Teacher selection is an important component in the way schools and school corporations hope to attain their overall goals and objectives. This study was designed to partially replicate a study completed by H. Bradford Allison in 1981 at the University of Wisconsin - Madison which looked at the effect of candidate age, candidate experience, and administrator position in the teacher selection process.Randomly selected administrators (300 principals and 300 superintendents) were sent a packet of information which included a candidate summary containing hypothetical information about a teacher candidate and a position description which outlined the teaching position to be filled. The candidate summary varied age two ways (29 years and 49 years) and experience level three ways (no experience, three years experience, and eight years experience). After reviewing the information, respondents were asked to rate the hypothetical candidate on the following six criteria:1. Candidate's knowledge of the curricular area.2. Candidate's ability to transmit knowledge.3. Candidate's likelihood to contribute to overall school operations.4. Candidate's ability to maintain a disciplined teaching environment.5. Candidate's ability to create a friendly classroom environment.6. Candidate's potential to grow in the profession.The dependent variable was the composite score or overall candidate rating computed from the six criteria on the candidate evaluation form. A 3X2X2 factorial design was used for this experiment and analysis of variance was used to analyze the effects of the variables on the composite rating.An alpha level of .05 was established as the critical value. The analysis yielded a significant F ratio (.033) for the three way interaction of administrator position, candidate age, and candidate experience. There was no significant F value for any of the two way interactions (administrator position X candidate experience, administrator position X candidate age, and candidate experience X candidate age). Nor was there a significant F value for any single main effect.Further analysis of the statistically significant three way interaction found that superintendents rated 49-year-old candidates with eight years experience significantly lower than they rated 29-year-old candidates with eight years experience. These findings suggest that under the conditions utilized in this study, age discrimination was not universally evident but occurred in the way superintendents rated 49-year-old candidates with eight years experience. / Department of Educational Leadership
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BSU/oai:cardinalscholar.bsu.edu:handle/179056 |
| Date | January 1994 |
| Creators | Newby, John C. |
| Contributors | Place, Andrew W. |
| Source Sets | Ball State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | viii, 71 leaves : ill. ; 28 cm. |
| Source | Virtual Press |
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