Policies and Practices for Selecting Highly Effective Teachers for Alternative Certification Programs.

A dramatic shift in the past fifteen years in teacher education has been the move toward people beginning their teacher preparation later in life and in their academic careers. In response, the number of alternative certification programs has increased to reduce teacher shortages in critical content areas such as mathematics, science, bilingual education, and special education, as well as teacher shortages in rural and urban schools. This research report explores the independent and interdependent processes of teacher screening and selection and, explicitly, identifies existing literature that has addressed the relationship between pre-employment decisions and post-employment outcomes for predicting alternatively certified teacher success. In addition, recent scholarship is analyzed that pertains to the use of interviews in the teacher screening process, particularly in alternative teacher preparation programs, often described as alternative routes or pathways to teacher certification. Specifically, the report affords the reader an assessment of the relative importance of three interview protocols in the selection process as the mechanism of merit that transcends the usual qualifications of degree, grade point average and test scores to discern those life experiences and intrinsic beliefs that predispose an alternative certification candidate to be an effective teacher.