Feedback for Teaching Candidates From Mentor Teachers and University Supervisors

• In Event: Preservice Courses, Student Teaching Experiences, and Beginning Teacher Outcomes

Abstract

Objective. Consistent with research showing the impact of individual teachers), the last decade has seen considerable policy efforts to reform teacher evaluations. This was spurred by a perceived lack of rigor of evaluation systems and evidence of little variation in evaluations. But while we now know a good deal about the evaluation of inservice teachers, there is little quantitative evidence of the evaluations that preserviceteachers receive during the course of completing their student teaching internship. The clinical practice that prospective teachers complete as a requirement for teaching (in most states) is one of the first opportunities for them to receive authentic feedback about their teaching practice, and it is widely regarded as foundational to their development (AACTE, 2018, NCATE, 2010). Indeed, student teaching has been identified as “a key component—even “the most important” component—of pre-service teacher preparation” (Anderson & Stillman, 2013, p.3).
Perspective. Mentor teachers are seen as key to the development of teacher candidates. Consistent with this view, there is an emerging body of research connecting the quality of mentors to the future effectiveness and performance of those teacher candidates who become teachers (Goldhaber, Krieg, & Theobald, 2018; Ronfeldt et al., 2018). In particular, in an experimental evaluation of the effects of assigning candidates to more effective mentors, Ronfeldt et al. (2018) find that candidates report more that mentors judged to be more instructionally effective also provide higher quality and more frequent coaching and feedback. That said, there is little large-scale quantitative evidence on the nature of the feedback that teacher candidates receive during their student teaching.
Data and Methods. Many teacher education programs require formal evaluations (“clinical assessments”) during the internship that mirror the classroom observations required of in-service teachers. Yet we know little (beyond case studies described below) about the kinds of feedback that student teachers receive from mentor teachers. In this study, we draw on unique data from a within teacher education program (TEP) randomized control trial including about 1,100 student teachers. As part of the study, student teachers were randomly assigned to two different treatment conditions: one in which they they receive differential feedback about their student teaching, the “Feedback Initiative”; and a second in which they are placed into algorithmically determined higher or lower quality placements (where quality is judged in large part based on attributes of mentor teachers), the “Placement Initiative”.
Findings. We link the data on random assignment to the content of the evaluations received by candidates in order to: 1) describe the level, distribution, and change of clinical assessments over the course of the internship; and 2) detail the congruence in clinical evaluation ratings between mentor teachers (the supervisor of clinical experiences on the district size) and field instructors (the supervisor of clinical experiences on the teacher education program size), and 3) exploit the randomization of teacher candidates to the interventions described above to test whether the provision of more information about evaluations or internship placements affects these associations.

Authors

• Dan Goldhaber, American Institutes for Research

• Matthew Ronfeldt, University of Michigan

• James Cowan, American Institutes for Research

• Emanuele Bardelli, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

• L. Joy Johnson, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

• Hannah Mullman, University of Michigan

• Chris Tien, University of Washington