Beyond Scores: What Performance Assessments Make Visible About Preservice Teachers’ Knowledge and Practices

• In Event: Roundtable Session 95
  In Roundtable Session: Research on the Development of Teacher Beliefs, Knowledge, and Efficacy

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine performance assessments from one central coast California Teacher Education Program to determine how and in what ways teacher candidates designed lessons that met the needs of their students, assessed those students to determine if and what they were learning, and then reflected on the teaching/learning process to determine next steps for their instruction. Three phases of analysis were conducted: 1) a factor analysis, 2) qualitative coding of twelve performance assessments according to characteristics of effective teacher performance, and, 3) a grounded theoretical construction of telling cases. We found five major differences in how teacher candidates planned, instructed, assessed, and reflected on their teaching in the “strong” versus “weak” performance assessments.

Authors

• Anissa R. Stewart, University of California, Santa Barbara

• Jennifer Noel Scalzo, University of California - Santa Barbara

• Katherine Joy Nilsen, University of California - Santa Barbara

• Nicole Marie Merino, University of California - Santa Barbara