Teacher Candidate Tensions with the edTPA: A Neoliberal Policy Analysis

Jones, Alexis; Korson, Stacey; Murray-Everett, Natasha C.; Kessler, Meghan A.; Harrison, Dorian; Cronenberg, Stephanie; Parrish, Michael; Parsons, Marilyn Johnston

doi:10.1080/00131725.2020.1790705

Cited by 4 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…In the process, we reorganized the data into six tensions that captured the initial codes. These six tensions eventually became three overarching tensions, which we presented at a conference and in a paper (Jones, et al, 2020). In these analyses, we were not interested in the frequency of responses, but rather with a focused analysis of how the candidates' responses reflected their reflections and frustrations.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In previous edTPA research projects, our research team examined the influence of the new edTPA requirement on us as instructors and the tensions in our teacher candidates' reflections on their experiences (Cronenberg et al, 2016;Jones et al, 2020). As we continued to work with our data, Foucault's discussion of power and its contingent manifestations evolved as a useful interpretive frame to more deeply analyze our teacher candidates' experiences.…”

Section: Relevant Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

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Who is Watching? What Do They Want? A Foucauldian Analysis of Teacher Candidates’ Experiences with the edTPA

Kessler

Jones

Johnston-Parsons

2020

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

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Background/Context This article is a policy discussion of the edTPA preservice portfolio assessment; it uses Foucault's work and our data to suggest a more critical and activist approach to the assessment. Currently 764 teacher education programs in 40 states have included the edTPA as part of their requirements. In Illinois, it is a newly required high-stakes portfolio assessment required for teacher licensure. Purpose/Objective We studied our teacher candidates’ experiences with edTPA portfolio. We wanted to know how they experienced this new assessment and how that might inform our program. As instructors, we had heard many complaints from our candidates, and we wanted to examine their experiences from their perspectives. Participants In this study, we collected narrative accounts from two different cohorts of teacher candidates in Year 1 (2015–16) and Year 3 (2017–18) to better understand their perspectives (total N = 37). The participants were interviewed at the end of their student teaching semester after they had completed their portfolio. Research Design We collected narrative accounts from two different cohorts of teacher candidates in Year 1 (2015–16) and Year 3 (2017–18) to better understand their experiences with the edTPA (total N = 37). We gave participants a choice of whether to do individual or focus group narratives. Participants were interviewed at the end of their student teaching semester after they had completed their portfolio. Findings As teacher educators, we aimed to support our candidates’ development into critically engaged educators. However, we found that the regulatory powers in the policies and procedures of the edTPA had a negative effect on our candidates’ experiences with it. We also did not give them the tools they needed to sufficiently analyze this particular assessment, despite having discussed testing policies in the schools and their negative implications for teachers and students. Further, we found a normalization of the edTPA between Year 1 and Year 3 of implementing this assessment that suggested a trend toward normalization over time—from energetic critique in Year 1 to acceptance and a just-get-it-done attitude in Year 3. Conclusions We conclude with implications for teacher educators, including a call for more critical engagement with this and other disciplinary technologies that our candidates may be subject to. As teacher educators, we advocate for a more explicit critical analysis with candidates to help them more deeply understand the history, context, and implications of corporatized, standardized assessments in teacher education, in particular the edTPA, and testing in the schools.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Relevant Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Who is Watching? What Do They Want? A Foucauldian Analysis of Teacher Candidates’ Experiences with the edTPA

Kessler

Jones

Johnston-Parsons

2020

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…They argue that such a unifying framework can improve collaboration, data-driven decisions, and coherence within TEPs and thus promote better support of PSTs (De Voto et al, 2021;Miller et al, 2015;Pecheone & Whittaker, 2016;Peck et al, 2014). Opponents claim that it disregards institutional knowledge (Dover, 2018;Greenblatt & O'Hara, 2015), warns about the influence of private enterprises on public education by pointing to Pearson's responsibilities for administering and scoring edTPA portfolios (De Voto et al, 2021;Jones et al, 2021), and questions the tool's validity, challenging whether the edTPA can accurately measure the quality of novice teachers (Gitomer et al, 2021;Lalley, 2017). Furthermore, while the scorers who are selected, employed, and trained by Pearson are experienced teachers, they might be subject to their own (unconscious) biases and thus unable to equitably evaluate unfamiliar contexts and approaches to teaching (Hébert, 2019;Kuranishi & Oyler, 2017;Tuck & Gorlewski, 2016).…”

Section: Features Of the Edtpamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The edTPA is also known to be challenging for TEPs to support and stressful for preservice teachers (PSTs) to complete (Cohen et al, 2020; Jones et al, 2021; Miller et al, 2015). In our own post-edTPA interviews with 65 science PSTs from three different TEPs, participants reported high stress, but the vast majority also described how teaching for the edTPA opened up novel opportunities to experiment with responsive and student-centered instructional practices and said those opportunities made them feel better prepared as teachers.…”

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confidence: 99%

“Protected Teaching Spaces”: Opportunities and Constraints When Teaching for the edTPA

Lohwasser

Long

Shim

et al. 2023

Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis

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Preservice teacher performance assessments, such as the edTPA, are one of the accountability policies from states and local authorities designed to ensure the quality of beginning teachers and standardize teacher education. We studied experiences of 65 preservice teachers regarding the effect of the edTPA on their learning in field-placement classrooms. These cases revealed that the edTPA created “protected teaching spaces” for participants to experiment with student-centered instructional practices supported in university courses and codified in edTPA rubrics. This was especially impactful for novices who previously had limited opportunities to try out equitable reform-oriented instruction in their placements. In these cases, the edTPA also helped mitigate inequities in learning to teach, an unintended outcome that is important for policymakers to consider when deciding on credentialing requirements.

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“…The initial teachers require adequate induction support to analyze the knowledge, interpret and understand the education environment setting, mission statement, curriculum, and precise nature of work; and understand the teaching. These processes help the new teacher educator evolve their epistemic, overview knowledge of schooling, the establishment and extended of pedagogy, and provide a potential platform for evaluating what to teach, when, and how (Jones et al, 2020). The world of education continues to grow and is greatly influenced by the development.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Optimizing Placement of Field Experience Program: An Integration of MOORA and Rule-Based Decision Making

Okfalisa¹,

Hafsari²,

Nawanir³

et al. 2021

JST

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The lack of optimality in the Field Experience Program (FEP) placement has affected universities’ educational services to the stakeholders. Bringing together the stakeholders’ needs, university capacities, and participants’ willingness to quality and quantity is not easy. This study tries to optimize the placement of FEP by considering the interests of multiple perspectives through the application of Multi-Objective Optimization on the Basic of Ratio Analysis (MOORA) and Rule-Based methods in the form of a decision-making model. MOORA ranked the students based on the FEP committee’s perspective and other criteria, such as micro-teaching grades, final GPAs, study programs, number of credits, and student addresses. Meanwhile, the school perspective was ordered based on its accreditations, levels, types, facilities, and performances. To achieve the optimal recommendation of FEP placement, the integration of MOORA and Rule-based intertwined the requirement of such perspectives. A prototype of the system recommendation is then acquired to simplify the decision-making model. As adjudications, a survey from twenty stakeholders evidenced around 86.92% of system user acceptances. The confusion matrix testing defines the accuracy of this method reaches 78.33%. This paper reveals that the recommendation model has been successfully increasing the effectiveness of decision making in FEP placement under the needs and expectations of the entire stakeholders.

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Teacher Candidate Tensions with the edTPA: A Neoliberal Policy Analysis

Cited by 4 publications

References 33 publications

Who is Watching? What Do They Want? A Foucauldian Analysis of Teacher Candidates’ Experiences with the edTPA

Who is Watching? What Do They Want? A Foucauldian Analysis of Teacher Candidates’ Experiences with the edTPA

“Protected Teaching Spaces”: Opportunities and Constraints When Teaching for the edTPA

Optimizing Placement of Field Experience Program: An Integration of MOORA and Rule-Based Decision Making

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