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This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

The teacher certification process can be overwhelming for early-career educators. Negotiating teacher identity, completing fieldwork hours, and navigating institutional expectations can stress the most resilient teacher candidates. These pressures are further compounded as teacher certification assessments, such as the edTPA, introduce additional hurdles to achieving state licensure. This study approaches these obstacles by examining the stories of a diverse group of 14 early-career teachers as they reflect on completing edTPA and their current teaching practices. Through social constructivist perspectives and professional learning continuum framing, we interpreted narrative data to examine early-career teacher discussions of completing edTPA and developing pedagogical practices. These 14 teachers elucidated that the collaborative nature of their preparation program was integral to their completing the assessment, that the program approach to completing the portfolio assessment positioned them to think reflexively about their practice, and that the skills and tools used on edTPA remained useful to them throughout their early-career teaching. We suggest ways that preparation programs can interpret this teacher certification policy as an instructional touchpoint and can limit the gatekeeping capabilities of certification exams through collaboration, building capital, and supporting reflective portfolios. This work has implications for policymakers in teacher education and induction programs.

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This article will demonstrate how the Royal College of Nursing's (RCN's) Principles of Nursing Practice (2010) and the 6Cs (Cummings and Bennett, 2012a ; 2012b) can be applied to stoma care nursing. The multidimensional role of the stoma care nurse means that he or she is well placed to improve quality and standards in stoma nursing care. Stoma care nurses provide direct patient care and can play a vital part in helping patients with a stoma, a long-term condition, ensuring that their patients get the best possible care (RCN, 2010). The poster contained within this article was displayed at the Association of Stoma Care Nurses (ASCN) national conference in Harrogate in October 2014 and was voted the overall winner. The authors of the article and the poster are stoma care nurses working in the acute and community settings and, between 2013 and 2014, they completed the RCN's Clinical Leadership Programme (RCN, 2005). The NHS Plan (Department of Health, 2000) identified the importance of leadership and the necessity of remodelling the NHS around the needs of service users. With this in mind, using the Principles of Nursing Practice and the 6Cs within stoma care demonstrates development with a consistent focus on patient care.