Teachers are at the heart of education. Accordingly, educational research often addresses what a “good” teacher is. Unfortunately, educational research rarely addresses what a “good” student in teacher education is, thereby tending to overlook that all teachers are themselves educated. With which dispositions do they enter teacher education, and which of these dispositions are relevant for their academic achievement?

The predictive utilities of cognitive and non-cognitive determinants of academic achievement seem well established by numerous meta-analyses (e.g. Hell, Trapmann & Schuler, 2007; Kuncel, Hezlett & Ones, 2001, 2004; Kuncel, Wee, Serafin & Hezlett, 2010; Poropat, 2009; Richardson, Abraham & Bond, 2012). However, the generalizability of these results to teacher education should be scrutinized for two reason: (1) studies are ambiguous whether the predictive utilities are moderated by the study major, and (2) teacher education worldwide involves student-teaching, which sets it apart from other study majors.

(1) Even for the relevance of general mental ability, meta-analyses offer mixed results: some meta-analyses argue for (e.g. Hell et al., 2007) and some against (e.g. Kuncel et al., 2001) its predictive utility for academic achievement being moderated by the academic field. The literature can also offers an ambiguous view on non-cognitive determinants. For example emotional stability has often been hypothesized to predict academic achievement (cf. Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997; Farsides & Woodfield, 2003), has failed to do so for academic achievement irrespectively of the academic field (ρ = :02: Poropat, 2009), while retaining its predictive utility in teacher education (e.g. Mayr, 2012).

(2) World-wide, teacher education involves student-teaching (Darling-Hammond & Lieberman, 2012). This applied nature of the education sets it apart from other study majors. On the one handy, this may affect the role of determinants of academic achievement. Due to this applied nature of the education, risk of the profession can already be risks during the education (Gold & Roth, 1993). Consequently, determinants of occupational achievement may already play an important role in the education. On the other hand, this is vital for assessing academic achievement. It suggest differentiating between two aspects of academic achievement, namely declarative and procedural facets (Krammer, Sommer & Arendasy, 2016).

Before this backdrop, the current talk addresses the relevance of determinants of academic achievement in teacher education. Firstly, are well established determinants of academic achievement – i.e. general mental ability – as relevant for teacher education as for other study majors? Secondly, are domain-specific personality traits – i.e. reaction to stress and coping with stress – relevant for teacher education? Thirdly, are determinants of occupational achievement – i.e. realistic job expectations – applicable to the educational setting? 

Sample. The sample consisted of four cohorts of students in teacher education. All students had graduated with a bachelor’s degree of education in a three-year long bachelor’s program to become teachers in either primary (n = 332) or secondary (n = 277) schools. Predictors. The predictors – general mental ability, domain-specific personality traits and realistic job expectations – were collected as part of the admission process to teacher education. General mental ability was assessed with the Intelligence Structure Battery (INSBAT: Arendasy et al., 2012). The domain-specific personality traits were assessed with the Inventory for Personality Assessment in Situations (IPS: Schaarschmidt & Fischer, 2013). Realistic job expectations were assessed with a structured interview designed specifically for college admission in teacher education (cf. Krammer et al., 2016). Criteria. The criteria was academic achievement, which was assessed with grade point averages (GPA). The GPAs were based on all grades of the entire bachelor’s degree of education. To reflect the applied nature of teacher education, the GPAs were computed separately for courses where students study and courses where students teach. Former conveys declarative knowledge, latter conveys procedural knowledge. For the latter, the students were assigned to schools where they regularly had to hold classes, along with the necessary preparation and post-processing, supervision, and mentoring. Student-teaching was part of the curriculum in each semester and made up one fifth of the curriculum. Statistical Analyses. Multi-group structural equation modeling was used to assess the structural relations between the predictor and criterion variables. Firstly, the measurement models for the predictor and criterion variables were evaluated separately. Secondly, the two measurement models were combined into a full structural model to examine the predictive utility of the latent predictors for the criteria.

The results demonstrated the predictive utility of the predictor variables for teacher education. Furthermore, distinct patterns of predictive utilities between primary school teacher education and secondary school teacher education emerged. For secondary school teacher education, general mental ability had predictive utility for both declarative and procedural facets of academic achievement in teacher education; not so for primary school teacher education. For the domain-specific personality traits, this was the other way around. Finally, realistic job expectations had predictive utility for the declarative facet of academic achievement in primary and secondary school teacher education; its predictive utility for the procedural facet of academic achievement was higher for secondary than primary school teacher education. Therefore, findings regarding the determinants of academic achievement can partially be generalized to teacher education. However, it needs to be heeded whether students are studying to become primary school teachers or secondary school teachers. Thus even within teacher education, predictive utilities are moderated by the study major. This becomes even more apparent when the assessment of academic achievement reflects the applied nature of teacher education by differentiating between courses where students study and courses where students teach. Finally, in teacher education determinants of occupational achievement are already relevant for academic achievement. This emphasizes that risk of the profession can already be risks during the education. In doing so, it sets teacher education even further apart from other study majors.

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