Push-Pull Relationships Between Concerns and Personal Engagement: Exploring the Adoption of edTPA as an Innovation

• In Event: From Educative Experiences and a Reliable Assessment to Tension-Filled Semesters and Philosophical Differences: edTPA’s Tug-of-War

Abstract

Objectives
1) What were edTPA faculty’s Levels of Integration (LoI) and Stages of Concern (SoC) in relation to their personal practice during edTPA implementation year?
2) How did edTPA faculty’s SoC relate with the edTPA LoI during the implementation year?
Theoretical Framework
Many states have moved towards the use of edTPA as a certification and/or program completion requirement for teacher candidates. In Georgia, all institutions were required to implement edTPA in programs in the year directly proceeding the adoption of a high-stakes policy making edTPA consequential for certification. The concerns-based adoption model (CBAM) provides a theoretical lens for understanding how concerns of policy implementers can impact the success or failure of an educational innovation (Kapustka & Damore, 2009). According to the CBAM model, the SoC is an attitudinal response to change and LoI is the actual behavioral response to change. This study utilized the Levels of Use of an innovation protocol (Hall, Dirksen, & George, 2006) to develop edTPA Levels of Integration survey, which is valid measure for determining the extent of edTPA use in faculty’s practice (Authors, 2017). The survey for assessing faculty Stages of Concern (George, Hall, & Stiegelbauer, 2006), helps to identify the peak concerns faculty might be experiencing while implementing a new policy directive, along the seven Stages of Concern continuum (Hall & Hord, 2010; Overbaugh & Lu, 2008).
Method and Data Sources
The edTPA LoI survey was distributed to 453 edTPA faculty across our state and 145 responded. These respondents were sent the SoC survey to understand their concerns related to edTPA implementation. Fifty-six of the LoI respondents returned the SoC survey, which also had faculty provide open ended responses. Correlation analysis explored whether faculty concerns had a strong association with utilization of edTPA. Open-ended responses were coded by stages of concerns and then analyzed using constant-comparative analysis (Glaser & Strauss, 1967).
Results
The SoC survey showed that the majority of the faculty were at the unconcerned stage (46%), showing little concern about edTPA policy or its implementation, followed by 18% on the collaboration stage (Table 1.1). We saw significant positive correlations between faculty SoC and LoI questions on analyzing local (r=.463, p<.01*) and national edTPA scores; (r=.487, p<.01*), showing that faculty progressed to a higher Stage of Concern when they examined student scores (Table 1.2). Majority of the qualitative responses were within the personal stage, voicing philosophical disagreement with the mandate.
Significance
CBAM theorizes faculty concerns may directly impact the degree to which an innovation gets used in practice, determining the success of policy implementation. In our study, faculty appeared to be unconcerned until they started utilizing student data from local and national scores, which encouraged them to collaborate with other faculty. Thus, opportunities for collective data analysis within their institution played an important role in assessing personal strengths and areas of improvement in preparing candidates to pass edTPA in the consequential year. Although attitudes about the policy influenced personal practice, institutional supports in turn influenced attitudes and helped faculty address developmental concerns.
 

Authors

• Jihye Kim, Kennesaw State University

• Karen Kurz, Berry College

• Tamra W. Ogletree, The University of West Georgia

• Ruchi Bhatnagar, Georgia State University

• Joyce E. Many, Georgia State University

• Carla Lynn Tanguay, Georgia State University