Bugs, Blips, and Work-Arounds: Using Collaborative Technologies in Consortium Research

• In Event: 63.052 - Reclaiming Teacher Performance Assessment: Findings From the New York edTPA Alternative Scoring Consortium

Abstract

Objectives or purposes of paper
The ubiquity of collaborative, open-access and no-fee technologies offers educators, scholars, students, parents, community members, etc., a growing number of options for producing and sharing work across geographically diverse areas. The purpose of this paper is to explore the ways in which a group of educators throughout New York State, The New York edTPA Alternative Scoring Consortium, used collaborative technologies to examine, resist, and reframe the approach to assessing the edTPA, a relatively new, mandated performance assessment for teacher candidates seeking initial certification.

Perspectives or theoretical framework
The perspectives framing this paper approach from two distinct areas: 1) a political economy of education perspective that suggests social-movement-building as the primary—and perhaps only—way forward for sustained, systemic change in public education; and 2) an open theory of the internet that supports, promotes, and creates opportunities for the not-for-profit production and distribution of new knowledge via digital technologies.

This paper will consider how for-profit, capitalistic perspectives of education and the internet clash with the purposes of public education and the very idea that information can—and should be—free.

Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
Building from the work of The New York edTPA Alternative Scoring Consortium, this paper will share the challenges, perspectives, and results of a participatory action research project that sought to understand, disrupt, and suggest an alternative to the unequivocal adoption of the edTPA as a measure to determine initial certification for teacher candidates. By reporting on the learned skills, approaches, and outcomes attempted and utilized in the course of the project, this paper invites its audience to engage in conversation around the current and future possibilities in collaborating via digital technologies.

Data sources
Perspectives on collaborating via digital means shared by Consortium members via email, phone, video, blog posts and face-to-face conversation will be used as the primary sources of data for this paper.

Results and Significance
The edTPA, an exam produced, distributed, and assessed by Pearson, Inc.—a large education conglomerate—is part of the multi-pronged, longitudinal efforts by large corporations to control the public education system. In contrast, the practitioners in this project see an alternative way forward—one that requires consistent, open, and thoughtful collaboration across institutions, spheres, and technologies.

Collaborative resource sharing, research, and knowledge building is possible today in ways we never could have imagined just a few years ago. The work of The New York edTPA Alternative Scoring Consortium offers possibilities that challenge the unilateral corporatization of public education by making assessment accessible, meaningful, and relevant while exploring the possibilities for digital collaboration across time and space. This paper seeks to offer a perspective on how the use of technology can fracture, as opposed to reinforce, existing structures that promote the efforts of corporations like Pearson via the edTPA.

Author

• Kiersten Greene, SUNY - College at New Paltz