Construction of the situational judgment tests for teachers

• Published in: Asia-Pacific journal of teacher education Vol. 48; no. 4; pp. 355 - 374
• Main Authors: Chao, Tzu-Yang, Sung, Yao-Ting, Huang, Jia-Li
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Routledge 07.08.2020; Taylor & Francis; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: College Students; Early Childhood Teachers; Elementary School Teachers; Foreign Countries; Item Response Theory; Judgment; Middle School Teachers; Preservice Teachers; Rasch model; Reliability; situational judgment tests for teachers; Situational Tests; Student teachers; Teacher education; Teacher Education Programs; Teacher Improvement; Test Construction; Test Reliability; Test Validity; Universities; Validity; Taiwan
• ISSN: 1359-866X; 1469-2945
• DOI: 10.1080/1359866X.2019.1633621

Situational Judgment Tests for Teachers (SJTTs) were developed as an alternative to the existing evaluation programs for selecting student teachers. A Situational Judgment Test for Middle-school Teachers (SJTMT), a Situational Judgment Test for Primary-school Teachers (SJTPT), and a Situational Judgment Test for Early-childhood Teachers (SJTET) have been developed by 30, 20, and 10 senior teachers, respectively. We recruited a total of 5,039 Taiwanese university students as participants, to evaluate the reliability and validity of these SJTTs. The reliability coefficients of the booklets in the SJTMT, SJTPT and SJTET fell between .19 and .74. In regards to validity, a Rasch analysis revealed that most of the SJTTs' items fit the uni-dimensional Rasch model. Additionally, students who enrolled in teacher education programs have significantly higher scores on the SJTTs than those who did not attend these programs, providing known-group validity. An online SJTTs system was also set up to serve all the universities in Taiwan. This study discusses the construction and the practical application of SJTTs for the selection of student teachers.