Page 6 - Teacher Selection and Onboarding Guide
P. 6
Components of Effective Interview Questions
When designing an effective interview question using the components described on the previous
page, critical incidents unique to a school should be determined first. For example, at one
particular school, cultural differences were determined to be essential to the school community,
and served as one of the critical incidents/issues.
Connecting to the SDPBC Model of Instruction, it can be seen that cultural differences can be
addressed by assessing teachers in the area of “Planning and Preparation” (Domain 2, Marzano
Teacher Evaluation Model). With cultural differences and teachers’ planning and preparation
skills being the focus, the following specific behavioral question was developed for use at that
school site:
Example of Effective Interview Question:
Describe a specific example of a time when you
integrated students’ cultural and linguistic differences
into your lesson plans. What were the demographics of
the students? What was the lesson? What was the
result?
Ineffective Versus Effective Interview Questions
Below is an example of an ineffective interview question for a teacher interview. It is neither
behavioral nor specific, and fails to ask the candidate about his/her specific professional
experience.
Example of Ineffective Interview Question:
Describe your philosophy on parent engagement in
student learning.
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