Challenge
Teachers are often hired based solely on their academic credentials. Naturally, a good teacher must be academically knowledgeable, but they must also capabilities such as understanding the best pedagogy practices, enjoying working with children, having high professionalism and teamwork and being able to communicate well with both children and colleagues.
These attributes are difficult to measure through traditional tests.
AlphaPlus and the Teacher Select team at the University of York worked with the Moroccan Ministry of Education and the World Bank to develop assessments customised to the Moroccan education context, and drawing on research from use of similar tools in the UK, for example SJTs are used in England’s Teach First programme.
Solution
Although measuring non-academic attributes can be challenging, Situational Judgement Tests (SJTs) are used across many disciplines to assess decision-making. The tests assess skills from five domains:
- Integrity
- Equity
- Psycho-social equilibrium
- Empathy
- Motivation
What we did
- Led the project working closely with the Moroccan MoE
- Performed successful statistical calibration on the question set
- Helped to create the test in both Arabic and French
- Developed both on-screen and on-paper versions of the test
