A Temperament for Teaching? Associations Between Personality Traits and Beginning Teacher Performance and Retention

Q: What problem does the study address about beginning teachers?

It addresses concerns that the U.S. teacher workforce is increasingly “greened” by inexperience, which is associated with lower effectiveness and higher exit from teaching.

Q: Which personality trait shows the strongest link to teaching outcomes?

Conscientiousness is significantly associated with higher value-added estimates, higher evaluation ratings, and higher retention rates.

Q: How does general self-efficacy relate to teacher performance and retention?

General self-efficacy, described as a subdomain of conscientiousness, is significantly associated with teacher value added and evaluation ratings.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Cipher

AERA Open (Jan–Mar 2017) examines how personality traits relate to beginning teachers’ first-year performance and retention in North Carolina public schools. Building on prior economics and psychology research and using the 5-factor personality model, the study finds conscientiousness is linked to higher value-added estimates, higher evaluation ratings, and greater retention. It also shows that general self-efficacy (a conscientiousness-related subdomain) predicts value added and evaluation outcomes. The results suggest districts should consider personality trait measures alongside other valid hiring indicators.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages17

Reading Time43 min

AccessFree to download

Background

Teacher workforce “greening”

Research Approach

Personality traits and the 5-factor model

Key Findings

Conscientiousness and performance

Self-efficacy and teacher outcomes

Implications for Hiring

AERA Open January-March 2017, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 1–17 DOI: 10. 1177/2332858416684764 © The Author(s) 2017. [http://ero.sagepub.com](http://ero.sagepub.com) A Temperament for Teaching? Associations Between Personality Traits and Beginning Teacher Performance and Retention Kevin C. Bastian University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill David M. McCord Western Carolina University Julie T. Marks University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Dale Carpenter Western Carolina University The “greening”(i.e., inexperience) of the U.S. teacher workforce puts a premium on districts and schools hiring effective and persistent beginning teachers. Given the limitations of characteristics currently available at the time of hiring (e.g., academic ability, preparation type), we built off previous research in economics and psychology to investigate associations between personality traits and first-year teachers’performance and retention in North Carolina public schools. Using the 5-factor model of personality, we find that conscientiousness is significantly associated with higher value-added estimates, higher evaluation ratings, and higher retention rates. Additionally, general self-efficacy, a subdomain of conscientiousness, is significantly associated with teacher value added and evaluation ratings. These conscientiousness results are consistent with a rich body of evidence connecting conscientiousness-related measures to employee performance and retention across professions, and they suggest that districts and schools should consider using personality trait measures, along with other valid indicators, as a way to improve teacher hiring decisions. Keywords: personality traits, teacher effectiveness, teacher retention twenty-five years ago, the modal teacher experience category in the United States was 15 years. Today, first-year teachers are the largest experience category, and approximately 25% of the teacher workforce has <5 years of experience (Ingersoll & Merrill, 2012) . This “greening” of the teacher workforce is concerning for three reasons. First, novice teachers are typically less effective than their more experienced peers (Chingos & Peterson, 2011; Papay & Kraft, in press). Relative to first-year teachers, for example, North Carolina elementary grade teachers with 3 to 5 years of experience add 9% and 6% of a SD to student achievement on end-of-grade exams in mathematics and reading (Clotfelter, Ladd, & Vigdor, 2007) . Second, novice teachers are significantly more likely to exit the profession. This attrition entails financial costs for districts and has adverse effects on school stability and student achievement (Alliance for Excellent Education, 2014; Ronfeldt, Loeb, & Wyckoff, 2013) . Finally, novice teachers are disproportionately employed in high-need schools and classrooms, where students need the highest-quality resources to enhance their achievement (Bastian, Henry, & Thompson, 2013; Clotfelter et al., 2005) . Given the performance and attrition of early career teachers, this greening of the teacher workforce puts a premium on districts and schools making high-quality teacher hiring decisions. To make these decisions, districts and schools need to know the characteristics of teachers that significantly predict performance and retention. While research evidence indicates that characteristics typically available at the time of hiring—such as academic ability measures (e.g., SAT scores, grade point averages, licensure exam scores) or teacher preparation type—are associated with teacher effectiveness and retention, these characteristics explain only a small portion of the variance in these teacher outcomes (Borman & Dowling, 2008; Goldhaber, Liddle, & Theobald, 2013; Greenwald, Hedges, & Laine, 1996; Kane, Rockoff, & Staiger, 2008; Rockoff, Jacob, Kane, & Staiger, 2011; Wayne & Youngs, 2003) . Districts and schools should consider such Creative Commons CC-BY: This article is distributed under the te

FAQs

What problem does the study address about beginning teachers?

It addresses concerns that the U.S. teacher workforce is increasingly “greened” by inexperience, which is associated with lower effectiveness and higher exit from teaching.

Which personality trait shows the strongest link to teaching outcomes?

Conscientiousness is significantly associated with higher value-added estimates, higher evaluation ratings, and higher retention rates.

How does general self-efficacy relate to teacher performance and retention?

General self-efficacy, described as a subdomain of conscientiousness, is significantly associated with teacher value added and evaluation ratings.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Cipher