Predicting the academic achievement of first year, pre-service teachers: The role of ATAR, student engagement, motivation and emotional intelligence

Consistent with national policy, Australian universities are currently enrolling a larger and more diverse undergraduate student population. Counter to this trend, several states have developed plans to further restrict the entrance of students into initial teacher education programs by limiting admission only to students who meet increasingly stringent ATAR/Year 12 criteria. Given this background, the current study aimed to investigate the role of ATAR, student engagement, motivation and emotional intelligence in the academic achievement of first-year, pre-service teachers. Eighty-three regionally enrolled pre-service teachers at a large multi-campus university agreed to complete self-report questionnaires that assessed their engagement with learning and their emotional intelligence. The questionnaire data were supplemented with a series of focus groups at the end of the pre-service teachers’ first year. Although ATAR scores were found to be a significant predictor of academic achievement, scores on the Motivation and Engagement Scale (Martin, 2011) emerged as a much stronger predictor of first year GPA. A significant, positive correlation was found between pre-service teachers’ scores for understanding emotions and their GPA; however, measures of emotional intelligence did not add to the model. The results support the need to consider pre-service teachers’ motivation and engagement with learning, especially given the high stakes nature of the proposed reforms to initial teacher education programs.