Strengthening the Continuum of Teaching Practice Through Collaboration and Educative Performance Assessment

• In Event: Redesigned Performance Assessment: A State’s New Assessment Tool Confronts the Shortcomings in Teacher Preparation

Abstract

In this paper, the state examines its dynamic education community that is actively involved in improving supports for public school teaching through innovative policies and practices aimed at inquiry rather than compliance and attracting and retaining members of the profession. Based on its 20 years of experience with teaching performance assessment (TPA), one of the state’s several research-based initiatives has been to improve the design and use of TPA as one of multiple measures to inform teacher readiness to begin professional practice. To achieve these goals, stakeholders, led by the state’s 21-member TPA Design Team, have collaborated on the reconceptualization of TPA and how it should be used formatively and summatively by candidates, preparation and induction programs, districts, and the state.

With recent state adoptions of new Teaching Performance Expectations (TPEs) and Performance Assessment Design Standards, TK-12 teachers, administrators, and teacher education faculty are pooling their shared professional knowledge and experience to repave the pathway for candidates as they progress along the educator career continuum. This collaboration has produced a newly validated TPA that will serve as the next-generation instrument to support the practice of next generation of teachers.

In 2016, a validation study of the TPEs was conducted, including review by the state’s standing Bias Review Committee; 10 statewide focus group sessions with approximately 150 educators; and an online, statewide survey of 2,088 practitioners (61.8% teachers and administrators) and 1,292 teacher educators (38.2%). The validation survey collected judgments on the importance of the TPES to the job, as well as the frequency, clarity, criticality, and overall representativeness of the pedagogical expectations for the teaching credential. The study identified empirical validity evidence that the TPEs, and resulting performance assessment, represent the knowledge, skills, and abilities that new teachers in the state should demonstrate to earn a preliminary teaching credential. Establishing this logical chain of evidence from job requirements to the content assessed is a necessary condition for certification assessments (Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing, 2014) as well as other professional guidelines for best practice.

The results of the validation study were used by the TPA Design Team to make final recommendations on the set for state adoption and to design and pilot a revised TPA that is embedded within clinical practice and includes two instructional cycles based on the pedagogical sequence of plan, teach and assess, reflect, and apply. For each step, candidates provide evidence of instructional practice, including annotated video clips of classroom instruction
and written narrative. The new assessment is designed to be responsive to address subject-specific teaching and learning, particularly for an increasingly diverse student population. For example, the TPA is centered on content-specific pedagogy for all students, including English learners, all underserved education groups or groups that need to be served differently, and students with special needs. Considering the influences and interactions of social, cultural, and linguistic contexts, teacher candidates must now demonstrate developmentally appropriate practices in relation to the subject-specific pedagogy and demonstrate fluency in supporting students to become digital citizens.

Authors

• Heather Susan Klesch, Pearson

• Amy Reising, California Commission on Teacher Credentialing