Developing a Comprehensive Framework to Evaluate Teacher Education: Building Professional Research Capacity

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 14
  In Roundtable Session: Evaluating Teaching Programs and Teachers for Quality and Effectiveness

Abstract

Evaluating teaching and teacher preparation using pupils’ achievement tests results is becoming standard practice in the U.S. and abroad, raising concerns among the education-research community. Value-added accountability regimes have been implemented by several states to inform high-stakes decisions without evidence to warrant their use and with negligible contributions to educational improvement. Such regimes use administrative data of questionable quality, ignoring teacher preparation programs’ learning processes, teachers’ acquired knowledge, and the influence of school contexts and pupils’ characteristics on teaching effectiveness, among other important factors. This paper presents an alternative developed by the profession: an empirically-based framework to evaluate the effectiveness of teacher education aimed at strengthening the profession’s research base and developing a robust response to external regulation mandates.

Author

• Maria Teresa Tatto, Arizona State University - Tempe