Development of an Online Construct-Informed Situational Judgment Test for Screening Applicants for Initial Teacher Education

The purpose of this article is to report three phases of development and administration of an online situational judgment test (SJT) designed to screen candidates for selection into an initial teacher education (ITE) program. In Phase 1 the development of the content of the test is described. Phase 2 reports the online administration of a prototype SJT to 3341 applicants as part of the process designed to select candidates for an intensive day-long assessment center. Phase 3 reports the administration of a revised version of the SJT to 587 participants. Results showe that the revised SJT was internally reliable and significantly related to other screening methods and to assessment center outcomes. High scorers on the SJT scored significantly higher at the assessment center. There were no significant SES differences on the SJT, but females scored significantly higher than males. The factor structure of the test was unidimensional and did not cleanly reflect the six target attributes which underpinned the development of test content. We suggest that the teacher selection SJT could be a reliable, valid, and efficient screening tool for entrance into ITE.