Perspective - Educational Research ( 2022) Volume 13, Issue 2
Received: 01-Mar-2022, Manuscript No. er-22-55069; Editor assigned: 03-Mar-2022, Pre QC No. er-22-55069(PQ); Reviewed: 14-Mar-2022, QC No. er-22-55069; Revised: 24-Mar-2022, Manuscript No. er-22-55069(R); Published: 31-Mar-2022, DOI: 10.14303/2141-5161.2022.235
The goal of this qualitative study was to learn about school administrators' perspectives on the advantages of using virtual teacher hiring processes when in-person interviews were not possible due to COVID19. This study looked into how teacher hiring changed during school closures, how well those changes reflected best practice, whether school leaders thought their virtual interviews were effective, and how they think the experience of hiring with virtual interviews will affect future teacher selection processes. Semi-structured interviews were employed to collect data, and interview transcripts were analyzed using a sequential method of first and second cycle coding. When school leaders used virtual interviews, they were forced to use more reliable teacher selection practices, such as careful resume screening, interview questions designed to uncover values and effective teaching behaviors, authentic skill assessment, and attention to teaching artifacts in digital portfolios, according to the findings. Although school leaders did not intend to match their new selection processes with research-based best practices, they were aware of the practical usefulness of the modifications made to their recruiting processes and stated that at least some of the practices would be maintained in the future. Most principals rely on interviews as their primary source of information about a candidate in education, and this is no exception. When face-to-face interviews were impossible, school officials turned to virtual interviews as a substitute. While the COVID-19 pandemic is only temporary, the lessons learned from hiring during a crisis are applicable to school leaders who must continue to work through unknown future events, whether they are as serious as a pandemic or as common as the day-to-day disruptions and unexpected circumstances that occur in schools. When the pandemic is gone, the impact of technology on all educational operations, including teacher hiring, will continue. As a result, it's critical to assess the long-term consequences and benefits of adjustments made out of necessity during the global health crisis.
Over the last few decades, research has shown that a skilled teacher is more important than other school and home factors in ensuring high levels of learning for each student. Receiving instruction from a high-quality teacher has consistently been found to have a greater impact on students than other school and home factors. Any other school component, such as programming, school leadership, and technological access, has two to three times the influence of teachers. Despite the expanding body of evidence about the importance of high-quality teachers, the process of teacher recruiting and hiring is frequently disregarded in school reform plans. Every chance to employ a new teacher is an opportunity to enhance the school and student results, and bad hiring decisions push the school further away from its improvement goals. Most principals think that one of their most essential responsibilities is to choose successful teachers, and that poor hiring decisions have a negative impact on both student progress and school culture. Even if the principal does not believe the instructor is effective, it is unlikely that the teacher will be assessed poorly or removed once employed. Less than a third of instructors deemed ineffective by their principals are rated as such, and less than 1% of teachers are graded unsatisfactory on a yearly basis. Similarly, throughout the last many decades, extremely low rates of teacher dismissal have stayed steady. According to the Schools and Staffing Poll, the percentage of teachers fired each year has remained stable at roughly 2% from 1999 until the last time the survey was conducted in 2012. When it comes to evaluating teacher performance, principals recognize that a teacher's ability to deliver high-quality instruction is the most important factor to consider, but the teacher dismissal process is so difficult and timeconsuming those non-renewals of teacher contracts are reserved for the most serious cases of incompetence and ethical violations. Given the low rate of teacher dismissals and the link between high-quality instructors and student achievements, teacher selection methods must precisely identify the individuals most likely to succeed.
While several textbooks and publications recommend recommended techniques for choosing teachers, actual research linking selection practices to teacher quality are rare. School hiring practices have not progressed at the same rate as hiring practices in other industries, and a recent national survey found that teacher selection processes frequently focus solely on a review of application materials, such as resumes and transcripts, rather than performance- based or predictive measures. The management field's selection science study gives advice for a selection procedure that is best predictive of job success. The literature recommends the development and deployment of a multiple-step selection strategy because no single instrument is perfect, and the traditional interview alone is unreliable. Moore (2017) identified three key elements for a successful hiring process: Identifying key qualifications and prior experience required for success, developing interview questions and acceptable answers that assess whether candidates possess the identified values and skills, and adding other predictive elements such as authentic assessments or job-related artifacts. Theoretical Point of View This research is based on previous research on the relationship between teacher quality and student results. The framework for this research is based on DarlingHammond's (2000) work, in which she used data from a 50- state survey of policies, state case study analyses, the 1993-94 Schools and Staffing Surveys (SASS), and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) to link teacher qualifications to student achievement (NAEP). The results of Darling-qualitative Hammond's and quantitative assessments imply that higher teacher quality is linked to higher student achievement. Darling-Hammond discovered, like others before her, that a skilled teacher has a greater impact on student achievement than student-level characteristics including poverty, language background, and race. Other school reform activities, such as curriculum development and textbook adoptions, are necessary, but they won't make a difference if instructors aren't skilled at using these resources to meet their kids' individual needs, Darling-Hammond found. As a result, it stands to reason that attempts to increase teacher performance should be made.
Given the long-standing and well-documented link between high-quality, professional teachers and student learning, it's critical that only the best teachers are hired, rather than those who will perpetuate the status quo or perform poorly. Hiring high-quality teachers is a critical component of school reform that must be pursued even in the face of adversity, such as school closures and quarantines. The goal of this qualitative study was to learn how school administrators felt about the processes and consequences of virtual teacher recruiting during the spring and summer of 2020, when schools were closed due to a global epidemic. In addition, the investigator wanted to know how school leaders felt about the efficacy of their hiring processes, what problems they faced, and how the pandemic hiring experience would guide future teacher selection processes.