Recruitment, Selection, Placement, and Support in the Preparation of Quality of Urban Secondary Teachers

Abstract

According to the classic text by Haberman and Post (1998), teacher leaders in urban schools must possess many characteristics, including “relationship skills… empathy…” (p. 98), skills for “coping with violence,” a capacity for “self-analysis,” and the ability to function “in chaos” (p. 99), among others. Further, they state, the process of recruitment and selection of high-quality teachers who will become teacher leaders relies upon the ability of a teacher certification program to effectively identify “those predisposed” “to perform the sophisticated expectations” (p. 96) of urban teachers. Recruiting and selecting candidates who will be effective, over the long run, in challenging environments may in fact be the most consequential phase of the entire teacher preparation process. Traditional methods of recruitment and selection vary widely and are typically less strategic (Guarino, Santibañez, & Daley, 2006) than the model described by Haberman and Post (1998). This chapter describes the recruitment and selection process employed by three CSUDH alternative routes to certification that aim to place highly effective teachers in high-needs urban secondary schools.

Citation

Hamdan, K., Aguilar, J., Yee, P., Nee, A., Benitez, X., Medina, C. and Sapp, J. (2014), "Recruitment, Selection, Placement, and Support in the Preparation of Quality of Urban Secondary Teachers", Pathways to Excellence: Developing and Cultivating Leaders for the Classroom and Beyond (Advances in Educational Administration, Vol. 21), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 221-237. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-366020140000021023