A Temperament for Teaching? Associations Between Personality Traits and Beginning Teacher Performance and Retention

Abstract

The “greening” (i.e., inexperience) of the U.S. teacher workforce puts a premium on districts and schools hiring effective and persistent beginning teachers. Given the limitations of characteristics currently available at the time of hiring (e.g., academic ability, preparation type), we built off previous research in economics and psychology to investigate associations between personality traits and first-year teachers’ performance and retention in North Carolina public schools. Using the 5-factor model of personality, we find that conscientiousness is significantly associated with higher value-added estimates, higher evaluation ratings, and higher retention rates. Additionally, general self-efficacy, a subdomain of conscientiousness, is significantly associated with teacher value added and evaluation ratings. These conscientiousness results are consistent with a rich body of evidence connecting conscientiousness-related measures to employee performance and retention across professions, and they suggest that districts and schools should consider using personality trait measures, along with other valid indicators, as a way to improve teacher hiring decisions.

Personality Development during Teacher Preparation

“…Cheng and Zamarro (2016) report that measures of teacher conscientiousness capture important dimensions of teacher quality, for example, teachers with higher conscientious scores are more effective at improving their student conscientiousness. While Bastian et al (2015) equally support the focus on investigation of beginning teacher personality traits and report that conscientiousness significantly predicts higher value-added, higher evaluation ratings, and higher rates of retention of teachers in North Carolina public schools. Job (2004) describes a weak positive correlation between conscientiousness and teaching effectiveness ( r = 0.03).…”

“…Interestingly, the personality trait pre-service teachers’ reported lowest across all 3 years was emotional stability. As was noted above, the personality of teachers have been found to influence student academic performance (Bastian et al, 2015). Downey et al (2014) studied the role of personality in academic success and report that that academic success was related to higher levels of emotional management control (EMC), conscientiousness and lower levels of extraversion thus emulating previous research that shows the role of emotional competencies in academic success.…”

“…Bastian et al (2015) report that first-year teachers with higher levels of openness to experience were significantly more likely to work in high-need school environments (that is high-poverty, high-minority, and low performing schools). Job (2004) describes a weak negative correlation between openness scores and teaching effectiveness ( r = -0.04).…”

“…Bastian et al (2015) report that agreeableness is negatively associated with teacher EVAAS estimates (the official measure of teacher effectiveness for teacher evaluation in North Carolina). While Chu (2003) reports modest correlations between agreeableness and principal evaluation ( r = 0.12).…”

“…In order to realize this, teacher preparation programs need to strengthen their understanding of the pre-teaching characteristics that significantly predict teacher performance and/or student outcomes (Corcoran and Tormey, 2013). There has been some focus on the sort of teacher education needed to support the development of teachers’ personality so that can develop these skills in young people (Bastian et al, 2015; Cheng and Zamarro, 2016). While there is evident value in such studies, there are also clear limitations.…”