Creativity and Democracy in the Student Teaching Seminar/edTPA Preparation Classroom

• In Event: Roundtable Session 13
  In Roundtable Session: Preservice Teachers' Emergent Understanding of Standards and Assessment

Abstract

In light of the edTPA exam, the student teaching seminar profiled in this study was re-designed to familiarize teaching candidates with the content they would encounter on the test. One challenge that emerged from this re-design, was that the technical work of test preparation overshadowed other, more creative and democratic ways of learning and expressing learning about teaching. This paper articulates a rationale for re-designing the course yet again, this time with the goal of incorporating creative work into the test preparation process. This paper describes a unit of study designed to help student teachers explore the edTPA’s content creatively, and shares the teaching candidates’ work and reflections on the process.

Author

• Trace M Schillinger, York College