How an Innovative, Inquiry-Based Teacher Performance Assessment Informs State Policies and Practices to Prepare 21st Century Teachers

• In Event: 79.037 - Walking Alongside Teacher Candidates: Embracing Collaboration During Clinical Practice and Teaching Performance Assessments

Abstract

This paper examines how the work of a state’s education community and its active engagement in improving supports for public school teaching through innovative policies and practices aimed at inquiry rather than compliance, is shifting the discourse in teacher preparation statewide. With recent state adoption of new Teaching Performance Expectations (TPEs) and Performance Assessment Design Standards, the state’s Teacher Credentialing agency, its technical contractor, TK-12 teachers, administrators, and teacher education faculty serving on the appointed TPA Design Team applied their professional knowledge and experience to redevelop the state’s Teaching Performance Assessment (TPA) and repave the pathway for candidates as they progress along the educator career continuum. By operationalizing a transparent and “open” performance assessment (candidates can collaborate with other experts, share and discuss their work with peers, see examples of quality evidence, know the prompts and scoring rubrics in advance, reflect on their practice) as a high-stakes measure, teacher preparation programs are re-thinking initial teacher education preparation and how a collaborative approach strengthens our collective understanding of what the next generation of quality, equity minded teachers should be able to demonstrate. Having a consistent and reliable performance assessment measure allows for use in state accreditation processes and will further shape the discourse on what it means to prepare teachers.

Teaching performance assessments are grounded in clinical practice and provide opportunities for teacher candidates to practice and hone skills and instructional strategies that support student learning (Darling Hammond, 2010; Darling-Hammond, Newton & Wei, 2012). As such, these assessments serve as educative tools for candidates as well as authentic measures of teacher readiness to begin practice (Darling-Hammond, 2010). Performance assessment can also improve faculty-level and program-level supports for candidates, and refine the shared language used to define practice (Peck, McDonald, 2013; Peck, Singer-Gabella, Sloan, & Lin, 2014). By instituting the reconstructed TPA, teacher preparation institutions will gain insight into the strengths and weaknesses of their programs based on their candidates’ performance on these assessments, allowing for continuous program improvement and focusing the overall enterprise of teacher educator preparation on what is important and necessary to develop effective teachers.

The objectives of this paper are to: 1) describe the state’s re-development of an inquiry based TPA and share field study results (2018); 2) discuss future policy and program implications and how an outcomes driven accreditation process centered on performance assessment data leads to equity minded, next generation teachers; and 3) describe how the discourse is shifting across sectors as the performance assessment becomes operational and pushes thinking about what next generation teachers should know and be able to demonstrate. The field test findings offer insight for other researchers and policy makers on the feasibility and design challenges in developing embedded performance assessments for statewide use in teacher preparation and licensure.

Author

• Amy Reising, California Commission on Teacher Credentialing