Personality Meets Preparation at Teach for America

This activity is important because personality traits affect how a person performs and reacts to job requirements. The Big Five is particularly helpful because it succinctly defines five broad dimensions of personality—conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness to experience, and extraversion. Of these, conscientiousness has the strongest effect on job performance and organizational commitment.

The goal of this exercise is to demonstrate your understanding of the Big Five personality traits by reading a case and answering questions.

Read the case about personality in teaching jobs and answer the questions that follow.

Many companies pay close attention to personality during their recruitment and hiring process. The Teach for America (TFA) program requires particular job skills for its teachers that are grounded in personality differences.

At or near graduation, students can apply to participate in the TFA Peace-Corps style program to which they will commit two years to teaching at underprivileged schools. The new teachers go through intensive six-week training and are put into new, challenging situations with much less experience than those in a typical college teaching program. In contrast, a college major in education requires classes on learning and instruction, including a semester as a student teacher.

Due to the differences in preparation, TFA looks for employees who have ‘certain personalities.’ Over 40,000 students typically apply each year and only about 15% are chosen. TFA uses a rigorous screening process that includes hours of interviews and tests to measure a number of traits, including achievement, personal responsibility, critical thinking, organizational skills, motivational skills, respect for others, and commitment to teaching. Those traits are vital, given the challenges faced by TFA recruits.

Most work 80 to 90 hours a week, which includes a 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekday schedule, along with hours of outside tutoring and preparation. One recruit summarized his experiences at a low-income high school in the Bronx, noting, “I was expecting it to be very hard, but it's harder than I thought it would be, and in a way I've never experienced before.” The traits possessed by TFA recruits have made them popular enough that over 11,000 teachers in the U.S. are currently from the company.

A criticism of TFA is that its teachers are unprepared to work in some of the nation's toughest classrooms. In addition, TFA is not a part of teacher unions, so when downsizing occurs, TFA teachers may be retained while career teachers are not. This poses challenges to how the TFA teachers ‘fit in’ with their coworkers in the schools. Critics also accuse TFA of focusing more on the experiences of its teachers and their future careers than on the students they serve. Traditionally-trained teachers state firmly that a desire to teach plus a college education is not sufficient to understand principles of learning and curriculum that are necessary.

Questions:

1. TFA teachers are required to jump into new situations with flexibility and curiosity to learn quickly, thus appealing to people with

A.) high agreeableness.

B.) high conscientiousness.

C.) high openness.

D.) low agreeableness.

E.) low openness.

2. People who should not apply for TFA are those who do not believe they can cope with day-to-day stressors, an indicator of neuroticism that is called

A.) differential reactivity.

B.) neuroticism.

C.) intraversion.

D.) differential exposure.

E.) accomplishment striving.

3. TFA teachers must work long hours with new materials, persevering in difficult situations, thus displaying _____, known to predict _____.

A.) negative affect; neuroticism

B.) openness; organizational commitment

C.) conscientiousness; job performance

D.) positive affect; extraversion

E.) agreeableness; extraversion

4. In a work environment that demands constant learning, adaptability, and creativity in search for a new and better approach, what personality trait might actually be limiting TFA teachers by making them stick with “tried-and-true” strategies that they won’t abandon?

A.) Openness

B.) Neuroticism

C.) Differential exposure

D.) Introversion

E.) Conscientiousness

5.) If TFA wants its teachers to display creative strategies in the classroom, they will need to have openness to experience and

A.) cognitive ability.

B.) conscientiousness.

C.) adaptability.

D.) positive affect.

E.) extraversion.

 

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