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A case study analysis of high school principals' criteria in the teacher selection process

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A case study analysis of high school principals' criteria in the teacher selection process

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Content Running head: PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS

A CASE STUDY ANALYSIS OF HIGH SCHOOL PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE
TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS

by

Eric Okazaki

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION

December 2017

Copyright 2017 Eric Okazaki
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 2

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I would like to acknowledge Prof. Lawrence Picus for his guidance. I
would also like to acknowledge the dissertation committee and the University of Southern
California, which gave me the opportunity to achieve and succeed.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 3

Table of Contents
List of Figures 5
Abstract 6
Chapter One: Overview of the Study 8
Background of the Problem 9
Statement of the Problem 11
Purpose of the Study 12
Research Questions 13
Significance of the Study 14
Organization of the Study 14
Chapter Two: Literature Review 16
Human Capital 16
A Broad Theoretical Framework: Human Capital Management 16
Narrowing the Perspective: Hiring in the Schools 24
Principals Perspectives in Hiring 32
The Interview 32
Principals’ Perspectives in Hiring 32
The Interview 32
The Right Fit/Hiring Decisions 34
Chapter Three: Research Methodology 44
Research Question and Hypothesis 44
Methodology 45
Research Population 45
Research Design 46
Instrumentation 47
Interview Protocol 47
Data Collection 49
Data Analysis 49
Limitations 50
Delimitations 50
Chapter Four: Results 51
Participant Sample 52
Public High School 1 52
Public School 2 53
Public School 3 54
Charter High School 1 54
Charter High School 2 54
Charter High School 3 54
Private High School 1 55
Private High School 2 55
Private High School 3 55
Qualitative Data and Discussion 56
Chapter Five: Summary, Conclusions, and Recommendations 86
Overview 86
Summary of Case Study 86
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 4

Purpose and Problem Statement 86
Research Questions 87
Methodology 87
Interviews with the Principals 87
Interview Protocol 88
Data Analysis 88
Conclusions of the Case Study 90
Summary of Findings for the Research Questions 90
Recommendations 93
Implications 93
For Further Research 95
References 97
Appendix 115
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 5

List of Figures
Figure A: Model of Values and Competencies 19
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 6

Abstract

This qualitative case study interviewed nine high school principals (three public, three private,
and three charter) in a semi-structured format asking 10 open-ended questions about teacher
selection criteria for hiring teachers. The triangulation of the responses provided the following
results:
 High school principals hired teachers who were intellectually sound in their content
area and practiced student-centered teaching.
 Teacher content knowledge was not a factor when taking into account cultural
demographics of the school as it related to students not understanding the content if
not meaningful.
 Students who did not have adequate command of the English language were
a consideration when hiring the right teacher.
 High school principals hired teachers who had prior experience and content expertise.

 High school principals hired based on experience, but the needs of the culture of
English as a Second Language students, working with the culturally disadvantaged
population, and online learning were factors in hiring that took precedence over
experience.
 A unique schoolwide characteristic (e.g., special population, online instruction,
project-based learning) affected the hiring process of teachers as selection was
narrowed to fulfill the needs of the specific schools.
 High school principals hired teachers based on five attributes:

 Organization: consider structure, lesson planning, assessment, backwards
mapping, and curricular pacing.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 7

 Flexibility: Flexibility with individual students, understanding multiculturalism,
teaching to the strength of the student, flexibility in assessments, adapting to a
situation, differentiation, and having a passion for a range of students.
 Relationships: Positively working with students, parents, and other teachers.

Positive relationships included respect, engagement, involvement, and interaction.

 Assessment Knowledge: Assessment knowledge about pre- and post-assessments,
implementation, strategy, structure, formative assessments, strengths and
weaknesses, and standardized assessments, which were all essential for student
success, student learning, and proficiency and mastery of content.
 Teacher growth: To promote self-growth toward thinking about becoming a better
teacher to include collaboration with others, to self-monitor, to be open to
learning, to reflect on their teaching practices, to improve and correct mistakes,
and to continuously improve on their instruction.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 8

CHAPTER ONE: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY

In the 2014 State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama stated:

Today in America, a teacher spent extra time with a student who needed it, and did her
part to lift America’s graduation rate to its highest level in more than three decades.

Teachers and principals in schools from Tennessee to Washington, D.C. are making big
strides in preparing students with skills for the new economy – problem solving, critical
thinking, science, technology, engineering, and math. Some of this change is hard. It
requires everything from more challenging curriculums and more demanding parents to
better support for teachers and new ways to measure how well our kids think, not how
well they can fill in a bubble on a test. But it’s worth it – and it’s working.

The problem is we’re still not reaching enough kids, and we’re not reaching them in
time. That has to change.

—Obama, 2014
In A Blueprint for Reform, the Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act, President Obama set a new goal: that by 2020, the United States

will once again lead the world in college completion. “To ensure the success of our children, we
must do better to recruit, develop, support, retain, and reward outstanding teachers in America's
classrooms" (United States Department of Education, 2010, p. 1). President Obama’s decision to
enforce change in our society has made Americans more aware of accountability.
According to the National Center for Education Statistic (2011), in the fall of 2011, about

76.3 million people were enrolled in American schools and colleges. About 4.7 million people
were employed as elementary and secondary school teachers or as college faculty, at full-time
capacity. Other professional, administrative, and support staff at education institutions totaled
5.6 million. A projected 3.7 million full-time-equivalent elementary and secondary school
teachers were engaged in classroom instruction in the fall 2011. This number has increased 7%
since 2001. The 2011 projected number of FTE teachers included 3.3 million public school
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 9

teachers and 0.4 million private school teachers. In fall 2001, the number of public school pupils
per teacher was 15.9, compared to a projected number of 15.2 public school pupils per teacher.
With the above numbers, and President’s Obama’s initiatives, education in the United
States has become one of the leading contributions to human capital in terms of setting
benchmarks to measure student achievement in our schools. In recent years, the United States
government has increased its productivity and investment capital, with the aim of bridging the
gap between human capital and student achievement. Americans, in conjunction with their
government, have demanded change and increasing accountability for standards of education for
schools, parents, students, and their communities. Americans are increasingly comparing their
opportunity costs of building their human capital to the cost-benefit analysis of making sacrifices
in their lifestyles to benefit society in the long run.
Principals are being increasingly targeted as the point person accountable for student
achievement outcomes in the schools and communities their schools serve. Researchers have
shown the susceptibility of principals to the effects of school knowledge, resource constraints,
and school standing in the labor market when hiring teachers (DeArmond, Gross, & Goldhaber,
2010). Nevertheless, as schools are held accountable for increasingly higher academic standards,
the one attribute of all high-performing schools is a dedicated and dynamic principal (No Child
Left Behind, 2002).
Background of the Problem

Hiring teachers is one of the many major tasks headed by the principal of a school.
Broad considerations for hiring include credentials, knowledge of student assessment, teaching
skills, and communication skills (Harris, Rutledge, Ingle, & Thompson, 2006; Minarik,
Thornton, & Perreault, 2003; Rutledge, Harris, & Ingle, 2010; Tooms, Lugg, & Bogotch, 2010).
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 10

The face-to-face interview remains the predominant method or practice for hiring teachers
(Rutledge et al., 2008). It is incredible to note that the decision to hire a teacher is made within
20 to 30 minutes (Acuff, 1981; Rutledge et al., 2008). Even with the face-to-face interview
process as the most used process, “it is the least reliability of any other structured planned
process being used by organizations (Acuff, 1981, p. 561). The major reason is finding time in
the day for the principal to dedicate to the interview, which essentially is no more than 30
minutes. During these 30 minutes, 8% of the interview time is verbal interaction between the
principal and interviewee (Acuff, 1981). The purpose of doing the interview is to obtain live
information on the interviewee’s skills, attitudes, and compatibility with the teacher position
(Engel, 1984).
Another aspect of the teacher hiring process is the variability of approaches to the
process. At minimum, school districts require state teacher certification, but most have a process
that involves screening the credentials of the applications of a large candidate pool, requiring a
writing sample, and interviewing the most qualified applicants. The qualified teacher applicants
are interviewed by the principal or a team of teachers (Swofford, 2003). According to Liu and
Johnson (2006), as part of the hiring process, few candidates were even observed teaching a
lesson. Other interviews required teacher candidates to provide a portfolio on student data,
student work samples for evidence of teaching skill, and a case study during the interview for
analysis (Reeves, 2007). Essentially, lack of uniformity in the hiring process is rampant and
implementation of a structured interview model is important for assessing teachers during the
hiring process (Cottrell, 2000).
The process also considers what characteristics are looked at during the hiring process to
define an individual as an effective teacher. To begin, the No Child Left Behind legislation in
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 11

2001, with Public Law 107-110, provided a means and a definition of being a “highly qualified”
teacher as an individual who has passed the state’s teacher certification and licensing
requirements, obtained a bachelor’s degree, and demonstrated subject matter expertise (No Child
Left Behind, 2002). Although no clear, finite answer exists, many studies provide
characteristics, attributes, and skills for an effective teacher (Steele, 2010). As an example, Polk
(2006) enumerated 10 characteristics of effective teachers: good prior academic performance,
communication skills, creativity, professionalism, pedagogical knowledge, student evaluation
and assessment, lifelong learning, personality, content area knowledge, and ability to model
concepts in their content area.
Most recently, in an effort to increase teacher effectiveness, the concept of “human
capital” has been introduced. With its origin in economics, human capital refers to skills and
competencies that individuals acquire and are valued in the marketplace (Becker, 1993).
Economist Gary Becker has called it “resources in people,” offering a perspective that
investments in human capital take the form of education and training. The subsequent
management of human capital is then tied to organizational outcomes. Research in private
industry first established a connection between human capital management practices and
organizational performance (Becker, Ulrich, & Huselid, 2001; Huselid, Jackson, & Schuler,
1997). As human capital management is applied to public education, school personnel practices
are then related to student performance. For example, schools led by more effective principals
were more likely to hire effective teachers (Loeb, Kalogrides, & Béteille, 2012).
Statement of the Problem

Hiring high school teachers to positively impact student achievement is contingent on the
diligence of principals to screen, select, attract, and provide incentives in the hiring process.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 12

Principals also need to be aware of the criteria, dynamics, and process for hiring the best teachers
for their schools. This qualitative multiple case study investigated the teacher selection criteria
and process used by high school principals and how decision making affected the final hiring
decisions.
Additionally, this study investigated high school principals’ teacher selection criteria in
relation to addressing the issue of hiring effective high school teachers who are capable of
promoting effective teaching and learning strategies to increase student achievement. Principals
in today’s society are continuously under pressure to maintain and financially manage the
demands of the school as well as to create a school-wide vision, hire teachers, and manage the
communities it serves, including parents, the Board of Education, district officials, and
policymakers (Mason & Schroeder, 2010). With prevailing high school teacher shortages—
particularly in math, science, and special education—and the high turnover rate in high poverty
high school complexes, principals are challenged to recruit, hire, and retain teachers (Boyd,
Lankford, Loeb, Ronfeldt, & Wyckoff, 2011; Ronfeldt, Loeb, & Wyckoff, 2012). Research
suggested that 33% of new teachers leave the profession after three years; 46% leave within five
years; and high poverty public schools have much higher teacher turnover rates than affluent
public schools (Ingersoll, 2003). Therefore, it becomes common practice for principals to make
rash decision by filling in these vacant positions with anyone who has the right credentials for
the positions—regardless of if he or she fits the needs of the school.
Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this study was to investigate the teacher selection criteria used by high
school principals whereby the findings contributed to the entire framework of knowledge that
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 13

enabled principals to make better hiring decisions. The results of this multiple case study also
enabled human resource staffers in the school district to do the following:
 Align their selections criteria to what high school principals are considering for hiring
teachers in their schools;
 Building teacher candidate pools that are more conducive to the hiring needs of the
principals;
 Enabling the recommendation of teacher candidates to high school principals to ensure a
“right fit.”
With this qualitative multiple case design, a planned study of a contemporary phenomenon (high
school principals ’ teacher selection criteria) in a lived context (principals at three high schools)
limited by time constraints (June –August 2014 for teacher interviews) and place (three high
schools on a large island) was conducted.
Research Questions

Woodburn (2012) conducted a similar case study examining the techniques of middle
school principals for hiring teachers and their effects on student achievement. Using
Woodburn’s research questions, this case study looked at how high school principals from
private, public, and charter school hired teachers. The main research question to be answered
was:
What do principals consider to screen/test/interview for new teachers?

To seek answers to the main question, the following sub questions were as follows:

Subquestion A: What formal/informal qualifications and characteristics do
incoming teachers need?
Subquestion B: What training do you seek for qualified teachers?
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 14

Subquestion C: What teacher attributes are considered in selecting qualified
applicants?
Significance of the Study

The significance of this study is adding to the qualitative research and knowledge based
on high school principals’ teacher selection criteria. Currently, there is little research focusing
on the hiring procedures high school principals use when selecting qualified teachers to measure
student achievement. The outcomes of this case study should then provide additional results and
recommendations to assist school districts along with school administrators in the hiring and
selection process for qualified teachers. Further outcomes of this case study will integrate the
dynamics of Human Resource Management techniques into the selection process to create
efficient administrators who understand the supply and demand theory of teacher selection pools.
Organization of the Study

This case study of high school principals’ teacher selection process consists of five
chapters. Chapter One begins with an introduction to the study, identifying high school teacher
supply, quality, and preparation strategies. It presents the statement of the problem, research
questions, context and purpose of the study, limitations, delimitations, and significance.
Chapter Two reviews the literature on the principals’ position as an effective human
resources manager, including hiring practices and techniques regarding concerns surrounding
high school teachers from the national and state levels. This case study used the conceptual
framework of Seyfarth’s Model of the Selection Process (2008).
Chapter Three reemphasizes the purpose of the study along with the methodology for the
case study and the perceptions and outcomes of the findings. It also presents Seyfarth’s (2008)
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 15

guiding conceptual framework, sample selection, data collection, and cross-case analysis. This
chapter concludes with standards of validation and ethical issues.
Chapter Four presents the outcomes of the study. This chapter provides an overview of
the methodology and research questions, as to how school districts hired from the teacher supply
pool.
Chapter Five provides a comprehensive summary of the study by restating the purpose,
problem statement, research question, methodology, and standards of validation. Conclusions are
also drawn and recommendations made.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 16

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW

Human Capital

The literature review discusses the broad topic of human capital. To begin, the research
suggests that human capital refers to the knowledge, ideas, skills, and health of individuals
(Becker, 2002; Coff, 2002; Eide & Showalter, 2010; Flamholtz & Lacey, 1981) and is, according
to Becker, the most important form of capital in modern economies. As one of the largest
investments organizations make (Schiemann, 2006), and constituting over 70% of the total
capital invested in the United States (Becker, 2002), human capital management is vital to the
economic success of individuals and organizations. Formal economic theories of developing
human capital as a common good date back approximately 50 years, although awareness of
positive outcomes of investing in people is far from new (Becker, 1964; Eide & Showalter,
2010; Schultz, 1961).
The modern usage of human capital took root in the economic growth and societal
changes that followed World War II. Contemporary economists like Schultz (1961) and Becker
(1964) observed that increased levels of education and training were creating a knowledge-based
economy in which individuals could better control their destinies. When individuals acquired
knowledge, skills, and attitudes as a form of human capital, these qualities could not be separated
from them as was possible with other forms of capital. Ultimately, the success of these
individuals would not only impact their own lives, but also have far-reaching effects on society
as a whole (Becker, 1964; Eide & Showalter, 2010; Schultz, 1961).
The benefit to an organization of investing in its workers is also a focus of human capital
theory. Ample research provides evidence that the knowledge, skills, and abilities possessed by
employees at a variety of levels contribute to organizational success (Boxall, 2011; Byerly, 2012;
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 17

Crook, Todd, Combs, Woehr, & Ketchen, 2011; Guest, 2011; Zimmerman, Gavrilova-Aquilar,

& Cullum, 2013). Investment in human capital development of employees is costly and time
consuming. Byerly (2012) calculated the financial costs to an organization through turnover.
Noting that turnover is not always bad, losing productive employees brings real costs related to
exiting and rehiring that interferes with organization missions and financial bottom lines. Boxall
(2013) added that the configuration of human capital—how managers allocate resources and
recognize potential talent worth investing in—is critical. Zimmerman et al. (2013) examined
how contingent workers are increasing in the workplace and asserted that greater attention
should be focused on their development to maximize their contribution to organizations.
Maximizing the impact and efficiency of human capital in organizations is one of the
cornerstones of industrial and organizational psychology inquiry (Bobko & Potosky, 2011).
Research shows that investing in human capital can yield positive individual as well as
organizational benefits. Compensation for employees and managers is strongly related to the
education and experience they possess. Superior human capital leads to sustainable performance
advantages because talent tends to expand over time. These principles of human capital transfer
to America’s public school system in that schools, like corporate organizations, need to acquire
and nurture the best and brightest human capital available and keep these investments by
implementing the same components of properly attracting, selecting, engaging, developing and
retaining employees, using a research-proven, systematic framework.
A Broad Theoretical Framework: Human Capital Management

From human capital, the literature then discusses another broad topic on Human Capital
Management (HCM). Odden (2011) outlined four elements of human capital management
related to talent motivation and development: induction and mentoring, professional
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 18

development, performance management, and compensation. Induction and mentoring refer to
the processes and strategies organizations use to provide individuals new to the system with the
knowledge and skills to work successfully. After induction and mentoring, ongoing professional
development programs should be structured around the vision and goals of the organization to
support ongoing development and engagement. Performance management is concerned with
directing and improving performance. Adequate compensation has the ability to strengthen
motivational factors.
In what follows, a broad picture of HCM will be discussed, utilizing the conceptual
framework of Phillips and Roper (2009). To begin, the literature defines HCM as a systematic
approach to attracting, selecting, engaging, developing, and retaining the highest-ability
individuals (Becker & Gerhart, 1996; Huselid, 1995; Joshi, 2012; McMahan & Wright, 1992;
Phillips & Roper, 2009). Human Capital Management (HCM) is a complex but critical system
that can enhance an organization's success (Becker & Gerhart, 1996; Huselid, 1995; Joshi, 2012).
Phillips and Roper (2009) proposed a comprehensive Model of Values and Competencies
that depicts the interrelationship of five stages of human capital management (HCM): attracting,
selecting, engaging, developing, and retaining employees (Figure 1).
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 19

Figure 1. Values and competencies model.

At the center of the framework are the organizations values and competencies, which are
aligned to the five key elements and the continuous process of strategizing, executing, and
evaluating. Research suggests that all decisions made by the organization must be aligned to one
another and linked to the strategic needs of the organization (McMahan & Wright, 1992).
Central to the model is that alignment of employee and organizational values and job
competencies is the foundation for effective human capital management (Bauer, Erdogan,
Truxillo, & Mansfield, 2012; Phillips & Roper, 2009). This congruence is identified as person-
organization (PO) fit and is an antecedent of entry into a workplace, reflected in positive
newcomer adjustment. PO fit is also an outcome measure tied strongly to long-term
organizational commitment (Bauer et al., 2012). Linking the five stages to organizational values
and competencies are employee opportunities for learning. Life-long learning—a catch-phrase of
21st-century education, is nonetheless integral to HCM and must be offered by the organization
and embraced by the employee. Each HCM stage is connected to the next by organizational
strategic planning and the actual implementation of those plans. Evaluating the effectiveness of
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 20

the plan must occur to determine if goals of the stage were met (Phillips & Roper, 2009).

For stages one and two, attracting and selecting employees involve recruiting the right
people for the job as the initial human resource management goal (Bauer et al., 2012; Phillips &
Roper, 2009). Careful creation of job descriptions and responsibilities are key steps of the
attraction stage to ensure clarity. An applicant possessing the necessary knowledge, skills, and
attitudes for a job position leads to successful integration into the organization. Once potential
employees apply, the traditional method of selection includes interviews, reference checks, and
examination of an applicant’s previous work experiences, training, and education. In the absence
of perfect information, these signals stand in for actual proof that the employee possesses the
knowledge, skills and abilities desired by the organization.
Virtually all employers use some level of applicant screening, which generally requires
that a prospective employer possess technical competence, or the ability to do the job,
motivation, which is the applicant’s desire and drive to produce quality work independently, and
cultural fitness adaptability, or an applicant’s ability to smoothly integrate and adjust to company
values, rules, conditions and environment (Huang & Cappelli, 2010).
For the third and fourth stages, engagement and development can be viewed along a
continuum. The responsibilities of these stages are shared by the employer and employee.
Engagement is early organizational socialization, the process in which new employees are
acclimated to the institutional structure and job role (Bauer et al., 2012. The organization offers
varying quality and depth, depending on the job position. Numerous activities occur during this
initial period, including reviewing benefits and job responsibilities, orienting to the institution’s
mission, goals, and structure, and orienting to the physical surroundings (Bauer et al., 2012).
Employees share equally in the engagement stage. The level of proactivity of the employee in
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 21

seeking information and connections, has significant influence on early organizational
socialization (Bauer et al., 2012).
According to Phillips and Roper (2009), satisfaction and engagement are two sentiments
that organizations need to instill in their employees. Satisfaction occurs when an employee is
happy with the current pay, working atmosphere, and benefits received. While satisfaction is a
positive sentiment for employees to have, satisfaction alone can lead to stagnation and less
ambition and initiation (Phillips & Roper, 2009).
On the other hand, engagement refers to qualities such as innovation and creativity,
taking personal responsibility, authentic desire for the success of the organization or team, and an
emotional bond to the organization and its mission and vision (Wagner & Harter, 2006).
Engaged employees can have a positive effect on the organizational success and increase desired
outcomes (Phillips & Roper, 2009).
Engagement should naturally flow into the development stage. Developing human
capital, continuing investment in employees, has been shown to increase the retention of
effective employees (Bauer et al., 2012; Becker, 1964; Byerly, 2012; Crook, et al., 2011; Guest,
2011; Zimmerman et al., 2013). Offering opportunities for professional development or ongoing
training of employees produces increased general and firm specific knowledge and skills (Bauer
et al., 2012; Crook et al., 2011). Committed employees will use this knowledge to advance the
organizational mission.
Informal socialization is a key part of engagement and development (Bauer et al., 2012).
Initially, this socialization helps newcomers navigate the unwritten policies in the workplace, but
ultimately leads to ongoing employee investment. Building respectful and trusting relationships
between all levels of management and workers has been found to profoundly impact employee
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 22

loyalty and satisfaction (Bauer et al., 2012). Recruitment and selection of a qualified applicant is
generally followed by a period of formal employee orientation to the organization and new
position. More comprehensively referred to as onboarding, this investment in human capital is a
critical socialization process that brings new employees into the organizational culture. The
value of onboarding to both the employee and employer has been explored extensively in the
literature (Adler, 2011; Bauer et al., 2012; Graybill, Carpenter, Offord, Piorun, & Shaffer, 2013;
Lynch & Buckner-Hayden, 2010). Employees given quality onboarding report increased role
clarity, self-effectiveness, and job satisfaction. As a result, organizations reap the rewards of
increased employee productivity and commitment, leading to reduced turnover. This effect has
been reported across different fields, such as education, business, and healthcare, and at different
employment levels, from CEOs to managers to hourly workers.
For stage five, retaining a skilled workforce and decreasing unwanted employee turnover
are necessities for companies and organizations world-wide (Belbin, Erwee, & Wiesner, 2012).
Defined as “the effort by an employer to keep desirable workers in order to meet business
objectives” (Frank, 2006, p. 9), employee retention is crucial in keeping companies moving
forward. As organizations compete to hire the most talented employees, a strong focus must also
be made to retain gifted employees (Govaerts & Kyndt, 2010). Keeping an organization’s best
workers can be critical in determining whether a company can maintain a competitive advantage
while ensuring that operations flow smoothly (Cardy & Lengnick-Hall, 2011). Losing talented
employees translates to losses in human capital, as the time and financial resources spent on the
departed employee are now lost (Cardy & Lengnick-Hall, 2011). If the best employees are not

retained, an organization can be negatively affected on both the operational and strategic level
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 23

(Cardy & Lengnick-Hall, 2011).

High employee retention is vital to the operational success of an organization (Belbin et
al., 2012). Because personal and organizational costs are high, efforts to increase workplace
retention have become paramount for organizations around the globe (Belbin et al., 2012). As
companies pay up to 50% of an employee’s salary on turnover costs, organizations are looking
for ways to increase retention (Laddha, Singh, Gabbad, & Gidwani, 2012). In light of rising
costs of replacing workers, a considerable amount of focus and attention have been given to
investigate why workers leave one job in pursuit of another (Belbin et al., 2012).
According to Govaerts and Kyndt (2010) several factors can be linked to employee
retention. On the organizational side, the existence of challenging and meaningful work,
opportunities for career advancement, empowerment, increased responsibilities, managerial
quality and integrity, and the presence of new opportunities/challenges within the organization
can determine whether an employee stays in an organization (Birt, Wallis, & Winternitz 2004).
Other factors that can influence employee retention include fair compensation, appreciation for
work performed, opportunities to learn, positive relationships with colleagues, recognition of
worker capabilities and contributions, a healthy balance between work duties and responsibilities
at home, and positive communication on the job (Walker, 2001).
According to Hytter (2007), workplace factors such as rewards, leadership style, career
advancement opportunities, training and skills development, physical working conditions, and
work-life balance have an impact on employee retention. Echols (2007) stated that on-the-job
learning and development processes, coupled with promotions and salary increases, contribute to
increased retention. Research has shown that retention is high as long as employees feel that
they are learning and growing on the job, while limited growth and scarce opportunities lead to
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 24

decreases in retention (Rodriguez, 2008). Development and learning are critical to attracting and
maintaining high-quality employees (Govaerts & Kyndt, 2010). Work experience and tenure
were also found to have positive influences on retention (Gunz & Gunz, 2007).
Good coworker relationships have positive impacts on workplace retention (Basford,
Offerman, & Wirtz, 2012). For most people, coworker relationships are an important facet of
everyday working life (Basford et al., 2012). While some coworker relationships are a product
of sharing the same physical space, many are the result of team-based, cooperative efforts to
achieve a common goal for the organization (Basford et al., 2012). Self-managed teams, project
work, task forces, working groups, and other forms of teamwork have become quite common in
the workplace (Basford et al., 2012). With an estimated 80% of mid-to-large scale companies
incorporating the teamwork approach to conducting business, healthy coworker relationships are
key to organizational success (Basford et al., 2012). Effective coworker relationships result in
increased levels of motivation to stay at one’s current place of employment for both high- and
low-level employees (Basford et al., 2012).
Narrowing the Perspective: Hiring in the Schools

To begin, from an employment point of view, principals are employees who are part of
the management team. At private/independent schools, the principal is accountable to the Board
of Directors. At public schools, the organizational structure is more complex, as the principal
must adhere to the rules and regulations of the district, state, and the Board of Education when
hiring teachers. Teacher positions are determined by student enrollment while districts determine
the allotment of teacher positions per school. A vacancy announcement is then created whereby

the employment protocol trickles down from the state to the districts via recruitments and mass
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 25

advertising.

Interested Individuals then submit a comprehensive application. With technological
advances with the Internet, applications can be submitted for consideration online. The
application process includes personal information, work history, licensure status, letters of
recommendation, and references. From the pool of applications, individuals who are ultimately
selected for an interview with the principal are upgraded to candidate status. The No Child Left
Behind Act of 2002, added requirements for individuals to be of highly qualified status. In
reality, the highly qualified status essentially narrows the pool of candidates with the hope that
the candidates are better qualified to serve as teachers. Thus, Mueller and Baum (2011) proposed
a 12-step research-based guide to hiring. The process begins with conducting job analysis—
study similar jobs in order to gather and report accurate information to potential hires. The
process then considers the following: Update job description—keep the job description that is
posted accurate to ensure that it meets the potentially changing needs of the organization; source
potential employees—consider finding candidates internally. Promotion or transfer from within
can cut recruitment and training costs and increase employee satisfaction and career
management. Résumé/Application review—resumés and applications can be electronically
scanned and screened for key words and completion then maintained in a database for easy
access and review; telephone screen—the telephone screen has the advantage of testing an
applicant’s vocal and listening skills, which are major factors in many jobs; pre-employment
performance testing—includes aptitude tests, personality tests, achievement or psychomotor
tests; practice Interview—preferably conducted by a supervisor trained in behavior-based
methods to screen for interpersonal skills relevant to the job; structured interview with a panel
based on the idea that potential teammates of the new hire have a vested interest and a right to
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 26

provide input into the hiring decision. Moreover, they may see strengths and challenges that the
supervisor has overlooked; office tour—evaluate the candidate’s motivation and cultural fitness
by taking a tour of the work site; matrix comparison—create a matrix as an equitable and
measurable means of comparing candidates and making the selection decision. These can be
weighted, check-marked or customized to employer needs; background/reference checks—
formal background checks are common and recommended. According to Taylor (1999), 96% of
employers still check references despite the time and cost it takes the company and the potential
invasion of privacy on the new employee. Offer (contingent upon background and reference
checks)—regarding compensation, Block (2003) recommended paying new hires as much as
possible rather than as little as possible so the new hire is happy about salary and won’t consider
other job prospects.
To expand, compensation, a workplace condition identified by Ingersoll (2001), has been
seen as an important influence in recruiting and retaining educators. For salary, the lower the
teaching wages, the less likely a graduate will choose a career in teaching (Dolton, 1990, as cited
in Brewer & McEwan, 2010; Heifetz & Linsky, 2002). Brewer (1996) found that between 1975
and 1990, a positive relationship existed between higher salaries and female teacher retention in
New York City schools. Salary also affects the decision to remain—the higher the salary, the less
likely they will resign (Dolton & Van der Klaauw, 1999, as cited in Brewer & McEwan, 2010;
Heifetz & Linsky, 2002; Loeb & Reininger (2004). A close inspection of the factors that lead to
attrition show that finances have at least some part in many new teachers’ decisions to leave.
Guarino (2006) found that, overall, higher salaries were associated with lower attrition rates. For
beginning teachers, they had the perception that they were not being fairly compensated for the
amount of work that the job demanded. Beginning teachers listed “providing higher salaries
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 27

and/or better fringe benefits” as the most effective way to lower teacher attrition (Liu, 2007).
Alternatively, even if overall satisfaction is relatively high, compensation is an area where many
experience dissatisfaction. When compared to other professions that require similar education
and training, teacher salaries are approximately 20% below their counterparts (Darling-
Hammond, 2003). According to the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, teachers
nationwide earn 88 cents for every dollar that those in 16 other comparable professions earn
(Swanson, 2008). Salary then becomes one of the strongest and most reliable relationships
between the workplace variable and attrition (Boe & Gilford, 1992).
In an earlier study, Roselius and Kleiner (2000) discussed eight steps employers should
follow to hire the best applicant. Employers need to (a) examine the job description and decide
on a list of attributes they want applicants to have, with a chart to compare all of the candidates;
(b) conduct a pre-interview or reference check to narrow down the face-to-face interviews; (c)
develop performance-based questions; (d) during the interview stage, provide an adequate
amount of time for candidates to take detailed notes of the candidates statements; (e) after the
interview, thoroughly screen the applicant again by checking references and giving candidates
additional evaluations; (f) possibly further narrow down the applicant pool by conducting
additional interviews of the finalists; (g) make a final decision and extend a job offer; and, (h)
improve public relations by notifying candidates either by letter or by phone.
Thompson and Kleiner (2005) investigated and drew upon nine years of experience
auditing various school districts’ recruiting and hiring actions. Thompson and Kleiner (2005)
affirmed that effective recruiting can be achieved through ongoing communications and research
to project the needs and set up reasonable timelines so that the best possible teachers can be
hired. Thompson and Kleiner also argued that human resources directors should develop
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 28

environments in which central and school-level administrators work closely with teachers and
draw on the experience and leadership skills of teachers to get the most out of the human
resources potential of the district.
To continue, teacher hiring does not occur in a vacuum. The research literature continues
with the effects on the labor supply, retention efforts, attrition, and turnover rates. To begin,
Weiss (1999), using Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) data from 1987–1988 and 1990–1991,
found that factors such as professional autonomy and decision-making, as well as administrative
leadership, affected morale and were predictors of an educator’s decision to return to teaching.
According to Newman, Rutter, and Smith (1989), a sense of collegiality can improve teachers’
sense of efficacy and community within the context of the school climate. Most recently, the
four factors that contributed to teacher attrition and retention were: (a) gender, (b) age, (c)
subject, and (d) time, which affected school culture, organization, management, salary,
employment (Minnesota, 2013). Lastly, Ingersoll (2001) used the Schools and Staffing Survey
(SASS), and its component, the Teacher Follow-Up Survey (TFS), which presented the
following three premises:
a. understanding employee turnover is important because of its link to the performance
and effectiveness of organizations; b. fully understanding turnover requires examining it
at the level of the organization; and c. fully understanding turnover requires examining
the character and conditions of the organizations within which employees work. (p. 504)
In terms of teacher turnover, Ingersoll (2001) mentioned a strong correlation with the
individual characteristics of teachers and occurs mostly in special education, math, and science.
The relationship between teachers' age or experience and their turnover follows a U-shaped
curve. Younger teachers have very high rates of departure, decline through the mid-career
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 29

period, rise again in the retirement. Teachers less than 30 years old and teachers greater than 50
years old are more likely to depart than are middle-aged teachers. Schools that have difficulties
filling teacher openings are almost twice as likely to have above-average turnover rates,
compared to schools reporting no difficulties.
Schools that provide more administrative support to teachers have lower turnover rates
(Weiss, 1999). The results show that, among public schools, teachers in high-poverty schools
have higher rates of turnover than do those in more affluent public schools. Retirement is not a
strong indicator as much as staffing cutbacks, school closings, and reorganizations. Other
reasons such as job dissatisfaction, the desire to pursue a better or other career, low salaries, lack
of support from the school administration, student discipline problems, and lack of teacher
influence over decision-making are other indictors of teacher turnover.
Many teachers will leave their jobs permanently because they are fed up (Tye, 2000).

In defining the word “fed up,” Tye suggested, “Teachers are tired and disgusted beyond their
endurance. They are burnt out and fed up with things as they are” (pp. 29–30). One answer as to
why, according to Tye, is the “feeling of isolation, loneliness, meaningless and powerlessness”
(pp. 29–30). Tye reconfirmed that poor working conditions, lack of administration support, too
much paperwork, lack of collegial and parent support, insufficient involvement in decision-
making, student behavior, and classroom management are other factors.
According to Lucksinger (2000), participation in leadership and curriculum decisions
accounted for higher-than-normal teacher turnover. The more teachers experience complaints
about the changing environment in the public schools, the more they lose the joy and satisfaction
of teaching. More often than not, experienced teachers who are working toward completing
advanced degrees rather than beginning teachers were dissatisfied. Teachers make decisions that
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 30

are shaped by their individual preferences and personal constraints which, in turn, affect the
supply of teachers. Teachers have a strong preference for living close to where they grew up. An
analysis of teacher labor markets in New York State found that teachers have strong preferences
for teaching in schools in close proximity to the communities in which they grew up. Between
1999 and 2002, 85% of entering New York teachers taught within forth miles of their hometown,
and 60% taught within 15 miles (Boyd, Lankford, Loeb, & Wyckoff, 2005). If a district is
continually faced with staffing challenges and is perennially forced to recruit teachers from
outside the local area, they are only finding a short-term solution to the problem. If district
officials consider that individuals who live locally are more likely to become teachers, ensuring
that these individuals have access to teacher preparation programs could be a permanent solution
to the staffing challenges (Reininger, 2006). Loeb and Reininger (2004) stated, “While policy
cannot change preferences, it can use incentives, such as bonuses or improved working
conditions, to encourage teachers to make particular choices” (p. 8).
In terms of school districts, Darling-Hammond (1984), Rothman (1986), and Wise et al.
(1987) indicated that large or small school districts and rural or urban school districts were likely
to experience teacher shortage conditions. District size was a better indicator of shortage
conditions. Districts that reported teacher shortage conditions reported a significantly higher
number of endorsement areas of shortage, were more likely to employ new recruits with either
emergency or alternative certification, used a significantly greater number of internal, external,
and total teacher recruitment practices, had a higher per pupil teacher recruitment budget, used a
descriptive brochure, advertised in the newspaper, and had more contact with university
recruitment offices.
For large districts, the use of financial incentive for teacher recruitment practices was
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 31

significantly greater; they included interest rate breaks for new teachers, rent subsidies,
reimbursed moving costs and other relocation assistance, sabbatical leave, increased salary for
new and for all teachers, and the use of internships and scholarships. Additionally, external
teacher recruitment practices were found to be significantly greater in large school districts, as
follows: out-of-state metropolitan newspaper advertising, trade journal advertising, television
and video advertising, contact with out-of-state college and university placement offices, campus
visits, job fairs, imprinted memorabilia, recruitment poster with attached postal reply inquiry
card, and general reliance upon out-of-state contacts (G’Fellers, 1992).
Loeb and Reininger (2001) and Hirsch, Koppich, and Knapp (2001) stated that offering
financial incentives, such as education assistance (e.g., tuition reimbursement and student loan
forgiveness, housing assistance, and signing bonuses), are means of attracting teachers and
offsetting some of the costs required to gain initial teacher certification. The time and costs
related to completing pre-service training and testing for teaching certification may discourage
qualified prospective applicants from considering being a teacher. Therefore, reimbursing
teachers for the costs associated with earning certification could entice them to work in
underserved or high-needs areas.
Little research exists regarding the impact of high levels of teacher turnover on student
achievement outcomes (Carroll et al., 2000; Guarino, 2006; Hanushek, Kain, & Rivkin, 2004;
Ingersoll, 2001; Lankford, Loeb, & Wyckoff, 2002). However, teacher retention appears to
affect student achievement (Shen, 1997; Smith & Ingersoll, 2004; Stockard & Lehman, 2004).
This suggests that stabilizing the teacher population can help to stabilize the student population,
which in turn can positively impact achievement. An adequate quantity of instructional staff to
meet instructional needs has a positive impact on student achievement. For many struggling
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 32

schools, the addition of more people could have beneficial consequences, while the long-term
work of improving quality can continue.
Princip als’ Perspectives in Hiring
The Interview
As the leader of the school, the principal wants to hire candidates who will be the best fit
for the school mission and culture. Principals who are making the teacher hiring decisions match
the school’s goals and philosophy to the teacher candidate’s goals and philosophy of education.
Tooms et al. (2010) stated that the desirable fit is attained when the candidate has displayed
evidence of exhibiting the stated and assumed norms, culture, and philosophy of the school and
district. During the interview, the principal observes teacher candidates to see who displays what
a teacher in the school would display when promoting the value of the organization for
reforming, transforming, and transcending the school organization through their teacher
leadership (Minarik et al., 2003; Tooms et al., 2010). In a study of 30 principals in a mid-sized
Florida school district, the results suggested a relationship between the principals’ goals for their
school and the candidates’ knowledge of student accountability assessment measures as they
related to the school’s goals (Rutledge et al., 2010). Furthermore, the candidate’s knowledge of
those assessment measures is highly correlated to the teacher’s subject matter knowledge and
teaching skills. Matching goals and philosophy during the interview enables the hiring
administrator to gain insight into the candidate who will be the most effective and successful
instructor in the classroom (Harris et al. (2010). Rutledge et al., 2010; Additionally, a principal
with more experience was more effective in using criteria to match the school’s culture to the
teacher candidate for hire (Papa & Baxter, 2008).
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 33

Kounin (1971) first coined a word “withitness” to describe teachers of well-behaved
classrooms who were constantly aware of what the students were doing in the classroom.
Marzano, Marzano, and Pickering (2003) expanded on Kounin’s withitness to determine teachers
who displayed an awareness of the art and science of teaching. Specifically, the teacher exhibited
an ability to handle classroom and student discipline management, utilized proactive
interventions, connected with students, and was physically and mentally in the moment in the
classroom. The principal sought to identify the candidates who presented an emotional
objectivity and avoided extreme emotional responses when interacting with students, parents,
colleagues, and administrators (Marzano et al., 2003). Communication skills, enthusiasm, ability
to motivate, student-centered teaching, establishing a positive classroom climate, knowledge of
teaching skills, understanding special populations, ability to work with students, honesty, and
tact were the top characteristics principals looked for (Harris et al., 2006). Teaching is complex,
and the best teachers committed to student learning, valued diversity, and displayed persistence,
patience, and caring (Becker, Kennedy, & Hundersmarck, 2003).
The interview has been the primary tool for making decisions about hiring teachers, and
surprisingly this decision is made for around half of the principals within a 20-minute time limit
(Rutledge et al., 2008). Rutledge et al. suggested that there is a correlation between the
principal’s hiring criteria of communication skills, caring, and enthusiasm and the candidate’s
presentation of evidence during the interview. As part of the interview process, on a limited
basis, only 7.5% of candidates were observed teaching a lesson as evidence within the hiring
process (Liu & Johnson, 2006). On another limited basis, some principals required teacher
candidates to provide portfolio evidence during the interview to include student data and student
work samples to provide evidence of teacher characteristics and skills. For the most part,
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 34

principals have difficulty assessing the merits of the portfolio, which in turn did not influence the
decision to hire (Theel & Tallerico, 2004). The reasoning was such that artifacts highlight
accomplishments and strengths rather than teaching dilemmas. Even with technology, the trend
of submitting eportfolios raises some issues as to its usefulness in hiring (Painter & Wetzel,
2005). Eportfolios also are difficult to evaluate, lack connection to a classroom practice, and
exhibit only the best work (Nodoye, Ritzhaupt, & Parker, 2012; Strawhecker, Messersmith, &
Balcom, 2007). As a solution, Reeves (2007) recommended that school data and student work
samples be given to the applicant when they arrive for the interview and asked to analyze the
school’s academic achievement and the quality of the student work for the principal to assess.
The Right Fit/Hiring Decisions
From further studies on the principal’s perspective, Cantrell and Weeks (2004) concluded
that academic achievement, pedagogical preparation and training, activity participation in the
content, developing relationships, educating diverse learners, oral communication skills, display
of enthusiasm, professional appearance, reference checks, and evidence of work samples were
valued during the hiring process. Harris et al.’s (2006) study a few years later determined that
communication skills, enthusiasm, ability to motivate, being student-centered, establishing
positive classroom climate, having knowledge of teaching skills, understanding the special needs
population, having the ability to work with students, honesty, and tact were the important
identifiable characteristics of the principal’s hiring criteria for teachers that emerged from a
results summary of seven studies. Similarly, Ingle and Rutledge (2010) summarized that
principals preferred teacher candidates who possessed verbal and quantitative ability skills,
subject matter competency, pedagogical skills, enthusiasm, motivation, caring, interpersonal
skills, and teaching experience. Interestingly, these principals were influenced by individuals
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 35

who shared similar background characteristics with the principal, favored younger candidates,
and sought for individuals who would complement the department/grade level and match the
organizational culture of the school (Delli & Vera, 2003; Ingle & Rutledge, 2010). To expand on
finding a match for the organizational culture of the school, Harris et al. (2010) concluded that
teacher personality, education, cognitive ability, and experience were areas that led to hiring
individual teachers.
Hiring as a process, from a principal’s perspective, includes many considerations. Hall
(2007) discussed six steps principals need to take: recruit and take the initiative to find teachers,
look through the applications, collaborate with others, obtain all of the necessary information
during the hiring process, narrow down to the finalists and dig deeper into the applicant’s
background, and, if any doubt exists, the answer should be “No.” Similarly, Peal (2007)
provided hiring considerations that principals should take: make decisions with a team, interview
only the best candidates, ask teacher candidates performance-based questions, provide the
teacher candidate a scenario to demonstrate how they would perform, check references, and start
the whole process over until they have the best possible teacher candidate. Private school
principals may have a luxury to choose without constraint, but public school principals have
more governmental regulations to select from the existing candidates, as provided by the human
resources office. In addition, schools in undesirable locations and low enrollment have fewer
resources to hire teachers as compared to brand name schools. Interestingly, “In the end, a
school’s location and relative attractiveness appear to have a central impact on its ability to cope
with the task of staffing its classrooms” (DeArmond et al., 2010, p. 349). Public school
principals many need to display more wit in maneuvering the government bureaucracy in
selecting and finding the right teacher candidate fit for the school.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 36

Moreover, in the school systems, principals continually seek to hire outstanding teachers
and staff. Mason and Schroeder (2010) investigated how principals screened applicants, what
they specifically looked for in potential applicants, and whether hiring practices were consistent
across a variety of principal demographic variables. They concluded that principals should
develop a teacher characteristic profile of what is needed or wanted in a candidate for a particular
vacancy before the selection process begins (Stronge & Hindman, 2003); develop a procedure
for examining paperwork that is consistent and reduces the level of uncertainty; hire their own
staff for their own schools while conducting their own screening of paperwork; hire new teachers
as soon as possible when the choice of potential candidates is sizeable; create a team to facilitate
hiring, reduce bias (Ilkka, 1995; Lee, 2005); and provide varied input to the hiring process. Poor
hiring decisions can result in declining school culture and problems for years to come. Wise
hiring decisions can add value to a school, whereas poor hiring decisions can quickly damage a
school and create a toxic culture. Principals initially look at professional attributes such as grade
point average and type of teacher credential before looking at personal attributes such as
enthusiasm, as professional attributes can be evaluated more objectively and provide more
defensible grounds for the acceptance or rejection of a candidate (Mason & Schroeder, 2010).
This way, principals weed out applicants by giving more weight to professional attributes first,
then personal attributes as they move toward the interview (Mason & Schroeder, 2010).
Principals also reported considering organizational factors when hiring teachers by trying
to find a match to the styles and personalities of the existing teachers in the school (Rutledge et
al. (2010). Based on the conceptual framework of bridging and buffering by Honig and Hatch
(2004), principals negotiated external policies with their own internal goals and strategies either
by accommodating policy demands through initiatives and structures directly aimed at meeting
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 37

policy goals (bridging) or resisting policy goals by focusing on local objectives and priorities
(buffering). Bridging and buffering provides a means to understand a school’s response to
external policy with what principals prefer in applicants during the hiring process. Results of a
study of thirty principals from a Florida school district suggested that principals considered
professional characteristics to some degree with a blend of personality characteristics. From the
30 principals, 22 principals focused on a blend of professional and personality qualities when
hiring teachers. Personality characteristics included caring, enthusiasm, and motivation.
Professional characteristics included academic background, teaching skills, and experience (Rice
2003; Wayne & Youngs 2003; Wilson & Floden, 2003). On the other hand, when the same
principals were asked how state and federal pressures to improve test scores had affected the
hiring process, 19 responded that their hiring practices were affected, while 10 reported no effect.
Of the 10, nine posted effective test accountability scores, of which seven were non-Title I
schools. Thus, most principals adhered to policy and the theme of bridging, and also tended to
prefer mixed characteristics of personality and professionalism; but when pressured to improve
school test scores, principals in lower-performing schools were more likely to bridge to hiring
based on improving test-based accountability.
Principals also sought valid and reliable means of obtaining information about teacher
candidates and apply three means of data-seeking as identified by Wise, Darling-Hammond and
Berry (1987). Low-cost data is used during the early stages of the hiring process and includes
transcripts, resumes, and application forms. The low-cost process of screening applications
yields relatively superficial information and serves to reduce the candidate pool to a manageable
number. Medium-cost data includes such items as reference reviews, telephone contacts, formal
interviews, and personality tests. The medium-cost process is more time-consuming on the
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 38

principal’s part but yields information of a much higher quality. High-cost data include teacher
observation, which some principals require prior to hiring.
Another particular issue most principals face with regard to hiring is centralization of
school structures and regulated hiring by the district. There is a constant search for hiring
methodology in schools to improve student achievement and overall efficiency (DeArmond et al,
2010; Mason & Schroeder, 2010). A growing interest is in decentralized decision making and
increased school autonomy toward effective hiring. Decentralized school-based hiring can take a
number of forms, such as school-level interviews teams, but the impetus is to ultimately give the
principal the authority to hire teachers. With, school-based hiring, two challenges provide viable
results when ensuring students have good teachers. First, school-based hiring addresses teacher
turnover by improving the match-and-fit between teachers and schools, leading to a more stable
staff. Second, teacher quality improves between the applicant and schools rather than the central
office and the applicant (DeArmond et al., 2010). With decentralized hiring, more attention is
given earlier in the process to determine if individuals fit the requirements of a teacher position
and/or the needs and culture of a school (Liu, 2003). Likewise, Naper (2010) defined
decentralized hiring and appointing employees at the school level directly by the principal,
whereas centralized hiring means the decisions are made by the school district office. Findings
by Donaldson (2013 suggested that principals felt constrained by centralization to hire teachers
due to contractual limitations. The argument in favor of the decentralized hiring process is that
the principal knows the school better than district office personnel and can make hiring decisions
more effectively. In a cross-country analysis, Wobmann (2003) demonstrated that students
tended to perform better when schools had autonomy in personnel and day-to-day decisions.
Schools with clear and consistent messages about their hiring priorities had principals who
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 39

offered precise messages about their ideal candidate and talked about their hiring priorities in
clear and consistent language. The messages included working with students on higher-order
thinking skills, classroom management and discipline, working with disadvantaged students,
using a specific teaching model (e.g., direct instruction), involvement with families, and
maintaining and expanding on a culture of professional excellence (DeArmond et al., 2010).
The most valuable resource in the field of education is the talents of its people
(Thompson & Kleiner, 2005). The first step to effective hiring is recruitment based on a needs
forecast of the school. Principals should look at area housing developments, census and
demographic data, and feeder institution student numbers to project possible enrollment figures.
Principals should also account for class size when projecting enrollment as some states may
mandate smaller class sizes. Budgetary restrictions or additions may also be considered when
hiring teachers and staff. In some instances, principals hired teachers from less selective colleges
(Ballou, 1996). In other instances, principals hired teachers based on the teacher candidate’s
contributions to student achievement (Boyd et al., 2010). Rutledge et al. (2010) found that
principals expressed a preference for candidates with subject knowledge. Yet, in one of the most
recent studies, principals at disadvantaged schools were seen making a trade-off in hiring based
on the attribute of caring, rather than looking at the age-old professional qualities of content and
pedagogical knowledge knowing that a caring teacher would better serve the best interest of the
students (Engle, 2012). For the most part, the principal’s opinions about the characteristics of
what made teachers successful in improving student learning predominately influenced the
decision to hire teachers (Donaldson, 2003).
In terms of hiring-for-the-right-fit, employers consider how their hiring decisions affect
the organizational culture of the institution (Bretz, Rynes, & Gerhart, 1992; Schein, 2004). To
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 40

begin, Kristof-Brown, Zimmerman, and Johnson (2005) provided one of the most widely used
concepts with the construct of person-environment fit (P-E) with a recent follow up in 2011
(Ingle, Rutledge, & Bishop, 2011). When applied to schools, this person-environment fit was
framed to understand how principals assessed a compatibility match between an individual and
the school, as defined in four sub-categories: person-vocation fit (P-V), person-job fit (P-J),
person-organization fit (P-O), and person-group fit (P-G) (Kristof-Brown et al., 2005). The P-V
is the broadest construct win which people tend to match their characteristics with their
occupation (Ehrhart & Makransky, 2007). With P-J, the person matches his or her credentials to
the job requirements (Debray, Parson & Avila, 2003; Mintrop, 2004; Sekiguchi, 2004; Werbel &
Gilliland, 1999). For P-O, a match is essential between the person and the values of the
organization (Hallinger & Heck, 1996; Kristof-Brown, 2000). For P-G, the issues include
compatibility with the individual and both the people and the organization and a match between
the value of the individual and the values held by the group on a regular work basis (Kristof-
Brown et al., 2005; Sekiguchi, 2004). The four categories are not mutually exclusive, as all
categories are taken into account in finding the right fit between the person and the organization
(Anderson, Lievens, van Dam, & Ryan, 2004).
To expand, principals perceived that their main responsibility in hiring was to select
teachers who fit the vocation, job, organization, culture, and existing staff of their schools
(Karren & Graves, 1994; Kristof-Brown et al., 2005). Even when P-V fit is important, it is also
likely that personal biases have affected the whole hiring process (Cranston, 2012). Similarities
between the principal and the teacher seemed to have more weight than actual fit and could have
an impact on commitment (Cranston, 2012; Van Vianen, 2000). Consistent with Hines (2010),
principals also perceived teacher attitudes for P-J as critical to determining who will be effective
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 41

as teachers based on the assumption that knowledge is required as a teacher (Parkay, Stanford,
Vaillancourt, & Stephens, 2009). Principals believed that they could determine which individuals
had professional knowledge that is needed to become an effective teacher (Cranston, 2012). The
P-O and P-G fit were significant in the later stages of the hiring process, when making decisions
on who to hire, as job satisfaction and organizational commitment are important outcomes for
the organization (Cranston, 2012; Sekiguchi, 2004). Similar to the principals’ perception of P-V,
the P-O fit appears to match the values fit between the principal and the teacher for hire
(Cranston, 2012). Thus, assessments of fit are highly significant for teacher hiring decisions,
especially for schools that are “loosely coupled” (Weick, 1976), where there is less control over
individuals, which in turns increases the need to infuse personal inferences to insure the right
teachers are hired (Bowen, Ledford, & Nathan, 1991).
As we apply human capital management to principals, the issue gravitates toward what
can be done or considered to systematically increase the quality of instruction that teachers
provide and to improve student performance. By aligning human capital functions with school
district goals, principals will take steps to bring their human capital practices in line with school
objectives, which leads to better decisions with teachers, and ultimately to higher student
performance (Donaldson, 2003). Ironically, schools and the behavior of the personnel hamper
this aforementioned process as schools are referred to as loosely coupled organizations
(Gamoran & Dreeben, 1986; Weick, 1976). Efforts to control what happens in the schools have
been convoluted by the complicated nature of the inner workings of the school culture (Lortie,
1975; Weatherley & Lipsky, 1977). Even with principals having control over teacher hiring, their
influence over instruction can turn out to be limited and indirect (Gamoran & Dreeben, 1986).
Thus, in taking the aforementioned literature review on human capital, Human Capital
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 42

Management, and the teacher hiring process, the discussion now turns to the final area or
conceptual framework. Seyfarth’s (2008) Model of the Selection Process is succinct and
considers four components (job model—working conditions and expectations; state/federal
statutes—licensing requirements, mission statements; guiding actions of the organization; and
research—increasing student learning) that contribute to the identification of job-specific and
non-job-specific functions. Job-specific functions are the knowledge and skills of the teaching
position. Non job-specific functions are characteristics, such as communication, work ethic, and
attitudes that lead to success. The model then turns to selection criteria, which includes
developing a job description for the teacher position and identifying the selection criteria. The
job description consists of five components: job title, summary description, duties and
responsibilities, qualifications, and terms of employment. The job title is self-explanatory—to
indicate the job. The summary description includes the type of work identified by the employing
organization, whom the person works with, and contact with others within and outside of the
organization. Duties and responsibilities include the tasks performed, the frequency of the tasks
performed, and materials utilized for the job. The qualifications lists the type and level of
education require for the job—including degrees, licenses, and certifications, work experience,
personality characteristics, and special skills. The terms of employment include the location,
working conditions, availability of resources, salary, fringe benefits, working hours, and start
date (Seyfarth, 2008). The final analysis includes hiring or rejecting the candidate based on the
right fit for the school.
Within the aforementioned teacher hiring process, Seyfarth (2008) has suggested
considering selection criteria based on the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support
Consortium (INTASC) principle. Seyfarth’s adaptation of the INTASC principle includes 11
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 43

highly valued teacher selection criteria: Teacher accepts responsibility for helping all students to
learn; teacher tells how he/she has communicated an affirming belief in all students’ ability to
learn; teacher plans/presents lessons that capture students’ interest and actively engages them;
teacher plans/presents lessons that demonstrate extensive knowledge of the subject; teacher
plans/presents lessons that include optional activities for learners with diverse abilities, interests,
and backgrounds; teacher plans/presents lessons that encourage student inquiry and critical
thinking; teacher tells how he/she has encouraged students to show mutual respect and interact
with one another in supportive ways; teacher reflects on lessons he/she taught and explains how
they might have been improved; teacher tells how he/she maintains close, supportive, working
relationships with colleagues; teacher tells how he/she has worked with parents to support
children’s learning; and teacher tells how he/she as used formal and informal assessments
strategies to evaluate students (Seyfarth, 2008). Finally, Seyfarth’s Model of the Selection
Process suggests that teacher selection criteria should be based on the school mission statements
and highlights, the school environment, description of the curricular emphasis, and the outcomes
of the school.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 44

CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The purpose of this qualitative research study was to investigate high school principals’
teacher selection criteria. The study addressed the issue of the selection process of hiring
effective high school teachers who are capable of promoting effective teaching and learning
strategies to increase student achievement. Principals today are under continuous pressure to
maintain and financially manage the demands of an ever-changing environment and are required
to recruit, hire, and retain teachers who meet their selection criteria. For this study, the
principals’ teacher selection criterion was explained via the conceptual framework of Seyfarth’s
(2008) Model of the Selection Process.
Research Question and Hypothesis

The main research question to be answered was:

What do principals consider to screen/test/interview for new teachers?

To seek answers to the main question, the following sub-questions were as follows:

Subquestion A: What formal/informal qualifications and characteristics do
incoming teachers need?

Subquestion B: What training do you seek for qualified teachers?

Subquestion C: What teacher attributes are considered in selecting qualified
applicants?

The research question produced the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis to the main question: Principals seek experienced teachers.

Hypothesis to Subquestion A: The ability to work with students and promote student

achievement.

Hypothesis to Subquestion B: Prior teaching experience.

Hypothesis to Subquestion C: Having a genuine interest in working with students for
successful achievement.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 45

Methodology

This qualitative study sought to understand the phenomena of high school principals’
teacher selection criteria. Rather than investigating quantitative data, this research study sought
to “understand how people interpret their experiences, how they construct their worlds, and what
meaning they attribute to their experiences” (Merriam, 2009, p. 5). To expound upon the nature
of this qualitative study, I developed a research question. Then I formulated an interview
protocol to collect data about the phenomena. The next step analyzed the data collected from the
interview. The research findings are presented with respect to the research question.
For the interview, the data were obtained by handwritten notes by this writer and tape
recordings of the individual interviews. After each interview, the tape recordings were
transcribed verbatim to written form. The transcribed data were then coded and categorized, with
the intent to seek patterns of responses.
Research Population

The research population for this study consisted of three public school, three private
school, and three charter school principals. The purpose was to obtain various perspectives based
on the principal’s experience as public and independent schools. The rationale was to understand
the context of the interviewed principals. This selection of respondents was based on
nonprobability sampling or what Patton (2002) referred to as purposeful sampling. Purposeful
sampling is based on “the assumption that the investigator wants to discover, understand, and
gain insight and therefore must select a sample from which the most can be learned” (Patton,
2009, p. 77). Thus, a typical sample was utilized to represent the phenomenon of this case study
(Merriam, 2009).
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 46

For field notes, this observer considered Taylor and Bogdan’s (1984) suggestion to
transcribe and record the field notes at the earliest possible time, as the recall will degrade as
time elapses (as cited in Merriam, 2009). Additional consideration was given to being highly
descriptive and reflective to include verbal descriptions, quotations, and comments (Merriam,
2009). For remembering the specifics of an observation, five areas were considered: paying
attention, utilizing a narrow lens, key remarks by the participants, beginning and end of a
conversation, and utilizing breaks to think about the observed actions (as cited in Merriam, 2009;
Taylor and Bogdan, 1984). The result produced recorded data for eventual analysis.
Research Design

A case study was selected, as the search for meaning and understanding included “the
researcher as the primary instrument of data collection and analysis, an inductive investigative
strategy, and the end product being richly descriptive” (Merriam, 2009, p. 39). The importance
of doing this study was to provide a phenomenological perspective with a case study of a
bounded system (Merriam, 2009). The data are based on qualitative data to seek the phenomena
of high school principals’ teacher selection criteria as a bounded case study. The research
question provided the impetus to seek how principals select teachers. An interview protocol of
10 questions was developed with a subsequent administration of the interview in a
semistructured format. The selection of respondents was based on nonprobability sampling or
purposeful sampling of six principals from different public and private schools. Handwritten
notes and a tape recorder were taken, and a tape recording of the interview was conducted during
the interview. A transcription of the interview was completed post-interview. The interviewer
closely considered issues of neutrality and reading the question slowly to optimize the integrity
of the data. The findings produced data in categories.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 47

Instrumentation

Interview Protocol

In developing the interview protocol, Patton’s (2002) six types of questions were
considered. Of Patton’s six questions, the protocol included questions of feelings that “tap the
affective dimension of human life” (as cited in Merriam, 2009, p. 96). A one-page, 10-item
questionnaire was developed, to be individually administered by this writer in a controlled and
structured setting located in the principals’ respective offices. In terms of the structure, of the
three types, the interview was based on a semistructured format whereby the questions were
open-ended, allowed for some flexibility of the questions during the interview, required specific
responses, and were guided by a list of questions (Merriam, 2009). The issue of neutrality was
considered by not arguing, debating, of expressing the interviewer’s views (Merriam, 2009). An
opportunity to test, discuss, and subsequently revise the questions avoided closed-ended
questions. Thus, based on Seyfarth’s (2008) highly valued teacher selection criteria adapted from
INTASC, the 10 questions to ask the principals for the interview follow below:
1. What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of background, training, and
student learning in high schools?
2. What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of a teacher’s daily, weekly, or
quarterly lesson planning?
3. What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of knowledge, skills, and
abilities of a teacher?
4. What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of diversity of learners?

5. What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of creating critical thinking
skills of students?
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 48

6. What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of student-to-student interaction
and learning?
7. What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of reflection of their teaching
practice?
8. What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of collaboration with other
teachers?
9. What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of interaction with parents?

10. What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of assessment strategies to
evaluate student learning?
Data Collection

The Institutional Review Board (IRB) process was completed in January 2015 for both
the University of Southern California and the State of Hawaii Department of Education. Upon
IRB approval, the data collection process began. Three public school, three private schools, and
three charter school principals were interviewed the next three to four months. Each interview
lasted about 90 minutes. The interview protocols were emailed to each principal about three
days prior to the face-to-face interview.

Data Analysis

The data were collected from the interview protocols. From the interview, the field notes,
tape recordings, and the interview transcripts were reviewed and prepared for analysis. From the
observation, the field notes were reviewed and also prepared for analysis. The interview included
a tape recording, so time was available after the interview to transcribe and enhance the
interview field notes. Conversely, the observation data were recorded immediately after the
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 49

observation in order to optimally capture and remember what was observed (Merriam, 2009).
Once all of the data were available, the process of analysis began.
Specifically, the first step in analyzing the interview field notes was “identifying
segments in your data set that are responsive to your research question” (Merriam, 2009, p.176).
By taking this raw data, the segments or unit of data assists to answer the research question. The
second step was to take the unit of data to create words and, in turn, form categories. The raw
data were then open coded, and one must “be open to anything possible” (Merriam, 2009, p.
178). Open coding involved writing words in the margin. The third step in analyzing the data
was to group or notice regularities or patterns in the responses. This process included creating
categories, which are “conceptual elements that cover or span many individual examples
(Merriam, 2009, p. 181), After reaching a saturation point, the fourth step was to name the
categories. The criteria considered included being, “responsive to the purpose of research,”
“exhaustive,” “mutually exclusive,” “sensitizing,” and “conceptually congruent” (Merriam,
2009, pp. 185–186). Therefore, the result produced categories for analysis. To then triangulate
the interviews, the responses from the three public, private, and charter school principals were
compared to each other as a group and individually. The public, private and charter school
principals were represented and analyzed as three separate groups. Each of the responses of the
three principals in the group was individually analyzed with the principals in and out of the
group (public school principal v. public school principal, public school principal v. private
school principal, and public school principal v. charter school principal). With the group and
individual responses, the analysis included similarities, differences, and conceptual themes.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 50

Limitations

For this study, the following limitations were considered:

1. This study was limited to the high school principals who agreed to participate
voluntarily.
2. This study was limited to the number of high school principals surveyed and the
amount of time available to conduct this study.
3. Validity of this study was limited to the reliability of the instruments used.

Delimitations

This study was confined to nine different high schools made up of three public, three
private, and three charter institutions within the state of Hawaii. The focus of this case study was
to investigate and determine the teacher selection process by these individual school
administrators and how their choices affected student achievement.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 51

CHAPTER FOUR: RESULTS

This qualitative case study investigated how high school principals from public, private,
and charter schools hire teachers. To intently investigate variation in perspectives, nine high
school principals were purposively sampled for their consideration in determining teacher
selection criteria. Three high school principals were from public schools, three high school
principals were from private schools, and three high school principals were from charter schools.
The main research question to be answered was:
What do principals consider to screen/test/interview for new teachers?

To seek answers to the main question, the following sub-questions were as follows:

Subquestion A: What formal/informal qualifications and characteristics do
incoming teachers need?

Subquestion B: What training do you seek for qualified teachers?

Subquestion C: What teacher attributes are considered in selecting qualified
applicants?

To collect information to address the research question and the subquestions, the principals were
asked the following interview questions:
1. What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of background, training, and
student learning in high schools?

2. What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of a teacher’s daily, weekly, or
quarterly lesson planning?

3. What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of knowledge, skills, and abilities of
a teacher?

4. What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of diversity of learners?

5. What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of creating critical thinking skills of
students?
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 52

6. What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of student-to-student interaction
and learning?

7. What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of reflection of their teaching
practice?

8. What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of collaboration with other
teachers?

9. What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of interaction with parents?

10. What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of assessment strategies to evaluate
student learning?

This study will begin with the findings from the sub-questions. Analyzing the sub-
questions will lead to answering the main research question:
What do principals consider to screen/test/interview for new teachers?

Participant Sample

To obtain wide variation in the sample selection, the research population for this study
consisted of three public school, three private school, and three charter school principals. All
nine principals were high school principals from the island of Oahu, Hawaii. The descriptions of
the schools follow.
Public High School 1

Public High School 1 was a co-educational comprehensive secondary school just outside
of Honolulu. Established in 1961 on a former sugar plantation, the student population was
approximately 1,100 students in grades nine to 12. The student population was multi-ethnic, with
the three biggest groups being Filipino (29.9%), Native Hawaiian (18.8%), and Japanese
(12.5%), which comprised 61.2% of the total ethnic population. The median household income
was $80,712, higher than the Hawaii median average of a little over $66,000. The language arts
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 53

(65%), math (25%), and science (38%) state testing scores for the 11th graders were higher than
the state performance of language arts (56%) and science (33%), but lower for math (30%). It
was accredited by the Western Association of School and Colleges until 2018 (State of Hawaii
Department of Education, 2017).
Public High School 2

Public High School 2 was a co-educational, comprehensive secondary school in East
Honolulu. Established in 1958, the student population was approximately 1,300 students in
grades nine through12. The student population was multi-ethnic with the Asian Population
breaking down as follows: Japanese (35.1%), Chinese (17.9%), and Korean (6.0%), which
amounts to 59% of the total ethnic population. The median household income was nearly
$103,000, considerably higher than the Hawaii median average at a little over $66,000. The
language arts (69%), math (48%), and science (47%) state testing scores for the 11th graders
were all higher than the state performance of (56%), (30%), and (33%), respectively. The school
reported 42 valedictorians from the Class of 2016, and many went on to major universities. It
was accredited by the Western Association of School and Colleges until 2017 (State of Hawaii
Department of Education, 2017).
Public High School 3

Public High School 3 was a co-educational comprehensive secondary school in East
Honolulu. Established in 1943, the student population was approximately 741 in grades nine
through 12. The student population was multi-ethnic with the predominant groups consisting of
Micronesian (22.5%), Native Hawaiian (19.5%), and Japanese (12.4%). The student population
had seen declining population trends over the previous three years, since the 2013–2014 school
year. The median household income was a little over $55,300, lower than the Hawaii median
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 54

average at a little over $66,000. The language arts (54%) and math (13%) state testing scores for
the 11th graders were lower than the state performance of (56%) and (30%), respectively. It was
an accredited school until 2020 from the Western Association of School and Colleges (State of
Hawaii Department of Education, 2017).
Charter High School 1

Charter High School 1 was a small co-educational hybrid/e-learning high school, located
in downtown Honolulu. Established in1999, the student population was approximately 120
students in grades nine through12. The student population was multi-ethnic, with the
predominant groups consisting of Caucasian (52%), Native Hawaiian (16%), and Asian (20%),
and Hispanic (10%) (Charter High School 1, 2017). It was an accredited school by the Western
Association of School and Colleges.
Charter High School 2

Charter High School 2 was a small co-educational high school located in central
Honolulu. Established in 2004, the student population was approximately 47 students in grades
nine through 12. The curriculum was based on Hawaii Core Values and the predominant group
was part-Hawaiian (85%). Other ethnic groups were Asian (8%) and Hispanic (4%) (Charter
High School 2, 2017). It was an accredited school by the Western Association of School and
Colleges.
Charter High School 3

Charter High School 3 was a small co-educational high school, located in Windward
Oahu. Established in 2001, the student population was approximately 43 students in grades nine
through 12. The curriculum was based on Hawaii Core Values, and the predominant group was
part-Hawaiian (81%). Other ethnic groups were European (10%) and Japanese (6%) (Charter
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 55

High School 3, 2017). It was an accredited school from the Western Association of School and
Colleges. (Charter High School 3a, 2017).
Private High School 1

Private High School 1 was a small co-educational independent high school located in
central Honolulu. Established circa 1998, the student population was approximately 122 students
in grades nine through 12 (Private High School 1, 2017). The school serviced a specialized
population of gifted and students with various learning challenges who learn in very small class
settings (Private High School 1a, 2017). It was an accredited school from the Western
Association of School and Colleges.
Private High School 2

Private High School 2 was a large co-educational, religiously affiliated independent
comprehensive high school located in central Honolulu. Established in 1887, the school had a 9th
through12th grade population of approximately 1,800. It was an accredited school from the
Western Association of School and Colleges (Private High School 2, 2017).
Private High School 3

Private High School 3 was a small, co-educational, religiously affiliated independent
comprehensive high school located in central Honolulu. Established in 1883, the school had a 9th
through12th grade population of approximately 425 (Private High School 3, 2017). It was an
accredited school from the Western Association of School and Colleges.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 56

Qualitative Data and Discussion

Subquestion A: What formal/informal qualifications and characteristics do incoming teachers
need?
To begin, two out of the three public school principals cited content knowledge as a
qualification for hiring incoming teachers:
Public School Principal 1: I expect teachers to know their content…In high school, a
teacher is expected to know their content and subject area
and a teacher is expected to deliver the content to the
student.

Public School Principal 2: At this school, the teachers I hire need to know their
content and as far as learner diversity, be able to explain
the content in various ways so the learner understands the
academic material.…Being able to teach to the strength of
the learner is critical.”

With content knowledge, principals were then looking at overall achievement via statewide
assessment scores as a gauge toward meeting benchmarks and proficiency. Public School
Principals 1 and 2 also expressed delivery and explanation of the content, respectively, as a need
for hiring incoming teachers. Public School Principal 2 went further to include understanding
learner styles toward student learning. With the exception of Public School 1’s statewide test
performance for math, Public School Principals 1 and 2 had met the benchmark for language
arts, and science.
On the contrary, Public School Principal 3 had other thoughts toward student culture and
diversity as follows:
The teachers that I hire need to be diverse and culturally based verses content
based. Basically the type of student I have is not up to par and is easily become
disinterested if the content is too hard. So I don’t necessarily look for what a
teacher knows but rather how a teacher can work with an individual student if
he/she is struggling.

Public School Principal 3 had different demographics from Public School Principal 1 and 2, and
expressed his thoughts about cultural cognizance over content knowledge. Public School 3 did
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 57

not appear to have academically inclined students conducive to teaching. Finding teachers who
understand the culture takes precedence over just presenting the content. Content knowledge was
important for Public School Principals 1 and 2, but in the case of Public School Principal 3, the
needs of the school population outweighed the need to hire teachers for content knowledge,
whereby “How a teacher can work with an individual student if he/she is struggling” took
precedence for hiring decisions.
For private school principals, all three expressed teacher intellect and knowledge as a
qualification for hiring incoming teachers:
Private School Principal 1: being able to model how and what to think is part of the
criteria I use to select teachers, which then means that the
teacher has to be academically sound and intelligent in
bringing out the thinking skills in our students.

So of course we have minimum criteria in terms of you
have to have a BA.

Private School Principal 2: It's the understanding of depths of knowledge.

I look for teachers who have had experiences with leading
student interactions with other students 'cause if you've
been a professional student, you know, and you've gone
through the right things, gone through the right courses to
get the right paperwork or documents doesn't necessarily
mean that you're a good teacher.

Do you know what prior skills, do you know prior
knowledge compared to what skills they need to learn? I
look for unpacking standards…So if the teacher can
explain to me in an interview what skill sets they are and
how do you unpack a lesson or how do you unpack a
standard to come up to specific objectives then I know that
they've got their framework clear.

So I look for teachers who can answer not only teaching
the “what” but instill the skill in teaching the “how” when
developing critical thinking skill in students.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 58

Private School Principal 3: but I also look for how “smart” the teacher is too. So I
look at transcripts to also help me make a decision.

I do try to find teachers who are qualified to teach the
areas we are hiring for…and the particular course that
they have been hired to teach.

This consensus from the private school principals suggested the need to disseminate academic
knowledge to its students with intellectually sound teachers. Private School Principals 1 and 3
looked at hard evidence, such as having a BA degree and looking at the transcripts, respectively.
Private School Principal 2 had the most to say and discussed the process of using the teacher’s
cognitive skills towards answering the question of “how to” teach content to students. Private
School Principal 1 and 2 also expressed the “how” of developing student thinking skills. For
Private School Principal 1, “being able to model how and what to think” were important
considerations for hiring based on teacher intellect and knowledge. For Private Principal 2,
having a teacher who has “understanding of the depths of knowledge,” “experiences with leading
student interactions with other students,” and “unpacking standards” were key factors in hiring.
For Private School Principal 3, “how smart” the teacher is in “the areas hiring we are hiring for”
was a specific consideration for hiring. Each of the private school principals was concerned with
hiring teachers who have intellectual ability.
For charter school principals, each of the three charter school principals expressed teacher
intellect and knowledge and additionally taking a student-centered approach as a qualification for
hiring incoming teachers:
Charter School Principal 1: So we have an online curriculum and I expect teachers to
have computer skills.

I’m looking for teachers who can teach to the individual in
a very unique setting…I’m looking for a teacher who is
able to teach lessons online.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 59

I want teachers to look for and know the strengths and
weaknesses of their students. To start with a baseline and
provide posttest and look to correct errors to develop
proficiency and mastery of the content.

I would like them to recognize strengths and weaknesses of
students and expand on knowledge via the computer.

Charter School Principal 2: So looking for a teacher that understands the role of
standardized assessments but also is able to fill in the gap
in terms of formative classroom authentic performance
based…you know, performance in terms of hands on
administration.

But also…how to take our cultural perspectives, our
cultural view our culture, our mo'olelo and integrate that
into the content. And then the ability to deliver it in a very
grounded perspective and then attain the results that we
expect for them.

Charter School Principal 3: So we're really looking for staff who have expertise in some
aspect of learning who understands teaching to the
individual student learning needs. And is able to juggle that
with the mixed level, mixed age. So do we want them to be
knowledgeable in their field? Absolutely.

With a hybrid/e-learning curricular platform, computer skills became the means for hiring for the
Principal at Charter School 1. Charter School Principal 1 expects teachers to have computer
skills,” which leads to developing “proficiency and mastery of content.” This is achieved by
knowing “strengths and weaknesses,” and understanding “baseline” and “posttest” to “correct
errors” of the students. Charter School Principal 2 considered knowing about the “role of
standardized assessments,” and using “formative classroom authentic performance” and integrate
the “cultural perspective” and “mo’olelo” to “attain the results that we expect of them.” For
Charter School Principal 3, “teaching to the individual student learning need” was important with
“mixed level, mixed age” classroom groupings. Furthermore, for each of the three charter
schools, student-centered learning was an important factor during the hiring process. The three
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 60

charter school principals were also cognizant of individual student learning whereby students
were able to scaffold their learning and sustain learning with capable teachers.
Comparatively looking at the nine principals, eight of the nine principals expressed the
need for teacher intellect and content knowledge. Unlike Public School Principal 3, teacher
content knowledge was not a factor while taking into account the cultural demographics of the
school as they related to students not understanding the content if not meaningful. For Public
School Principal 3, students who do not have adequate command of the English language was a
consideration in hiring the right teacher as well. With smaller student populations such as the
three charter schools, more student-centered teachers were considered for hiring. For the private
schools, student population, demographics, and being student centered were not as important as
being intellectually sound in their content area. Additionally, private school principals
considered the teaching methodology of the teacher when allowing students to learn as a factor
for hiring. Therefore, in answering Subquestion A, principals hired teachers who were
intellectually sound in their content area with student-centered teaching as a related
characteristic.
Subquestion B: What training do you seek for qualified teachers?

Moving on to the question of training, training equated to experience for teachers when
hiring, as follows by two of the three public school principals:
Public School Principal 1: I look for experience but I also look for that good fit that
will work well with that student population in that content
area…I expect teachers to know their content, have good
experience and reference in teaching

Public School Principal 2: I look for… years of teacher experience…I look for
content and years of teacher experience.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 61

Both Public School 1 and 2 were similar as far as being large, co-educational, comprehensive
traditional high schools with multi-ethnic populations. Public School Principal 1 also expressed
looking for a “good fit” to “work well” with the “student population in the content area.” For
Public School Principal 2, “teacher experience” was construed to satisfy questions of training.
Being large high schools, both Public School Principals 1 and 2 needed teachers who could teach
without having to start fresh without experience. Additionally, with experience, Public School
Principals 1 and 2 added that the experience goes together with content knowledge.
Public School Principal 3 had other thoughts rather than seeking teacher experience as
follows:
This teacher has to facilitate and come down to their level, verses just teaching
content straight from the book. Part of coming down to their level means recognizing
that lecture is not enough…I don’t necessarily look for what a teacher
knows but rather how a teacher can work with an individual student if he/she is
struggling…I look for skill in working with student who speaks English as second
language…For our school, they must reflect on teaching methods for culturally
disadvantaged students. I am looking for teachers who can work with kids and be
creative in their curriculum…I’m looking for a teacher that can work with students from
multiculturalism.

With a student population who spoke English as a Second Language, Public School Principal 3
had different demographics from Public School Principal 1 and 2 to express his thoughts of
cultural cognizance over content knowledge. Public School 3 did not appear to have
academically inclined students conducive to teaching. Finding teachers who understood the
culture took precedence over the presentation of content.
Unlike Charter School Principal 1, Charter School Principals 2 and 3 had similar
responses about hiring teachers with experience. Both Charter Schools 2 and 3 had curriculums
based on Hawaiian Core Values and had larger part-Hawaiian student population at 85% and
81%, respectively:
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 62

Charter School Principal 2: I think for our school, it is experience. It is the training, but
I think for us, what's most important is that experience and
training in culture based education.

Charter School Principal 3: So we're really looking for staff who have expertise in some
aspect of learning who understands teaching to the
individual student learning needs.

I need teachers to work with project based learning in
addition to having students do research papers and use
PowerPoints for presentations.

For Charter School Principal 2, the training equated to “experience” with “cultural based
education.” With a part-Hawaiian student population at 85%, the impetus for Charter School
Principal 2 for training was to meet the student population’s needs based on the Hawaiian Core
Values curriculum. Similarly, for Charter School Principal 3, the emphasis for training to work
with a part-Hawaiian student population at 81% was geared toward “project based learning.”
This training also included “expertise in some aspect of learning” and “understands teaching to
the individual student learning needs.”
On the other hand, Charter School 1 had different needs, whereby hybrid/e-learning was
the curricular emphasis toward training:
I’m looking for teachers to integrate online lessons in teaching student to think
about a problem…we have an online curriculum…Most of my teachers
are forced to use the web to deliver online lessons…Most of the instruction is
online so the teacher has to create online interaction skills with the students.

This online platform contrasted to Charter School 2 and 3, whereby student learning in Charter
School 1 was based on e-learning technology and students learned from the comfort of their
homes rather than in continuous face-to-face contact.
All private school principals expressed a consensus about hiring teachers with prior
experience to satisfy the issue with training:
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 63

Private School Principal 1: So of course we have minimum criteria in terms of you have
to have a BA. I definitely prefer some teaching experience
and preferably in secondary ed.

Private School Principal 2: I do look for mostly the training part. What they've had,
have they had experience in the classroom? If not then have
they had training in a training teacher's facility? Whether
it's through a college system or…primarily it's that. What
kind of experience have they had?

Private School Principal 3: I look for teaching experience, as well as diversity and a
sense of pride in their profession.

It’s not always easy or goes the way we planned so an
experienced teacher knows how to reflect. I want teachers
who can problem solve rather than ask me.

Regardless of size or demographics, instruction and learning was traditional at each of the three
private schools, with an emphasis on hiring teachers with prior experiences. Although all private
school teachers need a college degree, Private School Principal 1 was the only principal who
stated that a BA was required. Class size was significantly smaller at Private School 1, with a
specialized population. Private School Principal 2 was interested in “whether they had
experiences in the classroom” or “training in a teacher’s facility.” For Private School Principal 3,
in addition to teaching experience, having “a sense of pride in their profession” and teachers who
can problem solve” were important considerations in hiring teachers with training experiences.
For each of the three private school principals, having prior experiences with training was an
important consideration for hiring teachers.
Comparatively looking at the nine Principals, 7 of the 9 expressed the need for an
experienced teacher. Public School Principal 3 and Charter School Principal 1 had different
needs with the culture of English as a Second Language students and online learning as factors
that took precedence over experience, respectively. Public School Principal 3 was in need of
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 64

teachers who could work with his culturally disadvantaged population, rather than have
experience. Charter School Principal 1 did not specifically express the need for an experienced
teacher, but needed a teacher for online instruction. For Public School Principals 1 and 2,
experience went hand-in-hand with content knowledge of the teacher being hired. Similarly,
experienced teachers in Hawaiian Culture were needed to work with the predominantly part-
Hawaiian student population. Without a doubt, each of the three Private School Principals
needed experienced teachers and sought experienced teachers over a teacher without experience.
With experience comes less principal intervention as experienced teachers will lead the way for
student learning. Therefore, in answering Subquestion B, principals hired teachers who had prior
experience and content expertise as related characteristics with exceptions such as cultural
demographics and e-learning considerations that affected the hiring process.
Subquestion C: What teacher attributes are considered in selecting qualified applicants?

The qualitative data pointed to five attributes in hiring: organization, flexibility,
relationships, assessment knowledge, and teacher growth. To begin, organization was a
consideration for hiring for six of the nine principals. Each of the three public school principals
reached consensus in hiring a teacher who is organized:
Public School Principal 1: I expect teachers to be organized, structured.

Public School Principal 2: Instruction has to be structured…An excellent teacher has
a written lesson plan for every school day.

Public School Principal 3: I appreciate a teacher who is organized and can
demonstrate classroom assessment strategies towards
increased learning.

The specifics of the organization were defined as being structured, having a written lesson plan,
and having assessment strategies by Public School Principals 1, 2, and 3, respectively. With large
student populations, Public School Principals 1 and 2 expressed the same sentiments toward
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 65

structure. This structure, for Principal 2, included a daily written lesson plan. With the English as
a Second Language student population, Public School Principal 3 expressed assessment as a
means of being organized toward student learning. Of the three public schools, Public School 2
had the highest student learning outcomes, in which a daily lesson plan was a key component for
being and hiring excellent teachers. With Public School 3 having the lowest student learning
outcomes, Public School Principal 3 expressed the need to hire teachers who had classroom
assessment strategies to bring up the learning outcomes for his English as a Second Language
learner. Hiring outcomes may have been similar for the public school principals, but the means
of being organized to reach goals may have differed.
For Private School Principals 2 and 3, the means of being organized translated to areas
such as backwards mapping and pacing, respectively.
Private School Principal 2: I do look for the organization skills…its more the
backwards mapping and understanding.

Private School Principal 3: Most teachers who teacher here want to be here and are
comfortable with the curriculum and pace that we follow
here. If I can find a teacher who is organized that becomes
a plus.

Private School Principal 1 disagreed with Private School Principals 2 and 3, as organization for
him was not an issue:
And then like I said, the biggest skill for me that I look for in a teacher is
you've gotta be able to build relationships with kids. Yeah all of our kids
are diverse learners so yeah, that's all of what I’m looking for.

Unlike Private School Principals 2 and 3, Private School Principal 1 had a small, specialized
population with small class sizes. The focus therefore tended to be on student and student-
centered learning. Private Schools 2 and 3 had larger student populations, with traditional
classrooms and class sizes. Therefore, with larger numbers of students, organization tends to be
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 66

an attribute for hiring in terms of backwards mapping and curricular pacing for Private Schools 2
and 3, respectively.
Only Charter School Principal 2 expressed organization in terms of alignment and lesson
planning.

Charter School Principal 2: Like would want to make sure that they're of course always
in alignment with what we're doing as a school…how that
translates into their classroom needs to be articulated well
enough. And then their quarterly planning, their lesson
planning and all that needs to be in alignment.

Charter School Principal 1didn’t express any teacher organization skills but emphasized online
teaching as an attribute for hiring:
I’m looking for a teacher who is able to teach lessons online.

Additionally, Charter School Principal 3 clearly expressed that organization was not an attribute
for hiring:
Ok so we're not typical. We're a student center, based on project based learning,
which means that no two students graduate from H Learning Center with the same
learning path. We're really with the student and his or her family and our educators help
that student plan a path that when done really well, hits their learning struggles or gaps
to help them be successful in what their dreams are for the future and meet the required
standards that we have for the student. But we don't do it in a linear fashion and we don't
do it in . . . everybody's on the same step at the same time. So it's really all over.

Even with curriculums based on Hawaiian Core Values, Charter School Principals 2 and 3 had
different viewpoints on organization. This may be due to the difference between lesson planning
for instruction as opposed to project-based learning between Charter Schools 2 and 3,
respectively. Lesson planning and alignment is geared towards the teacher and teaching while
project-based learning focuses on student learning and scaffolding student knowledge from the
student’s perspective. As for Charter School 1, the delivery and presentation of learning was not
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 67

predominately done face-to-face, as it was with Charter Schools 2 and 3, where students and
teacher physically met daily.
Comparatively looking at the nine principals, six out of the nine expressed organization
as a teacher attribute for hiring. Private School Principal 1, and Charter School Principals 1 and
3, did not express organization as a teacher attribute for hiring, as implementation of unique
school-wide characteristics such as a special population, teaching online, and project-based
learning took precedence over organization, respectively. For schools with traditional campuses
and diverse population (Public Schools 1, 2, 3, and Private Schools 2 and 3), the principals
considered organization as an attribute more than the non-traditional campuses did. Interestingly,
each considered different aspects of organization (Public School Principal 1—Structure; Public
School Principal 2—Lesson Planning; Public School Principal 3—Assessment; Private School
Principal 2—Backwards Mapping; and Private School Principal 3—Curricular Pacing). Even
with predominantly homogenous part-Hawaiian populations in Charter Schools 2 and 3,
organization was only an attribute for hiring at Charter School 2. Charter School Principal 2
looked at the individual teacher more when hiring as opposed to Charter School Principal 3, who
additionally considered student-centered and project-based learning. Therefore, in answering the
first (organization) of six attributes of Subquestion C, principals predominately hired teachers for
different reasons for organization skills, unless a unique school-wide characteristic existed,
which took precedence over hiring based on a teacher attribute.
Next, flexibility was a consideration for hiring for nine of the nine Principals. Public
School Principals 1 and 3 considered flexibility for hiring as follows:
Public School Principal 1: I expect teachers to be able to teach to every student. Every
student is diverse in their own way and although we would
like to teach the same across the board. I expect teacher to
be flexible to work individual students as needed.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 68

Public School Principal 3: I’m looking for a teacher that can work with students from
multiculturalism and is flexible in their curriculum. So the
teacher has to be able to motivate these kids to learn.

Although Public School Principal 2 did not specifically express flexibility, its antonym was used
as a means of being flexible, as follows:
Being rigid is not the answer. Being able to teach to the strength of the learner
is critical.

What each of the three Public School Principals did add consistently to being flexible was to
focus on students:
work individual students as needed; Being able to teach to the strength of the learner
is critical, and work with students from multiculturalism and is flexible in their
curriculum.

Each of the three private school principals reached consensus on flexibility as an attribute
for hiring, as follows:
Private School Principal 1: I'm looking for people who are open to different kinds of
learners…hiring someone to try and get a sense of are they
flexible with those kids.

So you know, in terms of assessment, I just need someone
who is comfortable with not measuring kids with the same
stick. And you may have five kids in your classroom and all
five you may be assessing in completely different ways. And
for different things.

Private School Principal 2: I look for someone that can change things on the spur of
the moment…What makes a skillful teacher is being able to
adapt. They're not rigid, they're fluid people.

Private School Principal 3: I’m looking for a teacher that can work with students from
a multicultural view and is flexible in their curriculum. The
teacher has to be able to motivate these kids to learn.

“I look for flexibility, creativeness and intuition.”

Much like the public school principals, private school principals’ consideration for flexibility
came down to students. Being student-centered and/or teaching to the needs of the student
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 69

learner was specifically important. Private School Principal 1 specified “not measuring kids with
the same stick;” Private School Principal 2 specified “change things on the spur of the
moment/being able to adapt;” and Private School Principal 3 specified to “work with students
from a multicultural view and is flexible in their curriculum.” Teacher flexibility with students
was a paramount consideration for hiring.
Only Charter School Principal 1expressed flexibility as an attribute for hiring, as follows:

So we have an online curriculum and I expect teachers to have computer skills,
provide office hours and be readily available to students who need additional help.
This school is not necessarily suitable for the traditional teacher. I look for someone
who is flexible, creative, and a thinker.

Charter School Principal 2 did not specifically express flexibility, but expressed differentiation,
as follows:
A teacher who has the ability to differentiate. Since we cannot select our
students, finding teachers who have the ability, or at least the willingness to
take students where they're at and bring them to where we want them to be
is what we look for.

Charter School Principal 3 also did not specifically express flexibility, but expressed passion, as
follows:
We look for people who have a passion about what they have to share but are
willing to be with children both as students themselves, as learners themselves,
as well as teachers and allowing students to do the same.

I'm going to look for someone who has a passion around something. Whatever,
social studies, math, whatever it is and is able to effectively and engagingly draw
students to that exploration as well. So not only be an expert in whatever, but able
to communicate that to a range of students.

Although only Charter School Principal 1 expressed flexibility as an attribute for hiring—as
opposed to differentiation for Charter School Principal 2 and passion for Charter School
Principal 3—all of the Charter School Principals included students in their responses:
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 70

be readily available to students who need additional help; the willingness to
take students where they're at and bring them to where we want them to be;
willing to be with children both as students themselves, and is able to effectively
and engagingly draw students to that exploration as well.

With students as the focus of flexibility, differentiation and passion can be considered as a means
of being flexible as an attribute for hiring. With differentiation, the teacher recognizes the
student/learner differences in providing academic work accommodations toward the same goal.
With passion, the teacher has the inner drive to having the means to work with and promote
success for each student. Consequently, even if two of the three charter school principals did not
specifically express flexibility, all three charter school principals implied various ways a teacher
can be flexible when the concentration is with students as an attribute for hiring.
Comparatively looking at the nine principals, the type of school (public, private, charter)
was not a factor for flexibility as attribute for hiring teachers. What mattered the most were the
students. Flexibility coincided with working with students for each of the nine principals.
Student performance and success was critical in many ways; this included flexibility with
individual students, multiculturalism, teaching to the strength of the student, flexibility in
assessments, adapting to a situation, differentiation, and having a passion toward a range of
students. Therefore, in answering the second (flexibility) of six attributes of Subquestion C, all
nine principals hired teachers who were flexible with students in order for the students to show
success.
Third, relationships were, without question, a consideration for hiring for nine of the nine
principals. Each of the three public school principals commented as follows:
Public School Principal 1: I expect teacher to interact with parents on a quarterly
basis.

collaboration is important to teacher learning and teacher
growth.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 71

I also look for that good fit that will work well with that
student population in that content area.

I think it’s critical for teachers to not only interact
and work with their students, but for students to interact
with each other. Again when I’m hiring for a teacher I’m
looking for a teacher who is qualified but one who can also
create student to student learning and group work skills.

Public School Principal 2: Parent interaction is big at this school.
Therefore a teacher that I hire needs to be able to
communicate well with parents.

Collaboration is big at this school and I strongly
encourage it.

I expect teachers to go above and beyond what they’re
expected to do and have students get along in an out of the
classroom.

Public School Principal 3: But I do encourage teachers to interact with parents by
either by email, mail or a phone call.

I need a team player to work with other teachers to deal
with the challenges of our student population.

Well the teacher I prefer is someone who can get students
to get along with each other in an out of the classroom.
This teacher has to facilitate and come down to their level,
verses just teaching content straight from the book. Part of
coming down to their level means recognizing that lecture
is not enough and that having students interact with each
other to learn is equally important.

Relationships included relationships with students, teachers, and parents. For Public School
Principal 1, relationships with students meant hiring teachers as a “good fit” for students, to
interact with parents, collaborate with teachers, and to “create student to student learning and
group work skills.” For Public School Principal 2, having “students get along in an out of the
classroom,” collaboration with other teachers, and communication and interaction with parents
were key areas. Public School Principal 3 also expressed having students get along in and out of
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 72

the class. Additionally, Public School Principal 3 hired based on the attribute of being a “team
player” with other teachers, interacting with parents, and teaching students at “their level.” The
overall impetus and consideration for each of the public school principals were to hire teachers
based on relationships with students, teachers, and parents.
Likewise, each of the three private school principals considered relationships with
students, teachers, and parents when hiring teachers.
Private School Principal 1: the biggest skill for me that I look for in a teacher is you've
gotta be able to build relationships with kids. Yeah all of
our kids are diverse learners so yeah, that's all of what I’m
looking for.

The collaboration, being able to work with a team.

I think what I expect out of a teacher is just to not have a
"reactive personality". I want teachers to be proactive and
initiate interaction with parents.

It's my number two. Number one is to relate to kids.
Number two is you have to be able to work with others. And
I would even have someone teach out of their content area
and be able to work well with kids and collaborate with
others than hire, you know, the biologist for biology who
can't do those things.

I involve kids in the hiring process. The students can really
pick up on the character and the person.

Private School Principal 2: I (for teacher) need to understand how to account for it.
And that's when I know a teacher's on board and I'm
willing to help as a partner with a parent.

It goes to creating relationships and not burning bridges.
Teachers helping other teachers are critical. I also ask and
see if they care enough about the other teacher who
approached them or to get clarification as to what's going
on. So collaboration is essential.

The other thing too I look for is what connections they have
for students? If they don't say the word "student", I worry
about it.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 73

Private School Principal 3: Students must learn to work with each other in the learning
process and I look for teachers that can recognize this…to
create a learning culture that’s not only lecture but to
include the cooperative learning model.”

Oh I think collaboration is important amongst all of our
teachers…We are flexible with our curriculum so helping
each other out is common and what I look for when hiring.
Being on your own in isolation from other teachers is not
what I’m looking for. Won’t work for out smaller
environment where we share what goes on continually for a
smooth operation.

Students must learn to work with each other in the learning
process and I look for teachers that can recognize this…to
create a learning culture that’s not only lecture but to
include the cooperative learning model.

I expect my teachers to keep our students and parents
aware of their progress in school. I highly encourage
teachers to continue to bridge that gap of communication
between their students and parents.

Private School Principal 1 went as far as involving students in the hiring process to see who can
“build relationships with kids” as well as to consider teachers who are “able to work with a team
“with other teachers” and be “proactive” rather than “reactive” when interacting with parents.
For Private School Principal 2, looking for “connections” with students was important, along
with “not burning bridges” with other teachers, and being “on board” with parents. For Private
School Principal 3, looking for teachers who “create a learning culture” with students to include
the cooperative learning model was a critical factor when hiring, along with teachers “helping
each other out” to “bridge that gap of communication” with parents. Much like the public school
principals, each of the public school principals hired teachers based on relationships with
students, teachers, and parents.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 74

Each of the three Charter School Principals also considered relationships with students,
teachers, and parents when hiring teachers, as follows:
Charter School Principal 1: Interaction with parents is important. I look for teachers
who don’t shy away from continuous interaction with
parent..

In this setting we [teachers] don’t always work with other
teachers.

Most of the instruction is online so the teacher has to
create online interaction skills with the students. If they do
meet in the classroom face-to-face, then the teacher must
assist with not only teacher to student interaction, but also
student to student learning.

I’m looking for teachers to integrate online lessons in
teaching student to think about a problem. Knowing, using,
and teaching about web-based applications are important
attributes I look for in teachers in creating critical thinkers

Charter School Principal 2: I want teachers who let Parents know, how their kid is
doing too.

So I think in that sense, collaboration is needed for the
betterment of the student and allowing the student to be
successful.

A teacher that is able to demonstrate respect towards
student learning and developing that relationship is partly
what I look for. We have hands-on inquiry based
approaches to learning the Hawaiian culture so it’s
important that student to student interaction is done by the
teacher.

A teacher that is able to create that culture of inquiry in the
classroom. And I think, you know, the ability to give just
enough information so that a student starts to understand,
and then further starts to think more broadly.

Charter School Principal 3: Their job is to make sure that the student is first of all,
defining their personal learning plan or updating it each
year, depending where they are….. to make sure that we
talk personally to each family, our staff does, on a three
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 75

week cycle so that the staff is hearing the moments of
celebration hopefully, more than areas of struggle.

We work really hard to get families involved in the learning
environment and I need teachers to engage with parents.

Yeah. It's critical. So that's why we take a solid four days
always before school starts to really make sure we're on the
same page as much as possible…We work out how do we
work best together and what are the things we need to work
on.

I’m looking for involvement…involvement in what we call
an advisory decision making model…I look for people to be
comfortable and proactive in sharing their expertise
around successes or ideas that might work and becoming
part of solutions.

We want someone who's really directing student to student
learning an also listen to understand where he or she is
coming from, what their resources are in their life context,
not just here on school, and then recognize that in our
school.

I'm going to look for someone who has a passion around
something. Whatever, social studies, math, whatever it is
and is able to effectively and engagingly draw students to
that exploration as well. So not only be an expert in
whatever, but able to communicate that to a range of
students.

So we try to find those people to pull out the thinking skills
of our students. So you're really that coach, facilitator,
mentor, you know, all of those things. Also not only being a
teacher, but also a learner. It’s critical to have people who
listen for understanding, verses yeah yeah yeah yeah, ok,
gotcha, do this, you know? We don't want that.

For students and parents with Charter School Principal 1, consideration for hiring was about
creating “online interaction skills with the students” and “continuous interaction,” respectively.
For Charter School Principal 2, “to demonstrate respect towards student learning” and “create
that culture of inquiry in the classroom” were factors for hiring. With parents, “collaboration”
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 76

and letting parents know “how their kid is doing,” respectively, were also factors in hiring
teachers. Charter School Principal 3 had the most to say for the teacher’s relationship with
students, parents, and other teachers. For students, Charter School Principal 3 wanted “someone
who's really directing student to student learning;” For teachers, “to engage with parents” and
“work out how do we work best together and what are the things we need to work on” were
important to Charter School Principal 3. Much like the public and private school principals, each
of the charter school principals hired teachers based on relationships with students, teachers, and
parents.
Comparatively looking at the nine principals, each one resoundingly considered
relationships with students, parents, and other teachers as an attribute for hiring teachers. Similar
to the attribute of flexibility, the type of school (public, private, charter) was not a factor for
relationships as attribute for hiring teachers. What did matter the most was positively working
with students, parents, and other teachers. Positive relationships expressed by the principals
included “respect,” “engagement,” “involvement, and” interaction.” Therefore, in answering the
third (relationship) of five attributes of Subquestion C, all nine principals hired teachers who
have would have good relationships with students, parents, and other teachers.
Fourth, assessment knowledge was a unanimous attribute considered for hiring for nine
of the nine principals, as follows:
Public School Principal 1: I expect teachers to provide some sort of assessment
implementation

Public School Principal 2: I expect teachers to provide me with a pre and post
assessment during the school year.

Be data driven to improve on instructional weaknesses.
Public School Principal 3: I appreciate a teacher who is organized and can
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 77

demonstrate classroom assessment strategies towards
increased learning. If instruction and assessment are
structured, assessments can be easily delivered and
calculated.

For Public School Principal 1, “assessment implementation” was a specific consideration when
hiring teachers. For Public School Principal 2 “pre and post assessments” were important as a
means to “improve on instructional weaknesses.” For Public School Principal 3, “classroom
assessment strategies” was a consideration where “instruction and assessments are structured” to
“increase learning.” Public School Principal 1 was interested overall in the implementation
process of assessment, but Public School Principal 2 considered more specifics on the
implementation process, citing “pre and post assessments.” Public School Principal 3 was
interested in “classroom assessment strategies” to probably deal with the English as a Second
Language population where the aim is to “increase learning.” The overall consensus of the public
school principals was to consider the knowledge of the teacher toward assessments and its
utilization for student learning.
For the private school principals, understanding student achievement was the focus, as
follows:
Private School Principal 1: In terms of assessment, I just need someone who is
comfortable with not measuring kids with the same stick.
And you may have five kids in your classroom and all five
you may be assessing in completely different ways and for
different things.

Private School Principal 2: If a teacher can tell me that formative assessment is what I
do throughout the whole lesson to ensure that I am on the
right track and the child is learning, then good. Then I
know that teacher is understanding what assessment is all
about. 'Cause you don't wait until the end of the assessment
to say "oh, the kids didn't get it!", and when is that?
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 78

Private School Principal 3: Well I would like them to be able to share what and how
they assess their students and their expectations of the class
as teachers. Looking at what students can and cannot do is
important. To build on what they can do and to work on
what they cannot do. Take the data and problem solve.
That’s what I look for in a teacher.

For Private School Principal 1, multiple ways to assess students was an important consideration
when hiring teachers. Rather than a one-size-fits-all mentality, “assessing in completely different
ways and for different things” was the answer for Private School Principal 1. For Private School
Principal 2, formative assessments were important considerations when hiring. Having the
teacher state “I am on the right track and the child is learning” was an important attribute to
Private School Principal 2. For Private School Principal 3, the “what and how” of assessments
were important considerations when hiring. The means to achieve this was to “Look at what
students can and cannot do” and ultimately “build on what they can do and to work on what they
cannot do.” Much like public school principals, Private School Principals 1, 2, and 3 considered
the knowledge of the teacher in terms of assessments and use for student learning in terms of
multiple ways to assess formative assessments, and to answer the “what and how,” respectively.
For charter school principals, standardization of the assessments was an important focus,
as follows:
Charter School Principal 1: So this is kind of tricky because each student is assessed
differently. I want teachers to look for and know the
strengths and weaknesses of their students. To start with a
baseline and provide posttest and look to correct errors to
develop proficiency and mastery of the content.

Charter School Principal 2: Looking for a teacher that understands the role of
standardized assessments but also is able to fill in the gap
in terms of formative classroom authentic performance
based…you know, performance in terms of hands on
administration. Then putting together a whole picture of
student success based off of all that information.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 79

Charter School Principal 3: But to really look at the data that we have on that student
beyond the number. So what is behind that number? We use
nationally normed diagnostic assessment at the beginning
and end of each year and that gives us information on
where the gaps are that they're not being able to be
successful with if that's the issue and ideas around
instructional strategies that we use with them. So we
actively have and look for teachers who look at the data as
well.

For Charter School Principal 1, approaching assessment with a “baseline,” “correct errors,”
and “provide a posttest” were considerations for hiring. For Charter School Principal 2, knowing
about “standardized assessments” and “authentic performance based” assessments were
important considerations for hiring. For Charter School Principal 3, understanding “what is
behind that number of nationally normed diagnostic assessment” and “where the gaps” were
important considerations for hiring. The actual means was important for Charter School
Principals 1, 2, and 3 in terms of “baseline and posttest,” “authentic performance based”
assessments, and determining “where the gaps,” as based on “nationally normed” assessments,
respectively. The focus may be slightly different, but the attribute of assessment knowledge for
all of the charter school principals was important when hiring teachers for their schools.
Comparatively, each of the nine principals unanimously considered assessment
knowledge as an attribute for hiring teachers. Much like the attribute of flexibility and
relationships, the type of school (public, private, charter) was not a factor for assessment
knowledge as an attribute for hiring teachers. What did matter the most was assessment
knowledge about “pre and post assessments,” “implementation,” “strategy,” “structure,”
”formative assessments,” “strength and weaknesses,” and “standardized assessments,” which
were all essential for the nine principals in terms of “student success,” “student learning,” and
“proficiency and mastery of content.” Therefore, in answering the fourth (assessment
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 80

knowledge) of five attributes of Subquestion C, all nine principals hired teachers who possessed
assessment knowledge toward student learning and success.
Lastly, teacher growth was the unanimous attribute considered for hiring for nine of the
nine principals, as follows:
Public School Principal 1: I believe collaboration is important to teacher learning and
teacher growth.

Public School Principal 2: I expect teachers to stop and think about whether the
student conceptually understood the lesson and be data
driven to improve on instructional weaknesses.

Public School Principal 3: They must reflect on teaching methods for culturally
disadvantaged students.

For public school principals, individual teacher growth was similar for each of the public school
principals. Public School Principal l considered “collaboration” towards teacher growth. Public
School Principal 2 considered both ends for the teacher to “stop and think,” if the student
“understood the lesson” and for the teacher to improve on “instructional weaknesses.” Public
School Principal 3 considered teachers to “reflect on teaching methods” for the “culturally
disadvantaged students” of the school. The needs may have been different as public school
principals concentrated on teacher and teacher-to-teacher growth to share information and ideas
with one another. Public School Principal 2 took it to another level to deal with higher achieving
students and addressing instructional weaknesses. For Public School Principal 3, the student
population defined how teachers should show growth. What is certain is that the public school
principals focused on continuous teacher growth for specific reasons, rather than just a body to
fill a position.
For private school principals, teacher growth meant being open to learning as a process as
follows:
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 81

Private School Principal 1: I want to see when I'm hiring someone if they're truly open
to learning. I ask questions that are reflective and need to
have people who are willing to learn.

Private School Principal 2: If you ask about a mistake, and that's one of the questions I
like to ask because you can see if they are a reflective
person and if they're looking at themselves to see how they
can improve themselves or learn upon a mistake. It's really
telling.

Private School Principal 3: It’s not always easy or goes the way we planned so an
experienced teacher knows how to reflect. I want teachers
who can problem solve rather than ask me. The teacher
may not like my answer so I want a teacher who can learn
and grow as well.

For Private School Principal 1, having teachers “who are willing to learn” was a paramount
consideration for hiring. To find out, Private School Principal 1 used questions during the
interviews that tested whether the teacher candidate could “reflect” on learning as a process.
Regarding mistakes, Private School Principal 2 looked to, “how they can improve themselves or
learn upon a mistake.” Much like Private School Principal 1, Private School Principal 2 used the
teacher candidate experiences with mistakes to determine “if they are a reflective person” and
show growth to “improve themselves or learn upon a mistake.” Additionally, for Private School
Principal 3, being able to have “teachers who can problem solve rather than ask me” was
important for teacher growth. Private School Principal 3 did not appear to want teachers coming
to him whenever things to bad—“It’s not always easy or goes the way we planned.” With all
three private school principals, the focus was about teacher growth via being a reflective
practitioner toward the focus of student learning.
For charter school principals, teacher growth was about individual growth as a reflective
practitioner as follows:
Charter School Principal 1: They need to adjust, learn from mistakes, and improve with
each online class.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 82

Charter School Principal 2: Must be willing to continuously grow and improve upon
their own practice.”

Charter School Principal 3. So that means you have to reflect on what you do…
What am I doing that's working well? What am I doing that
could be better, right? What am I struggling at? And then
be ready to listen and be able to be around comfortable
and unthreatened by reflecting and sharing knowledge.

Charter School Principal 1 expressed key words, such as “adjust,” “learn,” and “improve” for
individual teacher growth. Charter School Principal 2 also expressed to “improve,” and added to
“continuously grow.” Charter School Principal 3 further added the “what” question, as to
whether the teacher reflects on his or her teaching methodology. Once the teacher reflects, an
additional step for growth is to “listen” and “sharing knowledge.” Much like the public and
private school principals, all three charter school principals focused on individual teacher
growth, all focusing on practice, methodology, and student learning.
Comparatively looking at the nine principals, each of the nine principals again
unanimously considered teacher growth as an attribute for hiring teachers. Similar to the
attributes of flexibility, relationships, and assessment knowledge, the type of school (public,
private, charter), was not a factor for teacher growth as an attribute for hiring teachers. What did
matter the most was teacher growth about “collaboration” with others, to self-monitor, to “be
open to learning,” to “reflect” on their teaching practices to “improve,” “correct mistakes,” and
continuously “improve” on their instruction. Therefore, in answering the last (teacher growth) of
five attributes of Subquestion C, all nine principals considered hiring teachers who can take the
initiative to promote their self-growth toward thinking about becoming a better teacher.
In summary, the main research question answered was:

What do principals consider to screen/test/interview for new teachers?
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 83

The nine principals were asked the following sub-questions to answer the main research
question, as follows:
Subquestion A: What formal/informal qualifications and characteristics do
incoming teachers need?

Subquestion B: What training do you seek for qualified teachers?

Subquestion C: What teacher attributes are considered in selecting qualified
applicants?

By triangulating the data with the comparative responses from three pubic school principals,
three private school principals, and three charter school principals for a total of nine principal
responses, the results were as follows:
From Subquestion A, principals hired teachers who were intellectually sound in their
content area with student-centered teaching as a related characteristic. One exception was with
Pubic School Principal 3, where teacher content knowledge was not a factor when taking into
account cultural demographics of the school as it related to students not understanding the
content if not meaningful. For Public School Principal 3, students who did not have adequate
command of the English language was a consideration toward the hiring the right teacher.
From Subquestion B, principals hired teachers who had prior experience and content
expertise as related characteristics, with exceptions, such as cultural demographics and e-
learning considerations. Public School Principal 3 and Charter School Principal 1 had different
needs with the culture of English as a Second Language students and online learning as factors
that took precedence over experience, respectively. Public School Principal 3 was in need of
teachers who could work with the culturally disadvantaged population, rather than have
experience. Charter School Principal 1 didn’t specifically express the need for an experienced
teacher, but needed a teacher for online instruction.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 84

From Subquestion C, principals hired teachers based on five attributes: organization,
flexibility, relationships, assessment knowledge, and teacher growth. For organization, principals
predominately hired teachers for different reasons for organization skills (Public School
Principal 1—structure; Public School Principal 2—lesson planning; Public School Principal 3—
assessment; Private School Principal 2—backwards mapping; and Private School Principal 3—
curricular pacing). Exceptions that took precedence over hiring based on a teacher attribute.
included a unique school-wide characteristic, such as having a special population, teaching
online, and project-based learning,
For flexibility, the type of school (public, private, charter) was not a factor for flexibility
as an attribute for hiring teachers. Principals’ consideration for flexibility came down to students.
Being student-centered and/or teaching to the needs of the student learner was specifically
important. Although only Charter School Principal 1 expressed flexibility as an attribute for
hiring—as opposed to differentiation for Charter School Principal 2 and passion for Charter
School Principal 3—all of the charter school principals focused on students.
For relationships, principals considered relationships with students, parents, and other
teachers as an attribute for hiring teachers. The type of school (public, private, charter) was not a
factor for relationships as an attribute for hiring teachers. What did matter the most for principals
was for teachers to positively work with students, parents, and other teachers. Positive
relationships expressed by the principals included “respect,” “engagement,” “involvement,” and
“interaction.”
For assessment knowledge, what did matter the most for principals regardless of the type
of school (public, private, charter) was assessment knowledge about “pre and post assessments,”
“implementation,” “strategy,” “structure,” “formative assessments,” “strength and weaknesses,”
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 85

and “standardized assessments,” which were all essential in terms of “student success,” “student
learning,” and “proficiency and mastery of content.”
For teacher growth, principals considered hiring teachers who could take the initiative to
promote their self-growth toward thinking about becoming a better teacher. What did matter the
most for principals was teacher growth about “collaboration” with others, to self-monitor, to “be
open to learning,” to “reflect” on their teaching practices, to “improve,” “correct mistakes,” and
continuously “improve” on their instruction.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 86

CHAPTER FIVE: SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS, AND RECOMMENATIONS

Overview

Chapter Five includes an introduction, summary of the case study, conclusions of the
case study, and recommendations. In what follows, the introduction discusses the need for a case
study. The summary of the study covers the issues that led to this investigation, including the
purpose of the study, the statement of the problem, research questions, and methodology. The
conclusion and recommendations discuss the results of this study and suggestions for research
and hiring practices. This study will then add to the current research literature on high school
principals criteria in the teacher selection process.
The purpose of this qualitative research study was to investigate high school principals’
teacher selection criteria. This study addressed the issue of the selection process of hiring
effective high school teachers who are capable of promoting effective teaching, and learning
strategies to increase student achievement.
Summary of Case Study
Purpose and Problem Statement
The hiring of high school teachers to positively impact student achievement is contingent
on the diligence of principals to screen, select, attract, and provide incentives in the hiring
process. Principals also need to be aware of the criteria, dynamics, and process for hiring the
best teachers for their schools. With the prevailing high school teacher shortages—particularly in
math, science, and special education—and the high turnover rate in highly poverty-driven high
school complexes, principals are confronted to recruit, hire, and retain teachers (Boyd et al.,
2011; Ronfeldt et al., 2012). Research has suggested that 33% of new teachers leave the
profession after three years, 46% leave within five years, and high-poverty public schools have
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 87

much higher teacher turnover rates than affluent public schools (Ingersoll, 2003). Therefore, it
becomes common practice for principals to make hasty decisions by filling these vacant
positions with anyone who has the right credentials for the positions regardless of whether he or
she fits the needs of their school.
Research Questions

The research questions for this study were:

QUESTION 1: What do principals consider to screen/test/interview for new teachers?

Subquestion A: What formal/informal qualifications and characteristics
do incoming teachers need?
Subquestion B: What training do you seek for qualified teachers?

Subquestion C: What teacher attributes are considered in selecting
qualified applicants?
Methodology

This qualitative study sought to understand the phenomena of high school principals’
teacher selection criteria. A research question was developed and an interview protocol collected
data. The data were then analyzed and the research findings were presented with respect to the
research question.
Interviews with the Principals

For the interview, the data from the nine high school principals (three pubic, three
private, and three charter) were obtained by handwritten notes and tape recordings of the
individual interviews. After each interview, the tape recordings were transcribed verbatim to
written form. The transcribed data were then coded and categorized with the intent to seek
patterns of responses.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 88

Interview Protocol

A one-page, 10-item questionnaire was developed to be individually administered by this
writer in nine controlled and structured settings located in the principals’ office. The interview
was based on a semi-structured format where the questions were open-ended, flexible, and
guided by a list of questions that required specific responses (Merriam, 2009). The issue of
neutrality was considered by not arguing, debating, of expressing the interviewer’s views
(Merriam, 2009). An opportunity to test, discuss, and subsequently revise the questions was done
to avoid closed-ended questions. Thus, based on Seyfarth’s (2008) highly valued teacher
selection criteria adapted from INTASC, the 10 questions that the principals were asked for the
interview follow below:
1. What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of background, training,
and student learning in high schools?
2. What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of a teacher’s daily,
weekly, or quarterly lesson planning?
3. What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of knowledge, skills, and
abilities of a teacher?
4. What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of diversity of learners?

5. What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of creating critical
thinking skills of students?
6. What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of student-to-student
interaction and learning?
7. What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of reflection of their
teaching practice?
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 89

8. What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of collaboration with
other teachers?
9. What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of interaction with
parents?
10. What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of assessment strategies
to evaluate student learning.
Data Analysis

From the nine interviews, the field notes, tape recordings, and the interview transcripts
were reviewed and prepared for analysis. The interview included a tape recording, so time was
available after the interview to transcribe and enhance the interview field notes. Once all of the
data were available, the process of analysis began as follows:
1. The first step in analyzing the interview field notes was “identifying segments in the
data set that are responsive to your research question (Merriam, 2009, p.176). By
taking this raw data, the segments or unit of data assists to answer the research
question.
2. The second step was to take the unit of data to create words and in turn forms
categories. The raw data was then coded and “be open to anything possible”
(Merriam, 2009, p. 178).
3. The third step in analyzing the data was to group or notice regularities or patterns in
the responses. This process included creating categories, which are “conceptual
elements that cover or span many individual examples (Merriam, 2009, p. 181).
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 90

4. The fourth step was to name the categories. The criteria considered included being,
“responsive to the purpose of research,” “exhaustive,” “mutually exclusive,”
“sensitizing,” and “conceptually congruent” (Merriam, 2009, pp. 185–186).
Therefore, the result produced categories for analysis. To then triangulate the interviews,
the responses from each of the three public, private, and charter school principals were compared
with each other as a group and individually. The public, private and charter school principals
were represented and analyzed as three separate groups. Each response of the three principals in
the group were individually analyzed with the principals in and out of the group (public school
principal v. public school principal, public school principal v. private school principal, and
public school principal v. charter school principal). With the group and individual responses, the
analysis included similarities, differences, and conceptual themes.
Conclusions of the Case Study
Summary of Findings for the Research Questions
By triangulating the data with the comparative responses from three pubic school
principals, three private school principals, and three charter school principals for a total of nine
principal responses, the results are as follows:
From Subquestion A, principals hired teachers who were intellectually sound in their
content area with student-centered teaching as a related characteristic. One exception was with
Pubic School Principal 3 for whom teacher content knowledge was not a factor when taking into
the account of cultural demographics of the school as they related to students not understanding
the content if not meaningful. For Public School Principal 3, students who did not have adequate
command of the English language was a consideration in the hiring the right teacher.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 91

From Subquestion B, principals hired teachers who had prior experience and content
expertise as related characteristics with exceptions, such as cultural demographics and e-learning
considerations. Public School Principal 3 and Charter School Principal 1 had different needs,
with the culture of English as a Second Language students and online learning as factors that
took precedence over experience, respectively. Public School Principal 3 was in need of teachers
who could work with the culturally disadvantaged population, rather than experience. Charter
School Principal 1 didn’t specifically express the need for an experienced teacher, but needed a
teacher for online instruction.
From Subquestion C, principals hired teachers based on five attributes: organization,
flexibility, relationships, assessment knowledge, and teacher growth. For organization, principals
predominately hired teachers for different reasons for organization skills (Public School
Principal 1—Structure; Public School Principal 2—Lesson Planning; Public School Principal
3—Assessment; Private School Principal 2—Backwards Mapping; and Private School Principal
3—Curricular Pacing), unless a unique school-wide characteristic existed (special population,
teaching online, and project-based learning), which took precedence over hiring based on a
teacher attribute.
For flexibility, what mattered the most were the students. The type of school (public,
private, charter), was not a factor for flexibility as an attribute for hiring teachers. Flexibility
coincided with working with students for each of the nine principals. Student performance and
success was critical in many ways. This included flexibility with individual students,
multiculturalism, teaching to the strength of the student, flexibility in assessments, adapting to a
situation, differentiation, and having a passion toward a range of students.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 92

For relationships, principals considered relationships with students, parents, and other
teachers as an attribute for hiring teachers. The type of school (public, private, charter) was not a
factor for relationships as an attribute for hiring teachers. What did matter the most was
positively working with students, parents, and other teachers. Positive relationships expressed by
the principals included “respect,” “engagement,” “involvement, and “interaction.”
For assessment knowledge, principals considered assessment knowledge as an attribute
for hiring teachers. The type of school (public, private, charter), was not a factor for assessment
knowledge as attribute for hiring teachers. What did matter most was assessment knowledge
about “pre and post assessments,” “implementation,” “strategy,” “structure,” ”formative
assessments,” “strength and weaknesses,” and “standardized assessments,” which were all
essential for the nine principals in terms of “student success,” “student learning,” and
“proficiency and mastery of content.”
For teacher growth, principals considered teacher growth as an attribute for hiring
teachers. The type of school (public, private, charter) was not a factor for teacher growth as
attribute for hiring teachers. What did matter the most was teacher growth about “collaboration”
with others, to self-monitor, to “be open to learning,” to “reflect” on their teaching practices to
“improve,” to “correct mistakes,” and to continuously “improve” on their instruction. Therefore,
in answering the last (teacher growth) of five attributes of Subquestion C, all nine principals
considered hiring teachers who could take the initiative to promote their self-growth toward
thinking about becoming a better teacher.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 93

Recommendations

Implications

Principals are continuously under pressure to maintain and manage the demands of a
changing environment and are confronted to hire teachers who meet their selection criteria. As
human capital management is applied towards principals’ teacher hiring process, the conceptual
framework of Seyfarth’s (2008) Model of the Selection Process considers four components:
1. Job Model—working conditions and expectations

2. State/Federal Statutes—licensing requirements,

3. Mission Statements—guiding actions of the organization, and

4. Research—increasing student learning that contribute to the identification of job-
specific and non-job-specific functions.
Seyfarth (2008) has suggested considering selection criteria based on the Interstate New Teacher
Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC) principle. Seyfarth’s adaptation of the INTASC
principle includes 11 highly valued teacher selection criteria:
1. Teacher accepts responsibility for helping all students to learn;

2. Teacher tells how he/she has communicated an affirming belief in all students’ ability to
learn;
3. Teacher plans/presents lessons that capture students’ interest and actively engage them;

4. Teacher plans/presents lessons that demonstrate extensive knowledge of the subject;

5. Teacher plans/presents lessons that include optional activities for learners with diverse
abilities, interests, and backgrounds;
6. Teacher plans/presents lessons that encourage student inquiry and critical thinking;
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 94

7. Teacher tells how he/she has encouraged students to show mutual respect and to interact
with one another in supportive ways;
8. Teacher reflects on lessons he/she taught and explains how they might have been
improved;
9. Teacher tells how he/she maintains close, supportive, working relationships with
colleagues;
10. Teacher tells how he/she has worked with parents to support children’s learning and

11. Teacher tells how he/she has used formal and informal assessments strategies to evaluate
students (Seyfarth, 2008, p. 25).
Therefore, based on the main research question and the three subquestions, the implications and
recommendations are as follows:
1. Hire teachers who are intellectually sound in their content area and who practice
student-centered teaching.
2. Teacher content knowledge was not a factor when taking into account cultural
demographics of the school as it relates to students not understanding the content if
not meaningful.
3. Students who do not have adequate command of the English language was a
consideration when hiring the right teacher.
4. Hire teachers who have prior experience and content expertise.

5. Hire based on experience but the needs of the culture of English as a Second
Language Student, the culturally disadvantaged population, and online learning were
factors that took precedence over experience.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 95

6. A unique schoolwide characteristic (e.g., special population, online instruction, and
project-based learning) affects the hiring process of teachers as selection is narrowed
toward the need of the school characteristic.
7. Hire teachers based on five attributes:

a. Organization: consider structure, lesson planning, assessment, backwards
mapping, and curricular pacing.
b. Flexibility: Flexibility with individual students, understanding multiculturalism,
teaching to the strength of the student, flexibility in assessments, adapting to a
situation, differentiation, and have a passion towards a range of students.
c. Relationships: Positively working with students, parents, and other teachers.
Positive relationships included respect, engagement, involvement, and interaction.
d. Assessment Knowledge: assessment knowledge about pre- and post-
assessments, implementation, strategy, structure, formative assessments, strength
and weaknesses, and standardized assessments, which were all essential for
student success, student learning, and proficiency and mastery of content.
e. Teacher Growth: To promote self-growth toward thinking about becoming a
better teacher, include collaboration with others and the ability to self-monitor,
to be open to learning, to reflect on their teaching practices, to improve and
correct mistakes, and to continuously improve on their instruction.
For Further Research

This qualitative case study investigated high school principals’ teacher selection criteria
for hiring teachers at three types of schools (public, private, and charter). Issues and topics
related to teacher intellect and content knowledge, student-centered learning, prior teaching
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 96

experience, multiculturalism, learning and achievement, online teaching, school-wide curricular
initiatives, teacher organization, teacher flexibility, teacher relationships with other stakeholders,
teacher assessment knowledge, and teacher growth should be investigated at other public,
private, and charter high schools for further research to continually determine the phenomena for
hiring teachers. Likewise, further research should be conducted at the elementary and middle
school levels to understand further perspectives on principals’ teacher selection criteria for hiring
teachers.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 97

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Appendix

Interview question 1: What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of background,
training, and student learning in high schools?

Public School Principals

1. I expect teachers to know their content, have good experience and reference
in teaching, most of all be caring for students in the classroom. So I believe
anyone can teach, but it’s how you interact with the student is truly important
to me. When I started this position, I got a lot of resistance from the faculty
because I am a middle math teacher and my philosophy of teaching is
different than what I high school teacher expects. In high school, a teacher is
expected to know their content and subject area and a teacher is expect to
deliver the content to the student. As a former middle school teacher, I too
have to deliver the content but I have to do it in a way that is diverse, flexible
and yet understanding to every child. So when I hire a teacher I am looking
for a teacher that is caring for a student, verse just standing and teaching
content knowledge.

2. I look for content and years of teacher experience. Here, teacher turnover
is very low, because of the student population along with the overall attitude
that’s fairly good. I look at holding the teacher to a higher standard. What I
get are teachers who want to teach at this school.

3. The teachers that I hire needs to be diverse and culturally based verses
content based. Basically the type of student I have is not up to par and is
easily become disinterested if the content is too hard. So I don’t necessarily
look for what a teacher knows but rather how a teacher can work with an
individual student if he/she is struggling. So keep in mind over 50% people of
my student population is (ethnic group) so I need a teacher that can work with
this population, which can become very difficult

Charter School Principals

1. So we have an online curriculum and I expect teachers to have computer
skills, provide office hours and be readily available to students who need
additional help. This school is not necessarily suitable for the traditional
teacher. I look for someone who is flexible, creative, and a thinker.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 116

y stan

So my school is small, less than 500 students yet we are still growing. It’s
difficult for me to get teachers to teach at this school and being a former DOE
district superintendent I do not get the same teacher supply as the DOE
would. I have to lower my standards to find qualified teachers to teach in the
classroom. Therefore you can imagine how difficult it is to find qualified
teachers to teach at my school. As a result, teacher turnover is relatively high;
teachers will stay on average 3-5 years as most. They will use my school as a
stepping-stone to another school. This is one of the disadvantages of being a
charter school.

2. I think for our school, it is experience. It is the training. But I think for us,
what's most important is that experience and training in culture based
education. Meaning that, teachers that have a demonstrated ability, or at least
a strong interest in grounding their strategies in Hawaiian perspectives and
Hawaiian worldview because that . . . I think that's the important part of our
vision and our mission. I think historically, there's always been a sacrifice
between a culturally grounded person and then one that doesn't have cultural
grounding but is a very good academic instructor. But I think we're at a time
where we're trying to push that forward. The assumption is there are teachers
like that now, that have both, and that have been successful in the classroom.

3. So we're really looking for staff who have expertise in some aspect of learning
who understands teaching to the individual student learning needs. And is
able to juggle that with the mixed level, mixed age. So do we want them to be
knowledgeable in their field? Absolutely. Does it have to be HQT as is
currently defined in fact to us that has not been a good indicator of a good
teacher. We look for people who have a passion about what they have to share
but are willing to be with children both as students themselves, as learners
themselves, as well as teachers and allowing students to do the same. We
spend a lot of time selecting.

Private School Principals

1. We are a specialized school so I think that that plays a role into my hiring
compared to maybe a school that's more traditionally and content driven. So
of course we have minimum criteria in terms of you have to have a BA. I
definitely prefer some teaching experience and preferably in secondary ed. I
prefer people who've worked with diverse populations before, whether that's
diverse learners or culturally diverse or kids that don't fit the box. But I think
in terms of the first things I look for, their cover letter is really important to
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me. Our teachers do a lot of writing of assessments and evaluations and I
need to be able to see that they can put sentences together Otherwise I spend
a lot of time editing.

2. I do look for mostly the training part. What they've had, have they had
experience in the classroom? If not then have they had training in a training
teacher's facility? Whether it's through a college system or . . . primarily it's
that. What kind of experience have they had? The other thing too I look for is
what connections they have for students? If they don't say the word "student",
I worry about it. And particularly what ignites their passion. Are they in there
for the long run? Are they just going through the motions to be here? 'Cause
you can train anybody to be a teacher but if you don't have the passion for
teaching, then it becomes challenging. You'll get the job and then the next
minute it's like . . . it's just challenging for that person.

3. I look for teaching experience, as well as diversity and a sense of pride in
their profession. Teaching here is a little different because of the specific
population. Teachers will either like it or then don’t. I would rather have a
teacher who doesn’t know how to teach, but can connect to the students in
their own way. I feel that we can help our teachers to become better teachers.
If our teachers have that ability to connect with our young men then to me
that’s where the learning starts.

Interview question 2: What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of a teacher’s daily,
weekly, or quarterly lesson planning?

Public School Principals

1. I expect teachers to be organized, structured but again I expect teacher to be
flexible and care for the individual student verses just being a robot and
explaining the content and moving on to the next unit.

2. Instruction has to be structured. They must understand how to backward map
from the assessment and teach and be data driven to build on the strengths
and work on their weaknesses. An excellent teacher has a written lesson plan
for every school day. They can formatively revise along the way on a daily or
weekly basis. The end results are summative assessment for each quarter
where data drives instruction that is pre planned daily, weekly and quarterly.

3. Because of my student population, making lesson plans that is suited to the
interest of the student is important. Unfortunately, everybody moves to Ewa
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and my numbers have decreased below a thousand students causing me to cut
teacher positions. In fact, I haven’t hired any new teachers for the last 4 years
due my numbers being small.

Charter School Principals

1. Most of my teachers are forced to use the web to deliver online lessons. They
are not teaching in a traditional classroom. It’s not uncommon for a teacher
to be teaching a class, when students are residing in different parts of the
state.

2. Like meaning how they plan out their year? Like would want to make sure that
they're of course always in alignment with what we're doing as a school. You
know, because as a charter school we have very specific visions and missions
and how that translates into their classroom needs to be articulated well
enough. And then their quarterly planning, their lesson planning and all that
needs to be in alignment with all of that. So it's a consistent thing so that when
we talk about what's going on in the classroom, it is very much tied to and
aligned with the vision and mission of our school.

3. Ok so we're not typical. We're a student center, based on project based
learning, which means that no two students graduate from H Learning Center
with the same learning path. We're really with the student and his or her
family and our educators help that student plan a path that when done really
well, hits their learning struggles or gaps to help them be successful in what
their dreams are for the future and meet the required standards that we have
for the student. But we don't do it in a linear fashion and we don't do it in . . .
everybody's on the same step at the same time. So it's really all over. So it's
kind of a spiral concept.

So that means that our staff really have . . . currently we have 16 students in
each of our ohana, and the team that works with that ohana has an
educational assistant as well as a teacher. A licensed teacher. And their job is
to make sure that the student is first of all, defining their personal learning
plan or updating it each year, depending where they are. That they're
continuing to keep it on track with where their hopes are for the future so that
we're preparing them for that as we going along. And then the family is part of
that effort. So what they do daily is really touch bases with every single
student, some more in-depth than others, depending on where they are in their
particular path on that particular day. On a weekly basis, they're trying to
make sure that they spend a significant time so they feel confident the
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 119

student's being productive with their time here. Our kids can do their learning
on and off campus and as long as we have it documented in our learning
database . . .

They can get earned credit towards whatever they're learning at as long as
you can validate your time and evidence of learning and acknowledging your
skills. So we look at them daily and weekly in that way. We divide our year up
into blocks of about six weeks, so at the end of six week blocks, we really look
more deeply at "ok, this is where you said you were going to try to be, where
are you? Ok and if you're on track, awesome, you know we set up [the next
one??] on how to get that going. If you're not, why? And what were the
barriers and how can we help you with that?" So that kind of stuff. So we do
that once a block, intensely at the end of each block and then we also report
more in-depth to families that information using our database by semester. We
also try to make sure that we talk personally to each family, our staff does, on
a three week cycle so that the staff is hearing the moments of celebration
hopefully, more than areas of struggle where we can maybe work together.

Private School Principals

1. I need to know . . . it's hard to tell 'cause like I said sometimes I hire a lot of
new teachers so they don't have a lot of experience in lesson planning and so
forth. But what I'm hoping comes out is I'm looking for people who are open
to different kinds of learners. Very willing to meet kids where they're at and
move forward. Willing to individualize, asking themselves, "well, if you have a
kid who's struggling, what else can I do? How can I help this kid" as opposed
to "you need to" and "you need to" so I'll ask . . . I'll do a lot of scenario
questions when I'm interviewing and hiring someone to try and get a sense of
are they flexible with those kids? Can I have the kid who's . . . they're in an
Alg 1 class but they're still really like a 5th grade math level and are you
going to be able to make Alg 1 work for them? Or are they going to be failing
from the first day of school?

And I don't want that kid failing from the first day of school. We need to meet
them where they're at and move them forward and you're going to have to
individualize and differentiate that curriculum for that kid. So in terms of
lesson planning, and weekly and quarterly and stuff, that component of
differentiation of is critical and that's part of our mission as a school.

2. Well I'm big on non-negotiables as you can tell. So I do look for "do you know
how to organize your lesson" be it backwards mapping, if you're looking at
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your curriculum as a whole, like for a year? And how do you make sure that
the assessments are set in there? How do you look at key components? Do you
know what an objective is? Do you know what you want that child to learn,
know and understand before they walk out that door, and how do you make
sure that they do? I do look for the organization skills of such. How do you . . .
what is your discipline plan? What is your philosophy in teaching? What do
you look for in terms of assessing? Do you know what formative or summative
assessments look like? Can you create them and do you know how to change it
up if you're in the middle of something and it doesn't quite fly? So, it's more
so the backwards mapping and understanding, what is the larger goal and
how are you going to get there?

3. Again, finding a teacher is not as easy as we cannot pay the same salary say
as the public school. Most teachers who teacher here want to be here and are
comfortable with the curriculum and pace that we follow here. If I can find a
teacher who is organized that becomes a plus

Interview question 3: What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of knowledge, skills, and
abilities of a teacher?

Public School Principals

1. The same answer as before.

2. That goes back to my last answer.

3. The teachers that I hire need to understand diversity and have tolerance for
multiculturalism. I look for skill in working with student who speaks English
as second language.
Charter School Principals

1. I’m looking for teachers who can teach to the individual in a very unique
setting. The traditional classroom teacher may have a difficult time teaching
at my school. I’m looking for a teacher who is able to teach lessons online.

2. It's kind of going back to that first question, you know, possessing that
academic rigor, the knowledge, the 'ike, the skills, you know, in their core
academics whether it be ELA, math, social studies, history, what have you.
But also "and", so it's not "or", it's "and" having 'ike in how to take our
cultural perspectives, our cultural view our culture, our mo'olelo and
integrate that into the content. And then the ability to deliver it in a very
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 121

grounded perspective and then attain the results that we expect for them. Still
be able to achieve and reach a level of proficiency and acquire the skill that’s
being expected. So basically having both the 'ike, the academic 'ike and the
cultural 'ike and putting that together and then the ability to move that
forward and deliver that in your classroom.

3. I'm going to look for someone who has a passion around something.
Whatever, social studies, math, whatever it is and is able to effectively and
engagingly draw students to that exploration as well. So not only be an expert
in whatever, but able to communicate that to a range of students. It's hard to
find in an interview though, you're not going to get all that information.
You're going to get inklings of it. We try to have staff actually come and spend
the day. Each staff come and spend the day, yeah, if they can because we are
so different. We're not a conventional school setting at all. And when we've
been successful when doing that, it seems we have a better success rate in our
choices because they are also making the choice, like no no no, I want to try
to do this.

Private School Principals

1. Yeah, definitely the differentiation and individualization. . . the collaboration,
being able to work with a team. My faculty meets every single day and we
work . . . we don't have departments, we are one . . .

2. I look for lesson planning, lesson design. Do you know what prior skills, do
you know prior knowledge compared to what skills they need to learn? I look
for unpacking standards, if you've got some kind of goal and here at KS it's a
little different because you can pick and choose, which is great, but you want
the kids to primarily comprehend and understand what they're doing and how
do you infuse rigor into it? So if the teacher can explain to me in an interview
what skill sets they are and how do you unpack a lesson or how do you unpack
a standard to come up to specific objectives then I know that they've got their
framework clear.

3. Well the problem is that the teacher pool is very limited. It is very difficult for
me to find qualified teachers who want to work here for a lower salary then at
the DOE. A lot of time we end up compensating our teacher’s abilities
because we feel the teacher is a good fit for the school and the particular
course that they have been hired to teach. I do try to find teachers who are
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qualified to teach the areas we are hiring for, but sometime the choices are
not the easiest to choose from.

Interview question 4: What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of diversity of learners?

Public School Principals

1. I expect teachers to be able to teach to every student. Every student is diverse
in their own way and although we would like to teach the same across the
board. I expect teacher to be flexible to work individual students as needed.

2. At this school, the teachers I hire need to know their content and as far as
learner diversity, be able to explain the content in various ways so the learner
understands the academic material. Being rigid is not the answer. Being able
to teach to the strength of the learner is critical.

3. That goes back to the previous answers. I’m looking for a teacher that can
work with students from multiculturalism and is flexible in their curriculum.
Keep in mind, the parents in these kids have never attended high school. So
the teacher has to be able to motivate these kids to learn.

Charter School Principals

1. For our online curriculum, it’s more work for the individual teacher to
prepare and recognize learner diversity. I would like them to recognize
strengths and weaknesses of students and expand on knowledge via the
computer. I expect teachers to be flexible as this is not the traditional
classroom, Flexibility is important in this environment.

2. A teacher who has the ability to differentiate. Since we cannot select our
students, finding teachers who have the ability, or at least the willingness to
take students where they're at and bring them to where we want them to be is
what we look for. So that could be the high flying student that comes to us or
having the underperforming student and bringing them up to par. It's to get a
specific result that we expect.

3. We don't want a sage on the stage; it's not "oh because you're an 8th grader
you're at this point." No, it's not that. It's really able to not only to get to know
the student personally, as they work with the student, but to really look at the
data that we have on that student beyond the number. So what is behind that
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number? We use nationally normed diagnostic assessment at the beginning
and end of each year and that gives us information on where the gaps are that
they're not being able to be successful with if that's the issue and ideas around
instructional strategies that we use with them. So we actively have and look
for teachers who look at the data as well.

Private School Principals

1. We teach kids…. not subjects, so if we're going to get together and talk, we're
going to get together and talk. What does Matt need, and what is Matt doing
in your class ….and your class ….and your class? And how can we do this?
And even if you don't have Matt, you have the kids similar to Matt so you can .
. . or you had him last year, so you can chime in and help us figure out what
this kid needs. So everything we do is collaborative with one another. And
then like I said, the biggest skill for me that I look for in a teacher is you've
gotta be able to build relationships with kids. Yeah all of our kids are diverse
learners so yeah, that's all of what I’m looking for

2. I look for someone that can change things on the spur of the moment. And it's
not to say that they have the full skill set but it's the attitude and if they have
the attitude and they want to kind of get there, then it'll work, Differentiation
is really difficult for any teacher to do, but if they don't have the
understanding of what it means, then you won't know how to start. It then
comes down to small group learning and instruction. What makes a skillful
teacher is being able to adapt. They're not rigid, they're fluid people.

3. That goes back to the previous answers. I’m looking for a teacher that can
work with students from a multicultural view and is flexible in their
curriculum. The teacher has to be able to motivate these kids to learn.

Interview question 5: What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of creating critical
thinking skills of students?

Public School Principals

1. Lately I haven’t seen a great deal teacher applicants who are strong in this
area. So what I did was I brought in people from the district office and did a
staff development day. We encouraged teachers from various subject areas to
create critical thinking skills into their curriculum. But yes I expect teachers
to provide critical thinking skills for the 21st century learner.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 124

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2. So critical thinking skills at this school are highly important and most students
want to be challenged. If a teacher is too easy and doesn’t challenge a student
too much, the student or the parents will be in my office complaining. So I
look for teachers who can answer not only teaching the “what” but instill the
skill in teaching the “ho hen developing critical thinking skill in students.

3. I look for flexibility, creativeness and intuition. The majority of the population
we teach are not highly motivated and teachers are encouraged to give
incentives.

Charter School Principals

1. I’m looking for teachers to integrate online lessons in teaching student to
think about a problem. Knowing, using, and teaching about web-based
applications are important attributes I look for in teachers in creating critical
thinkers. Knowledge of various search engines on the Internet is also a factor
in who I look for.

2. A teacher that is able to create that culture of inquiry in the classroom. And I
think, you know, the ability to give just enough information so that a student
starts to understand, and then further starts to think more broadly. So I think
the opportunities that we have in a way we deliver is we try our best to involve
play space, project based learning, hands-on experiential, and when that's
done well, our students take their knowledge an start to apply it and then start
to gain more knowledge by being inquisitive of what they're observing, what
they're doing in their hands-on approach, you know? So I think in that way,
getting students to just think and how to apply the 'ike, and I think that's the
most important thing is, getting students to apply. And I think that's the
movement of the whole smarter balance, common core, it's an application of
knowledge, not necessarily, not just the understanding of content , it's the
application of it too. So I think our program is positioned to, I think to do well
in this era of common core and smarter balance but it's not to say that we're
gonna do all off the bat. I think we need to make slight adjustments, or some
adjustments, but we're positioned to do it because that's has always been the
movement of Hawaiian education. It's application, it's critical thinking, it's
inquiry based, you know? So I think it's very consistent and now this
movement of common core, and this era of common core and smarter balance
is now catching up to this.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 125

tator, me

3. Here, it's critical that our kids are learning to be critical thinkers, to be
problem solvers, to be creative and doing that because they're part of
designing their learning package. And if they don't feel confident in that
they're going to do wherever like surfing, skateboarding, whatever…. So we
try to find those people to pull out the thinking skills of our students. So you're
really that coach, facilitator, mentor, you know, all of those things. Also not
only being a teacher, but also a learner. It’s critical to have people who listen
for understanding, verses yeah yeah yeah yeah, ok, gotcha, do this, you know?
We don't want that.

Private School Principals

1. We have a wide range of students so since we teach kids and since our classes
are small meaning under 8 students, we require that teachers work closer with
students in developing critical thinking skills. To do this as I said previously
building relationships with students and being able to model how and what to
think is part of the criteria I use to select teachers, which then means that the
teacher has to be academically sound and intelligent in bringing out the
thinking skills in our students.

2. It's the understanding of depths of knowledge. Rigor, I think it comes down to
the questioning too, when you're doing interview questions, what types of
questions you've devised, or created, so that it can get a person to kinda guide
them that way. So on critical thinking, giving them scenarios and seeing how
they respond. It's pushing that rigor. And a new teaching may not necessarily
have that skill so you look for qualities that could actually bring . . . you can
kind of question them to see if there's intrinsic or innate kind of ability to do
so. But it's a crafting of the right question that will bring that out. Otherwise
you could miss it.

3. I really want to be sure the teacher we hire is qualified for the position, and
can challenge our students. We are a small school and the advantage we have
is being able to work with our teachers closely. So we look for teachers who
themselves can be taught to teach critical thinking skills and model that with
our students. Prior experience is a factor in what I look for, but I also look for
how “smart” the teacher is too. So I look at transcripts to also help me make
a decision.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 126

Interview question 6: What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of student-to-student
interaction and learning?

Public School Principals

1. I think it’s critical for teachers to not only interact and work with their
students, but for students to interact with each other. Again when I’m
hiring for a teacher I’m looking for a teacher who is qualified but one who
can also create student to student learning and group work skills. One of
the problems of finding a teacher I’m looking for is the limited supply pool
of certified teachers.

2. I expect teachers to have students develop good rapport with other
students, I expect teachers to go above and beyond what they’re expected
to do and have students get along in an out of the classroom .The students
here want a challenge. Part of that is for the teacher to have students to
work together academically. In the process they are able to build stronger
relationship towards academic goals.

3. Well the teacher I prefer is someone who can get students to get along
with each other in an out of the classroom. This teacher has to facilitate
and come down to their level, verses just teaching content straight from
the book. Part of coming down to their level means recognizing that
lecture is not enough and that having students interact with each other to
learn is equally important.

Charter School Principals

1. I expect all teachers to have a rapport with the students and student to student
rapport online or otherwise. Most of the instruction is online so the teacher
has to create online interaction skills with the students. If they do meet in the
classroom face-to-face, then the teacher must assist with not only teacher to
student interaction, but also student to student learning.

2. A teacher that is able to demonstrate respect towards student learning and
developing that relationship is partly what I look for. We have hands-on
inquiry based approaches to learning the Hawaiian culture so it’s important
that student to student interaction is done by the teacher. So a teacher that has
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just he

to have the ability to not only instruct to the whole but set expectations for
students to work with each other in a collaborative classroom.

3. We want someone who's really directing student to student learning an also
listen to understand where he or she is coming from, what their resources are
in their life context, not re on school, and then recognize that in our
school. We want to build learning on their experiences so the teacher has to
recognize that and scaffold the learning.

Private School Principals

1. One of the things I do, or I try to do is to hire in the middle of summer, it's
tough, but I involve kids in the hiring process. The students can really pick up
on the character and the person, and I always ask “How would a teacher
instruct students to interact with each other?” I'm like "is this someone who
you get a gut feeling that you can guide students to interact with each other?
Is this someone that you can connect with? And not in a friend way." And the
kids, they're tough. They ask tougher questions than I do. The kids don't want
a friend for a teacher. So I take the student’s feedback and make a selection.

2. I look for teachers who have had experiences with leading student
interactions with other students 'cause if you've been a professional student,
you know, and you've gone through the right things, gone through the right
courses to get the right paperwork or documents doesn't necessarily mean
that you're a good teacher. I ask a lot of questions that might refer to their
learning experiences like service learning 'cause we want to teach the kids
also with experiences with peers so that they have that in their skill set. I think
it's really difficult to pinpoint it but I look for the relationship pieces.

3. Students must learn to work with each other in the learning process and I look
for teachers that can recognize this…..to create a learning culture that’s not
only lecture but to include the cooperative learning model. I like teachers to
mix things up with the delivery of lessons when students learn.

Interview question 7: What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of reflection of their
teaching practice?

Public School Principals

1. I look for experience but I also look for that good fit that will work well with
that student population in that content area.
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2. I expect teachers to stop and think about whether the student conceptually
understood the lesson and be data driven to improve on instructional
weaknesses.

3. For our school they must reflect on teaching culturally
disadvantaged students. I am looking for teachers who can work with kids and
be creative in their curriculum.

Charter School Principals

1. Again I don’t get the typical DOE teacher and the teacher that I get has to be
flexible and willing to work in an online setting. They need to adjust, learn
from mistakes, and improve with each online class. It requires more prep
time. This is not the traditional classroom setting.

2. Must be willing to continuously grow and improve upon their own practice.
The teachers get stagnant, you know, regardless, our students will always be
different. We're always getting a different group of students. And in the same
way we challenge our students to be lifelong learners, we as professionals
need to do the same thing and need to employ that same thinking. And we
always need to be reflective of our practice and in order to be reflective,
understand what we want to do well in our practice. Kind of the whole "this is
my goal, the students that I have, this is my goal with them and this is how I'm
progressing, this is what happened, and I got at the end, and then start to
reflect, what was successful in that? What were some challenges that I came
across?" But kind of looking at their profession and looking at their year as a
cycle of things and that every cycle is a new cycle because the students that
you worked with. If it's the same cycle and you take the approach that you're
working with the same students, you won't be successful as a teacher, you
know? And then I think part of that reflection process is how you as an
individual teacher fit into the bigger picture of our school and then into the
bigger picture of an indigenous education movement. If you can't reflect that
you're part of that bigger movement, nothing separates you from the DOE
teacher. So for me, it's trying to get our teachers to really think that there is a
difference between a charter school teacher and a DOE teacher. And
generally speaking, I'm not trying to stereotype DOE teachers, but teachers in
the DOE system are one of thousands of teachers. In a charter school, you're
one of hundreds of teachers. These hundreds of teachers are . . . I make 'em . .
. signed up for a movement and I want to be part of a movement. So how are
you contributing in your practice, in your classrooms to that movement? I
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think that has to be part of the reflection process, in addition to the usual
academics and student gains/student growth, how are you moving forward
with indigenous education, innovations, or what successes have you had
working with underrepresented, underperforming students? And how are you
sharing that with a more bigger context to influence the larger system? So for
me that's I guess, it's huge, having teachers reflect on their practice.

3. I’m looking for involvement…..involvement in what we call an advisory
decision making model. So even as we try to tweak what's not working, I look
for people to be comfortable and proactive in sharing their expertise around
successes or ideas that might work and becoming part of solutions. So that
means you have to reflect on what you do….. What am I doing that's working
well? What am I doing that could be better, right? What am I struggling at?
And then be ready to listen and be able to be around comfortable and
unthreatened by reflecting and sharing knowledge.

Private School Principals

1. I want to see when I'm hiring someone if they're truly open to learning, which
is hard. And being we're a non-traditional school….. We don't look like a
traditional school so even when I get someone in with good, solid teaching
background, it's a learning curve and they have to like put away everything
they thought they knew about teaching and learning and kids and kinda start
all over again. In the interview, I ask questions that are reflective and need to
have people who are willing to learn. Because we're a non-traditional school,
if you get someone in with too rigid of a paradigm of what school is, they
really struggle to shift their thinking. If I get someone new and I can mold
their paradigm of school and teaching and learning. I don't shy away from the
new teacher, really ever. And if I'm hiring a seasoned teacher, they need to be
open and willing to sit back that first year and figure out who we are before
they assert themselves in the community.

2. When we ask them what's their biggest mistake, that you've ever done, and if
they're honest in there, and they'll say what's your biggest mistake you did
today? Then you can tell from their answer how reflective they are, and
whether it's someone else's fault or yours. Or you've internalized it to say
"maybe I could've done that a little better". But if you ask about a mistake,
and that's one of the questions I like to ask because you can see if they are a
reflective person and if they're looking at themselves to see how they can
improve themselves or learn upon a mistake. It's really telling. The other
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 130

things that I do ask is about what was an "aha" moment for you. Or give me
an example of when you've seen a kid's light go off, you know? A bulb kinda
just ignites.

So those kind of practices tell me their connections of kids and if they've
stepped back and actually said that lesson worked. Other questions I would
ask are "what types of formative assessments you've used?" So they can see do
you change it up? So if a child's not getting that lesson, do I step back to see
have all my kids not got it? Or is it just this one child? Do I pull him for small
groups? Do I stop the lesson and retract . . . re-teach it or do I carry on? So
those types of questions are what I'll ask.

3. I prefer to hire a teacher with teaching experience. It’s not always easy or
goes the way we planned so an experienced teacher knows how to reflect. I
want teachers who can problem solve rather than ask me. The teacher may
not like my answer so I want a teacher who can learn and grow as well.

Interview question 8: What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of collaboration with
other teachers?

Public School Principals

1. I believe collaboration is important to teacher learning and teacher growth.
Teachers can learn from one another and I strongly encourage professional
development in teacher collaboration.

2. Collaboration at this school is important. We do a lot of projects with
different departments. For example stem research is big at this high school.
We have integrated the English, Math and science department to work
together. Collaboration is big at this school and I strongly encourage it.

3. I need a team player to work with other teachers to deal with the challenges of
our student population. Teaching in isolation and not getting along with
colleagues hurts the process.
Charter School Principals

1. In this setting we don’t always work with other teachers. However, I do
encourage teacher who are willing to work with one another…But in this
environment working at different platforms can be difficult, yet accomplished
through staff collaboration and parental involvement because the parents
have to ensure that their child is working with all these different teachers at
the same time.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 131

partme

2. So kind of going off the same page, how are you individually or collectively
contributing to the movement, you know? And at a big picture it's that, but just
at a school level, it's gradewise how are you working with
our students or developing a program so that for our students, it is seamless
from year to year to year... And not that "because I had this teacher this year,
I'm going to have this teacher next year that does a totally different thing and
has very different approaches." That from our student perspective, there's
some consistency and that takes a lot of collaboration because that goes to the
whole decentralizing of your curriculum, decentralizing of your practice, and
being very open about what it is. So I think part of that collaboration is just
being open to peer mentors, or peer evaluations or assessments, you know,
where your own peers are coming into your classroom and you're being very
real about what you're teaching and how you're teaching it. They're very open
to that conversation of "hey, I like what you did, and it worked with that
student because I'm struggling with that student in my class." So I think in that
sense, collaboration for the betterment of the student and allowing the student
to be successful.

3. Yeah. It's critical. So that's why we take a solid four days always before
school starts to really make sure we're on the same page as much as possible.
And then we also identify those areas that we're not quite, so we put them on
the agenda for our staff meeting. So we not only have the PLC meetings
weekly, weekly we have staff meetings on Friday. Within the DOE they have a
short day, so we figure ok fine, we have to follow their rules anyway, we'll
take the short day. And then that afternoon, we have a good solid couple
hours to work together. So those are kinds of things that we do. We work out
how do we work best together and what are the things we need to work on.

Private School Principals

1. It's my number two. Number one is to relate to kids. Number two is you have
to be able to work with others…And I would even have someone teach out of
their content area and be able to work well with kids and collaborate with
others than hire, you know, the biologist for biology who can't do those things.
You know, I'd rather hire a math teacher or a different kind of science to teach
biology or something. I can't teach teachers how to relate to kids and I can't
teach them how to work well with other people. They either have it or they
don't. So that's what I look for when I hire because the rest of it, yeah we can
do that. I can help you.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 132

sharin

2. It goes to creating relationships and not burning bridges. Teachers helping
other teachers are critical. I look to see how comfortable they are with each
other or whether they're sharing beyond teaching. 'Cause if you're willing to
share beyond teaching, then you're willing to step out of their classroom to
say "hey, I do need help too" so it's reciprocal. I also ask and see if they care
enough about the other teacher who approached them or to get clarification
as to what's going on. So collaboration is essential.

3. Oh I think collaboration is important amongst all of our teachers. We are a
small school. We are flexible with our curriculum so helping each other out is
common and what I look for when hiring. Being on your own in isolation
from other teachers is not what I’m looking for. Won’t work for out smaller
environment where we share what goes on continually for a smooth operation.

Interview question 9: What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of interaction with
parents?

Public School Principals

1. So at this school parent interaction is fairly good. I expect teacher to interact
with parents on a quarterly basis. I do recommend to teachers if a student is
averaging lower that a C, either by phone, email or deficiency notice. I also
encourage the teacher to contact the student counselor I that the student
knows they are averaging a lower grade and that the counselor can follow up
with the parents.

2. Parent interaction is big at this school. I don’t have a problem asking parents
to help out with student activities and as a result my parents have high
expectation of myself and teacher. Therefore a teacher that I hire need to be
able to communicate well with parents.

3. At this school I have very few parents who interact with teachers. But I do
encourage teachers to interact with parents by either by email, mail or a
phone call.

Charter School Principals

1. Interaction with parents is important. I look for teachers who don’t shy away
from continuous interaction with parent. Emails work well in our environment
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 133

to keep parents in the loop about student progress and the teacher I look for is
computer literate and also responds to parents reply email as well.

2. Communication is always a huge thing. I want teachers who let Parents know,
hopefully they want to know how their kid is doing too. I want to
communicate with parents are about many different things; About student
success, something they do really well in class rather than reporting just
deficit or disciplinary type of communication.. Just creating that type of
understanding with parents I think would is huge . . .

3. So I kind of talked about that as well. We work really hard to get families
involved in the learning environment and I need teachers to engage with
parents We highly request . . . can't require, but highly request families
contribute ten hours a quarter, 40 hours a year of volunteer time to the
learning environment. But we count everything. They come to hoike, if they
bring three family members to hoike, we do public hoike's. So we get an hour
or two for each of those people. We really count the personal learning plan
conferences, we count that. Volunteer for fundraisers, come in and be a
content area expert for a project or two. We would count all of those times. So
we try to find ways to do that. We're still working on doing that really well,
but that's what we do. The other thing that we do is contact that parent every
three weeks. And the main message should be to engage with the family and
problem solve.

Private School Principals

1. I think the most . . . well, with secondary schools, you don't have as much
interaction with parents as you do in elementary and middle school. I think
what I expect out of a teacher is just to not have a "reactive personality". I
want teachers to be proactive an initiate interaction with parents.

2. Ok so a lot of the questions that I'll ask a teacher is when a parent comes in
and says "my kid's the brightest kid. in the whole wide world" and you see in
the assessments that's not so, how do you approach that parent to say "this is
what I'm getting and this is what you're telling me. There's no connection."

So I like to hear what the responses are from teachers. And a lot of the times
it's "oh I just show them the assessment and I tell them, you know, your child's
not that bright." Well I know that they're not willing to extend themselves and
they don't want to be in partnership with the parent, but when a teacher comes
back and says to me "well you know, I'm struggling with this because we gave
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 134

this assessment, taught the whole thing, your child was on board when the
assessment came, they couldn't give me the answers. They would tell me that
they actually learned this concept. But you're telling me that they're gifted and
talented, am I not reaching them properly? I need to understand how to
account for it. And that's when I know a teacher's on board and I'm willing to
help as a partner with a parent. So you know, that's really telling. And it's a
good question to kind of pose to a teacher.

3. I expect my teachers to keep our students and parents aware of their progress
in school. I highly encourage teachers to continue to bridge that gap of
communication between their students and parents.

Interview question 10: What do you look for in a teacher to hire in terms of assessment strategies
to evaluate student learning.

Public School Principals

1. I expect teachers to provide some sort of assessment and because my student
population and teacher staff is so large I hold my department heads
accountable ensuring all of their teachers are providing me some sort of
assessment in their teaching curriculum. This helps me manage my school
more efficiently.

2. I expect teachers to provide me with a pre and post assessment during the
school year and that’s my way of holding the teachers accountable. So
remember my school is small and this allows me to monitor the students and
teachers closely. This allows me to interact with the students and teachers
more frequently.

3. I appreciate a teacher who is organized and can demonstrate classroom
assessment strategies towards increased learning. If instruction and
assessment are structured, assessments can be easily delivered and
calculated.

Charter School Principals

1. So this is kind of tricky because each student is assessed differently. I want
teachers to look for and know the strengths and weaknesses of their students.
To start with a baseline and provide posttest and look to correct errors to
develop proficiency and mastery of the content.
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 135

2. Open minded, and acknowledging that we all know . . . everybody knows that
there's all these state mandated testing, but I think there's some consensus that
it's not an accurate measurement necessarily. But even though it may not be
an accurate measure or a full picture, it is a measure nonetheless. It is an
assessment nonetheless. It is an indicator of what may or may not be working
in the classroom, so looking for a teacher that understands the role of
standardized assessments but also is able to fill in the gap in terms of
formative classroom authentic performance based . . . you know, performance
in terms of hands on administration. Then. putting together a whole picture of
student success based off of all that information and not just, you know, a
student took a the test, got an "F", so the student's getting an "F", but are they
just bad test takers? Have they demonstrated other ways in which they've
grasped the content? So I think in . . . the short answer is just an open minded
teacher.

3. I need teachers to work with project based learning in addition to having
students do research papers and use PowerPoints for presentations. We don't
typically though don’t do multiple choice quiz. We expect students to design
products for each of their student driven projects that would provide evidence
that they're learning new knowledge or skills. We need to be kind of constantly
be looking at what are those rubrics, Making sure that we're pushing that
student at the edge of his capability to the next. So that ok, yay, he's got this
down, let him do that forever? No. We're kind of pushing that. So that means
again, we need to be talking to each other. We have our database and then
upload the student's work so we have that, generally. And I say generally
because sometimes it gets eaten by a dog or something. Are we doing it
consistently? For our projects, for the student driven projects, a student has to
design it with their educational team and the educational team make sure they
hit all of the benchmarks but they're working with 16 kids so they're kind of all
over the place. So when the Ed team and the student thinks they got their
proposal set, then they have to go to two other adults who are their evaluation
team.

And they have to present their proposal to the evaluation team. If the
evaluation team says awesome, you hit all the benchmarks, if you do what you
say you're going to do, you most likely could earn the credit you'd like to earn
for this particular project, in these standards. You don't get it though, until
you do the work, right? So you do all the work that you said you're going to
do the research, you're going to write a paper, you're going to build a model,
or do a video, or whatever that you said you were going to do. When you're
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 136

done, you come back to that same team and actually defend your learning. So
they have to show, you know, this is my central question; these are my driving
questions to kind of narrow that, here's my products, what I learned along the
way, couldn't find this out but I found this out, and that kind of stuff. So then
they look at what the evidence was and they award credit towards standards
where there's genuine evidence and the knowledge is good.

Private School Principals

1. So you know, in terms of assessment, I just need someone who is comfortable
with not measuring kids with the same stick. And you may have five kids in
your classroom and all five you may be assessing in completely different
ways. And for different things. And that's that open-mindedness piece. We
have to train all of our teachers on the assessments that we use in terms of
cognitive assessments and reading scores and we have a "fact file" for every
kid that has diagnostic data through the roof, and it takes about four years
just for a new teacher to kinda be like "ok, I'm ready to start looking through
this." But the first few years of being a new teacher,, that's part of that
learning curve because you have all of this data, and you have no idea how to
read it or what to do with it. Or even if you know like, well they have a little
processing speed in working memory, but you don't know how that translates
to what you're seeing in the classroom. And so we have to do all of the
training on when you see a weakness or strength here, what is that going to
look like?

2. I ask them about assessments, what's their philosophy behind it. If a teacher
can tell me that formative assessment is what I do throughout the whole lesson
to ensure that I am on the right track and the child is learning, then good.
Then I know that teacher is understanding what assessment is all about.
'Cause you don't wait until the end of the assessment to say "oh, the kids didn't
get it!", and when is that? At the end of the chapter or unit. That's not
plausible because you've missed the whole opportunity for the child to learn.
So I do look for timeliness in assessments. I ask them, you know, what do you
do when the children answer, really looking for those strategies on formal
assessment. And I ask them about their philosophy. A lot of the teachers say . .
. "you know, data, I'm totally driven by data." And it's ok, but what do you do
with it? And data is ok but five minutes later it's kinda useless data if you don't
use it. So what do you do with the data and how do you inform instruction to
make better decisions in teaching? And then I look about the structure of how
they do their assessments. Is it related back to the objective? More often than
PRINCIPALS' CRITERIA IN THE TEACHER SELECTION PROCESS 137

not in my walkthroughs, you see assessments and it's got nothing to do with
what they're teaching. But I do look for a teacher that uses data to inform
instruction and within a period, not within a quarter or a semester. It's got to
be very timely.

I always say to a teacher, how often do you check your bank account? Oh I
check mines all the time 'cause it's always like "do we have enough money in
there?" You know, you check it quite often. So how often do we check our own
kid's assessments and learning? It's gotta be frequent enough to make an
informed decision. Do I stop spending, do I carry on? Same thing for a kid's
learning.

3. Well I would like them to be able to share what and how they assess their
students and their expectations of the class as teachers. Looking at what
students can and cannot do is important. To build on what they can do and to
work on what they cannot do. Take the data and problem solve .That’s what I
look for in a teacher

Abstract (if available)

Abstract This qualitative case study interviewed nine high school principals (three public, three private, and three charter) in a semi-structured format asking 10 open-ended questions about teacher selection criteria for hiring teachers. The triangulation of the responses provided the following results: ❧ - High school principals hired teachers who were intellectually sound in their content area and practiced student-centered teaching. ❧ - Teacher content knowledge was not a factor when taking into account cultural demographics of the school as it related to students not understanding the content if not meaningful. ❧ - Students who did not have adequate command of the English language were a consideration when hiring the right teacher. ❧ - High school principals hired teachers who had prior experience and content expertise. ❧ - High school principals hired based on experience, but the needs of the culture of English as a Second Language students, working with the culturally disadvantaged population, and online learning were factors in hiring that took precedence over experience. ❧ - A unique schoolwide characteristic (e.g., special population, online instruction, project-based learning) affected the hiring process of teachers as selection was narrowed to fulfill the needs of the specific schools. ❧ - High school principals hired teachers based on five attributes: Organization: consider structure, lesson planning, assessment, backwards mapping, and curricular pacing

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Asset Metadata

Creator Okazaki, Eric (author)

Core Title A case study analysis of high school principals' criteria in the teacher selection process

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Education (Leadership)

Publication Date 09/21/2017

Defense Date 04/14/2017

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag case study,high school principal,OAI-PMH Harvest,teacher selection process

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Picus, Lawrence (committee chair), Datta, Monique (committee member), Nakatsu, Richard (committee member)

Creator Email eokazaki1@gmail.com,okazaki@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-430595

Unique identifier UC11265485

Identifier etd-OkazakiEri-5736.pdf (filename),usctheses-c40-430595 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-OkazakiEri-5736.pdf

Dmrecord 430595

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Okazaki, Eric

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA