Bulletin of~Educational Psychology, 1983，詣， 115一124， Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan, China.
THE SELECTION OF TEACHER TRAINING
CANDIDATES IN TAIWAN*
CHIEN-HOU HWANG SUH-CHING DENG
This research consists of two studies. Study 1 included 331 secondary school teachers graduated from National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU). It was found that the FirM Choice Group did not differ from the Nonιfirst Choice Group in their (a) undergraduate achievement, (b) professional know-ledgeoin education, (c) subjective satisfaction in teaching experiences, and (d) actual teaching performance rated by their principals. Study 11 included 441 NTNU students. The results indicated that the First Choice Group and the Non-first Choice Group were equalIy benefited by the training program provided by the university. Hence the be!ief many people hold that those who made teacher-training institution as their first choice when they app!ied for the Joint Entrance Examination of Universities and CoUeges would become better teachers afterwards than the Non-first Choice Group is not supported.
• 115 •
National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) is one of the three institutions training socondary school teachers in Taiwan. It provides a 4-year program covering both courses of subject matter and courses of education. At present,
it recruits its freshman students through the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) just as aIl other universities and four year coIleges in this country do. Because NTNU is a prestigious institution, students who are admitted to this university are those who have got very high scores at JEE. But for a good portion of them, teacher education was not their first choice when they applied for university admission.
Since the Joint Entrance Examination of universities is a unique practice in the Republic of China, a brief description about it may be appropriate here. This system of Entrance Examination was established in 1954 with all universi-ties in Taiwan as its member institutions. All the academic departments of these universities are classified into four groups and they are: Group A: Natural Sciences and Engineering; Gro"J.p B: Humanities and Literature; Group
C: Biological, Agricu1tural and Medical Sciences; and Group D: Social Sciences. Each applicant can only apply for admission to departments within any one of the four groups; but he can list as many as half of the total number of depart-ments in that group as his goals or "choices". On the Application Form, an applicant has to list those choices in the order of his preferences. This is a very important step because later he will be admitted to a department based on that order and no change will be allowed.
At present, the JEE consists of a two day examination covering six subjects.
*
Presented at the ICET Thirtieth Anniversary World Assembly, held at Washington• 116 • 教育 Jt\ 理學報
The sum of the scores of these six subjects is the key factor of adrnission. In addition to that, each department may set a minimum score on one or two subjects as its departmental requirement of admission. When these scores are ready, it comes to the climax of the JEE-admission and placement. All applicants in each of the four groups will be arrànged in theorder of their Grand Total Score with the one who gets the highest score on the top. Then they are to be admitted one by one to the departments they have applied. The one with the highest score in each of the four groups will be admitted first and most likely he will be placed to the department of his first choice provided that he has also met the requirement of that particular department. The one with the second highest score will be processed. When it comes to a case whose first choice has no more vacancy, he .will be admitted to the department of his second choice, or the third, or even the tenth, ..., depending on the total situation of placement and admission at that very moment. This same pro-cedure will go on until all the vacancies of all the departments in that Group are taken. This year, (1983), 12,014 will be admitted to the departments of Natural Sciences and Engineering, 5,589 to the departments of Humanities and Litera-ture, 5,517 to the departments of Biological, Agricultural, and Medical Sciences; and 7,543 to the departments of Social Sciences. The overall rate of admission is 31.80%. AIl these are to be processed by computer.
Every year, about 1,200 students are admitted to National Taiwan Normal University. But only 159ó of them made a department of NTNU as their first choice when they attended the JEE and were so admitted (will be referred as the First Choice Group). The remaining 85% of them entered NTNU only because they failed to be admitted to the department of their first choice (or the first five, or ten... choices). In other words, teacher-education was not their first choice (to be referred as the Non-first Choice Group). This raises an important issue: whether a teacher training institution should accept only students who have made teacher-educatîon their first choice when they apply for university admission. Many people believe that sÎnce the First Choice Group have shown strong desire to teach, they would become better teachers than those who do not have such desire. This paper is to test the validity of the argument with empirical studies
STUDY 1
In this part of the study, 331 secondary shcool teachers who graduated from NTNU were used as the subjects. Among them, 169 were in the First Choice Group when they entered NTNU while the remaining 162 were in the Non-first Choice Group.
AIl these teachers were asked to take a test of Professional Knowledge in Education and a revised Job Description Index (JDI). The former was a 46-itern test consisting of questions related to general principles of education,
師範夫學學生入學志願與教師黨質的關係 • 117 • teaching methods, and problems in everyday classroom teaching. It was developed by the second author particularly for this study. The revised Job Description 1ndex was a modified form of the JD1 developed by Smith, Kendell and Hulin
(1969) and some adjustments have been made by the present authors to fit the cultural situations in Taiwan. The revised JD1 is measuring the degree of satisfaction in five aspects of one's job: (a) the work itseIf; (b) the co-workers; (c) the supervision; 但) the payment; and (e) the promotion. It has been used in several researches in Taiwan (Chen, 1977; Yu, 1980; Su, 1980), and has been regarded a usefuI instrument.
The actual teaching performance of all these teachers was rated by their principles who were informed about the purpose of the present study. The rating scale was a revision of the Professional Skills Rating Scale developed by the Division of Education, 1ndiana University and it covered four aspects of teaching performance: instruction, classroom management, & student evaluation; human relationships; professional development; and personal qualities. The rating were made on a five point scale with 5 for the best performance and 1 for the least satisfactory performance.
1n addittion, the undergraduate academic achievement represented by the General Average Grade of all courses taken in their studies at NTNU, were secured from the Registerar of NTNU for comparative analysis.
When the above-mentioned materials were collected, four comparisons were made between the two groups of teachers, the First Choice Group and the Non-firsf Choice Group.
1. Difference in Undergraduate Academic Achievements
From the figures given in Table 1, we can readiIy find that the General A verage Grade of the First Choice Group was nearly the same as that of the Non-first Choice Group with no significant difference between them. This means that although the First Choice Group showed greater interest in
educa-tion and teaching than the Non-first Choice Group when they entered this university, the former did not make better achievement than the later during the undergraduate years. When the teachers were grouped according to the number of years they had been engaged in teaching, the one-year group, the 2-5 year group, and the over 5 year group did not differ from one another in
their undergraduate achievements. 2. Difference in Professional Knowledge
-HH個﹒ 無 z時 內 , iliI 個 攝 First Choice Group Teachers and Non-first Choice Group Teachers Comparisons Undergraduate ProfessÍonal SatiJsofab ction Teaching Achievement Knowledge Performance M 50 F M SO F 品 f 50 F M 50 F First Choice 169 的 .05 4.18 0.01 168.30 22.44 0.01 82.98 18.29 0.61 77.75 11 .4 7 0.20 Choice
Group Non-first Choice
162 79.41 4.50 , (df= 1, 313) 169.97 19.40 (df= 1, 313) 85 .4 9 18.74 (df= 1, 313) 78 .4 9 11.57 (df= 1, 313) Group one 79 80.29 4.24 165. 釘 20. 泊 84.91 17.39 year 4.63 4.77* 1. 69 1. 16 Service 2-5 129 79.37 4.71 166.34 24. 的 8 1. 65 19.97 77.12 13.00 ln years Teaching (df=2 , 313) (df=2 , 313) (df=2 , 313) (df=2 , 313) over 5 years 123 79.25 4.20 173.98 20.98 86.43 17.69 79.26 1 1. 74 Table 1 *P<O.OI
萄摺山河幅帽除UF幅MW劉濟無哥海潮思軍歌 -HH也﹒ Mean and standard deviation on the subscales of JDI The Work Co-workers 5upervision Paymen t Promotion Total N M 50 M 5D M 50 M 50 M 50 M 5D First 169 2 1. 60 7.10 站 .46 6.58 22.41 8.05 7.22 3.76 6.51 2.96 82.98 18.29 Choice Group Non-first 162 2 1. 55 7.18 泊 .77 6.11 23.92 7.18 7.10 3.66 6.15 3.03 85.99 18.74 Choice Group Table 2
• 120 • 教育必理學報
posterior comparison revealed that those who had served five years and more got a higher score in Professional Know}edge. than ' the other two groups (the one-year group and the 2-5 year Group.)
3. Difference in Job Satisfaction
The scores of the subjects on the revised Job Description lndex are also given in the Table 2. Both the totãl score and that of the 5 subscales are shown. These figures indicate that the First Choice Group does not differ from the Non-first Choice Group on any of those scores. In òther words, the two group of teachers seemed to have obtained a similar degree of satisfaction from the teaching experiences as a whole as well as from the five different aspects of the work of teaching.
4. Difference in Teaching Performance
As is mentioned above, each subject included in this study was rated by the principal of the school to which he ór she was affiliated. Since in any one school, only five or six teachers were picked up for this study, so it did not cause the principals too much difficu1ty to -do the rating. The results showed that there was no sigficant inter-group difference in .those ratings indicating that the actual teaching performance of .these groups of teachers were about the same- in the eyes of the principals.
To -summarize, based on the findings of this study, the First Choice Group did not do any better than the Non::-iirst Choice Group in their undergraduate academic achievement or in their Professional Knowledge in Education, nor did they make better performance in actual practice than the later as rated by their principals. Moreover, the two groups of teachers did not differ from one another in their subjective satisfaction in teaching experiences. These results
seemed~to have rejected the. belief that those_ high school graduates二who have
made teaching their first choice when they apply for university admission would become beUer teachers afterwards than those who are in the Non-first Choice Group. Hence there is no reason to suggest that teacher training institu-tions should admit only the First Choiceapplicants.
STUDY 11
The subjects of this part of the study were two groups of students drawn from eleven departments of National Taiwan Normal University. The first group consisting of those who made a department of NTNU their first choice when applied for the Joint Entrance Examination and they numbered 220. The other group of subjects were 221 Non-first Choice students from the same departments. A questionnaire concerning the interest in teaching and a test of Professional Knowledge in Education (same as the one used in Study I) were administered to al1 of them. The fol1owing inter-group comparisons were made: (a) The time when they began to have the desire to become二a teacher
師節夫學學生λ學念廠與教師業質的關係 • 121 • have the ideá to become a teacher. The figures indicate clearly that more of the First Choice Group than the Non-fìrst Choice Group had the idea to become a teacher at earlier stages and the differences is statistical1y significant (X2=52.
10, df=5, P<O.OOl)
(b) Change of interest in teaching after having been admitted to NTNU
An individual's interest often changes as time goes on. Since NTNU is a teaching training institution, students are required to take various educational courses. As is shown in Table 4, there is generally an increase in the subjects' interest in teaching. The Non-first Choice Group showed a greater increase than the First Choice Group. This indicates that the programs of a Teacher Training institution have fulfilled its function in cultivating the interest of students in educational activities. The fact that the Non-first Choice students showed a greater increase in such interests is easy to understand. As the First Choice Group had ,a high level of interest in education atthe time üf application for university admission, there left a lìmited room for the increase afterwards. On the contrary, the Non-first Choice Group did not show high interest in education in the beginning, so there was sufficient room for an increase. Moreover, part of their increase in interest in education could be attributed to the phenomena of cognitive dissonance. In other words, since they have already entered a teacher training institution, they had beUer learn to like the teaching profession Iest it would cause dissonance and consequently psychological confIicts. (c) Difference in Professional Know ledge
A 46 item test of Professional Knowledge in -Education was given to the subjects of this study. It was found that the First Choice Group and the Non-first Choice Group got almost equaI score on the test indicating that there was no difference between the two groups as far as the Professional Knowledge was concerned. When the test was divided into three subscales according to it their factorial structure, an analysis of variance also showed that the two groups of
subjects did not differ from one another on the score of any of those factors. To summarize, the results of this part of the study seem to indicate that the First Choice Group students and Non-first Choice Group, after having entered NTNU, are equal1y benefited by the training program provided by the university. Of course, there are many fac
Not yet 15
|El
諮詢
ry
I
J罷官
I
S|泊
1
33 1 941
品|
,----8
1__
:_9
1_
5_2J
的|
University Ch i1 dhood 4 First Choice Group 46o
N on-first Choice Group 料 p<O. ∞ 1 df=5 χ2=52.40 料 單單 Table 4: Change of Interest in Taching First Choice Group Non-first Choice Group F df= l, 434 M SD M SD (A) _ Interest in teaching 品 .96 3 1. 95 28.6 會神 be~ore entering 62.55 42.25 university (C) Interest in teaching 74. 站 24.65 65.44 27.82 12.54 紳 at present 料 P<O.OOI 8.48 輛 |49.73I
戶
19-1-戶
21-l
11.81 (C) 一 (A) 樹， 聲 E 萬惡4
關 -NNH.
師範犬學學生入學志廠與教師素質的關係 • 123 •
CONCLUSION
There has been for many years an argument that the teacher training institutions in Taiwan should accept only students who have made
teacher-education their First Choice when they apply for admission to universities. It
is believed that since these students have strong desire to teach, they would
become beUer teachers afterwards than those who do not have such desire.
Tb determine the validity of the foresaid belief, the authors of this paper have
made two studies with students and graduates of National Taiwan Normal University as the subjects. The results of the first study indicate that the desire of a high school graduate to become a teacher and his interest in teaching when he enters a university are not correlated with his performance later in teaching. The findings of the second study suggest that the training program provided by a teacher-training institution can help develop the interest and knowledge in teaching among those who do not have strong desire in teaching
to start with. Hence, in teacher training, the program is of far greater
• 124 • 國立畫灣師範失學教育心理學系 教育心理學報，民72 ， 16期， 115-124頁
