Dr. Bob N. Cage, ULM professor of educational leadership, will present a paper at the American Association of Behavioral and Social Sciences 11th Annual Meeting in Las Vegas on Feb. 8.

Cage's paper is titled "Predicting Teacher Success" and is co-authored with Dr. Rebecca Watts of Middle Tennessee State University, and with ULM graduate assistants Valerie Tewson of Monroe and Debrah Davis of Bastrop.

The paper is a culmination of six years of research by Cage and other colleagues. It demonstrates that four factors of the 16 PF Personality Scale accurately predict successful teachers, as evaluated by their principals using Johnson's collective components of effective teaching, after three years of teaching in the same school with the same principal. A five-point Likert scale was used as the evaluation scale.

The four factors that were accurate in predicting the successful teachers were: rule consciousness, privateness, perfectionism, and tension. The 16 PF was administered to student teachers in seven different colleges of education in Louisiana during their senior year.

Cage stated that these four factors reflect dispositions that teacher education programs should look for when interviewing students for their pre-service education programs.