Celebrations, Confessionals, and Creative Interpretations: Representing Teaching Practice in the edTPA as a High-Stakes Certification Exam in New York and Washington States

• In Event: The Possibilities and Limits of Policy Frameworks for Teacher Candidate Performance Assessments

Abstract

This paper explores how New York and Washington teaching candidates chose to represent their practices in the edTPA, given the exam’s status as a high-stakes certification test in those states. These representations include: (1) rational approaches, whereby candidates included only artifacts and explanations directly linked to rubric language and demands, forsaking additional elements of teaching; (2) sanitized approaches, whereby candidates selectively edited artifacts, constructed explanations, and omitted what they perceived to be faults in order to strike a complimentary “best practice” tone; (3) confessional approaches, whereby candidates framed the edTPA as a formative tool, including perceived missteps and explaining how learning from those circumstances made them better teachers; and (4) misrepresentational approaches, whereby candidates fabricated images of teaching that met the edTPA’s assessment criteria but did not approximate their enacted practices. We discuss the implications of these representations relative to the edTPA’s positioning as a state accountability mechanism.

Authors

• Kevin W. Meuwissen, University of Rochester

• Jeffrey M. Choppin, University of Rochester

• Kathryn D Cloonan, University of Rochester - Warner School

• Hairong Shang-Butler, University of Rochester