The York Research Database

Selection for education, training, and employment occurs throughout the lifespan: sometimes for school places in early childhood, but commonly from late adolescence onwards as individuals move on to post secondary education or employment. A selection process—for training or employment— is a predictive exercise that involves three steps: first, identifying the attributes needed for success in an endeavor, second, assessing these attributes in candidates, and third, confirming the relationship between assessed attributes and the desired outcome. In education, selection is particularly important at two filtering points: when hiring into teaching positions, and when admitting candidates into initial teacher education. The goals of this chapter are to examine the selection process into initial teacher education, and specifically to consider the challenges of these processes, and then to present a new approach to selection into initial teacher education that address some of these long-standing challenges.