidates, individual characteristics, choice of study programme, selection effects, teacher recruitment
Theoretical framework: (549 words)
Teachers’ individual characteristics are considered to be key to successful teaching and to the development
of students’ competencies. This is the reason why educational research is concerned with examining the
cognitive and personality attributes of (prospective) teachers.
There are several approaches to explain the importance of individual characteristics for teachers’ professional competencies, the quality of teaching and, thus, student achievement (Klusmann, 2013; Roloff
Henoch, Klusmann, Lüdtke, & Trautwein, 2015; Rothland, 2014). According to the “opportunity-use model”
(Fend, 2006; Helmke, 2003; for a short description see Zierer & Seel, 2012), individual attributes impact on
teacher competencies because individual prerequisites (e.g., cognitive abilities, motivation, learning strategies) are relevant for the question of whether and how efficient learning opportunities offered during
teacher education are used.
The results of studies from different countries suggest that the teaching profession often attracts people with unfavourable cognitive and psychological characteristics, thus supporting the “negative selection”
hypothesis (for the US, see Guarino, Santibañez, & Daley, 2006; Hanushek & Pace, 1995; Podgursky, Monroe, & Watson, 2004; Zumwalt & Craig, 2008; for Switzerland, see Denzler & Wolter, 2008). A recent study,
however, found no proof for a negative selection in Germany when controlling for the field of study (Roloff
Henoch et al., 2015). Our study seeks to contribute to this body of research by analysing a large sample of
teacher education students and students in other study programmes, by taking different levels of teacher
education programmes into account (e.g., programmes for the training of primary, lower secondary, and
upper secondary teachers) and by including additional explanatory variables.
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Previous research on the composition of the teaching profession has mainly considered sociodemographic variables, cognitive abilities, interests, and personality factors. We, in addition, will also look at relevant aspects of the students’ school education and experiences. Partly, previous research has taken into
account the heterogeneity of teacher candidates by paying attention to the field of study (for Germany, see
Kaub et al., 2012; Roloff Henoch et al., 2015) or to the academic level of the study programme (for Germany, see Klusmann, 2013; Kampa, Kunter, Maaz, & Baumert, 2011; Klusmann, Trautwein, Lüdtke, Kunter, &
Baumert, 2009; Neugebauer, 2013; Retelsdorf & Möller, 2012). Going beyond these studies, we will simultaneously include the programme’s academic level and the field of study in our analyses.
Our research addresses two main questions: (1) Do teacher education students of different academic
levels and majors differ in their individual characteristics and educational background? This question refers
to the issue of the internal selection within the teaching profession and to the desideratum of a differentiated analysis of students in different teacher training programmes, expressed by Rothland (2014). (2) Do
teacher candidates of different academic levels and majors show different individual characteristics and
prerequisites than comparable students in other programmes? This question refers to the “negative selection” hypothesis and takes into account both the heterogeneity of teacher education students and the heterogeneity of other students.
Conceptually, our paper refers to different theories of career choice: theories that focus on cost-benefit
analyses – such as the expectancy-value model of Eccles and colleagues (Eccles et al., 1983; Wigfield & Eccles, 2000) or the sociological rational choice theory (e.g., Boudon, 1974) – and theories that describe vocational choices primarily as a result of matching personal orientations with the (expected) environment of
potential careers (e.g., Holland, 1997).
Methods: (358 words)
The analyses are performed using data from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS; Blossfeld,
Roßbach, & Maurice, 2011), Starting Cohort 5 – First-Year Students (doi:10.5157/NEPS:SC5:4.0.0). This substudy longitudinally observes a cohort of new entrants to higher education who enrolled for the first time
at a German higher education institution in winter semester 2010/2011. The data are collected two or
three times a year using different modes of data collection (Aschinger et al., 2011). Part of the information
included in our estimation models was gathered in the first telephone interview (conducted mainly in
2011): family and migration background, educational biography, interests, and prior academic achievement. Another part was collected in the second telephone interview that took place in the first half of
2012: personality aspects according to the five-factor model of personality (Big Five), global self-esteem,
and the meaning of work. The sample size of the second telephone interview is 13,114, among them are
more than 4,000 teacher candidates. All participants also took part in the first interview.
In many studies on teacher recruitment, individual characteristics are measured after the participants
have taken up higher education. This applies to our study as well and bears the risk that the findings cannot
be interpreted as actual selection effects (Roloff Henoch et al., 2015). However, in our case the risk seems
to be low because vocational interests were assessed shortly after study entry (first telephone interview)
and personality factors such as self-esteem and the Big Five personality traits are conceptualised as relatively stable dispositions. Since, in this respect, empirical evidence is inconclusive – some studies are challenging the stability hypothesis (Lüdtke, Roberts, Trautwein, & Nagy, 2011; Specht, Luhmann, & Geiser,
2014; Wagner, Lüdtke, Jonkmann, & Trautwein, 2013), others are supportive (Cobb-Clark & Schurer, 2012;
Rantanen, Metsäpelto, Feldt T., Pulkkinen, & Kokko, 2007) – , it is necessary to assess the results of our
analyses very carefully.
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Apart from some descriptive analyses, we use multinomial logistic regression models to estimate the effect of individual characteristics and educational background on the probability of being enrolled in different teacher education programmes or in programmes that do not open up the route to a degree in teaching.
Results and conclusion: (297 words)
Many results of our study are in line with previous findings. For example, we find that women opt for a
teacher education programme more often than men; given this decision, they show a higher propensity to
choose lower level programmes. Irrespective of whether the students have a STEM major or not, university
students from higher-status families are more often found in non-teacher education programmes than in
teacher education programmes.
Regarding cognitive ability (measured by average school grades), we find that students who performed
better in school are attracted more often by programmes for upper secondary teachers than by other
teacher education programmes. When controlling for the field of study, the differences in cognitive ability
between teacher candidates and students in other university programmes continue to exist for teacher education students in programmes for primary and lower secondary education, but disappear in case of students who want to become upper secondary teachers.
The results on interest orientations support Holland’s congruence hypothesis. The higher the degree of
social interests, the higher the inclination to choose a teacher education programme, especially a programme for primary education. The higher the degree of investigative interests, the higher the probability
to opt for a university programme in other areas than teaching. However, the impact of this factor is more
pronounced in STEM majors than in non-STEM majors. In addition, the difference between the investigative
interests of teacher candidates and students in other university programmes is the smaller, the higher the
academic level of the teacher education programme.
With regard to the “negative selection” hypothesis, the empirical analyses lead to the conclusion that
this hypothesis can partly be rejected and partly be maintained. In order to assess the “negative selection”
assumption it is important to take into account different programme levels and study majors.
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