Due to the decrease in birth rate in Taiwan, the position openings for teachers is quite limited nowadays. As more and more people taking teaching as their profession, the admission rate in recent years for teacher recruitment is less than 10%, with some counties with a rate of less than 1%. Due to the highly competitive nature of recruitment, to recruit teacher in a fair and proper way has become extremely important. The purpose of the study is to investigate the problems faced in the recruitment and assessment of teachers. The study also considers the teacher recruitment process of other countries. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches are employed to investigate the opinions of experts, elementary and junior high school teachers, and county officers. Suggestions for improvement in the teacher recruitment and assessment processes are also proposed.
Two research methods employed include literature reviews and questionnaire surveys. The literature review included collection and analysis of teacher recruitment policies for our current status and from other countries. Published journal articles, research papers, official data issued from the government and website articles were also included. In order to collect a wide range of opinions, online questionnaires were designed for elementary, junior and senior high school physical education teachers as well as for experts from relevant fields. A total of 3091 valid questionnaires were collected.
The results show most people support that teacher recruitment should also be managed by the relevant administrative authority rather than solely by local schools. However, the content for the current teacher recruitment process could be changed. For example, teaching portfolios and teaching years could possibly be included in the final decision scores. Scenario-based questions could also be added into the written testing. For the technical subjects, the relevant administrative authority should design objective and standardized testing. The order of testing for written tests, technical performance assessments, teaching demonstration and oral testing should take into considered the profession aspect of physical education teachers and the content should also be modified to better fit classroom teaching.
