Putting PACT (Performance Assessment for California Teachers) in Context: Opportunities and Concerns

• In Event: Putting PACT (Performance Assessment for California Teachers) in Context and Context in PACT: Teacher Educators Address the Content and Assessment of Quality Teaching in Preservice Preparation

Abstract

This paper lays the foundation for the session by drawing from the perspectives of faculty charged with implementing PACT. First, this paper traces the history of our cross-institutional collaboration. Second, this paper draws from meeting documentation and focus group transcripts to identify opportunities PACT implementation presents and concerns PACT implementation raises both within and across our respective teacher education programs (TEPs), which vary by size, region and emphasis, yet espouse a common goal: to prepare teachers who can meet the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students, particularly those who have been traditionally underserved. In essence, this paper seizes upon and mines a generative combination of factors—namely, a common state-wide policy context, a shared overarching goal, and varied TEP characteristics—underlying group members’ experience as it relates to the preparation of equity-minded teachers, the implementation of PACT, and the relationship between the two.

Specifically, this paper applies a blended theoretical framework that incorporates three complementary lenses. The first lens—a sense-making lens—hails from the literature on organizational theory and policy implementation; it offers rationale for unearthing and privileging teacher educators’ perspectives on PACT (i.e., the sense they make of this ‘universal’ performance assessment and its ‘local’ implementation). The second lens—an opportunity-to-learn lens—supports us in exploring how, from teacher educators’ point of view, PACT enables and/or constrains opportunities to learn among PSTs and TEP faculty alike. The third lens foregrounds a strand of culturally responsive teaching, which we call “contextualized practice” and further explicate in Paper 2. We utilize this three-lens framework to analyze two data sources: meeting documentation (e.g., agendas, emails, notes) and transcripts from focus groups conducted with our respective TEP colleagues. Focus groups employed the same protocol, which pressed participants to discuss PACT’s perceived strengths and weaknesses as a tool for assessing PSTs’ learning, PACT’s impact on program quality, and PACT’s role in preparing teachers to work with culturally and linguistically diverse students. Analysis followed the constant comparative method (Miles & Huberman, 1994); we analyzed data inductively first, noting core themes, and then grouped and condensed initial codes with a focus on “conditions, context, action/interactional strategies and consequences” (Strauss & Corbin, 1990, p. 96).

Concerning our findings, we report the full range of opportunities and concerns identified by the analysis. However, we then offer a research- and practice-based justification for honing in on one particular area of concern—the attention PACT pays, and thereby seemingly encourages PSTs to pay, to issues of context and its relationship to teaching and learning. We explain why this particular concern emerged as it did across institutions (e.g., the context component remains unscored in the PACT, rubrics for scored PACT components include only surface attention to context/contextualizing, etc.). In accordance with our shared commitments and recognition of our individual and collective agency to adaptively respond, we lay out our case for focusing on this particular area of concern with greater depth in the ensuing papers.

Authors

• Lauren M. Anderson, University of Southern California

• Jamy Stillman, University of Southern California

• Kathryn Struthers, University of Southern California