Voices from student teachers in New York: The persistence of a subtractive experience of the edTPA as a licensure exam for initial certification

Abstract

This article explores how candidates’ experiences in multiple initial certification programs within a single School of Education evolved over the first three semesters of New York’s implementation of edTPA as a requirement for initial licensure. The data reviewed included primarily surveys and interviews of teaching candidates, framed by critical perspectives on accountability, teacher performativity, and constructivist theories on learning to teach. Results suggest candidates’ perceptions of program alignment and edTPA benefits improved while several challenges persisted. These included the lack of mentor teacher knowledge about the edTPA as well as disconnects between candidates’ edTPA scores and local program evaluations. Additionally, student teachers’ perceptions of a subtractive experience of the edTPA continued in spite of improved perceptions about the benefits of the exam and across all scoring levels, programs, and semesters. A discussion of these results considers the implication of policies that reify quality, compel performance management, and contribute to values conflict for candidates in the particularly unique developmental moment of learning to teach. These voices of student teachers, often underrepresented in the research on edTPA, urge a reconsideration of the policy on teacher performance assessments in terms of how such policies impact the experiences of those learning to teach.

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

“…In these programs, the edTPA is placed at the intersection of what PSTs have learned in their preparation courses and their takeaways from the classrooms where they practice teaching. Consequently, tensions arise when the instructional visions of the performance assessment, the TEP, and the school context differ (Ahmed, 2019; Clayton, 2018; Meuwissen & Choppin, 2015). The detailed expectations of the edTPA can also feel unrealistic, which may constrain PSTs’ learning.…”

Performative enactments of teacher evaluation: Two preservice teachers and the edTPA

“…However, others found that reflective gains were tempered by the edPTA’s cumbersome logistical demands (Margolis and Doring, 2013). Indeed, mentor misunderstandings and the time-consuming nature of the edTPA can be subtractive forces in the student teaching experience (Clayton, 2018), which may be particularly problematic for candidates of color who already face a myriad of barriers to the profession (Petchauer et al., 2018). Furthermore, the developmental and educative gains that the edTPA may produce can be undercut by candidate context – specifically, their cooperating teachers’ understanding of the assessment’s requirements and their capacity to support (Kissau et al., 2019) – and the capacities of a candidates’ organizational context to comply with policy demands (De Voto, 2019).…”

“…So, it was really hard to spend three days on one task, which is what you have to do for the edTPA.Other researchers have noted the tensions between the edTPA and the student teaching context (e.g. Clayton, 2018; Meuwissen and Choppin, 2015), and Emily’s experience further illuminated these complexities. However, a more critical analysis of Emily’s story speaks to the capacity of the edTPA to act as one more iteration of policy technologies enacting power over teachers.…”

Teaching performance assessments in the USA and Australia

“…The parameters of teacher education are influenced and controlled by policy makers and the structural mandates are legislated regulations for ITE (Kosnik et al, 2017, p. 138). In Australia, it appears that the drive to implement TPAs is an example of policy borrowing (Steiner-Khamsi, 2016), with little regard given to the critiques associated with the implementation of its counterpart the edTPA in the USA (Clayton, 2018;Cronenberg et al, 2016;Dover and Schultz, 2016;Greenblatt, 2018). Phillips and Ochs (2003) suggest that there are four stages of policy borrowing involving: cross-national attraction, a decision, implementation and internalisation.…”

“…Olson and Rao's (2017) research has found that considerable time and energy has been spent in ITE organisations on redeveloping programmes and courses to best align with edTPA. There is "edTPA driven instruction" (Kleyn et al, 2015, p. 96), with assessment driving PST engagement in teaching units (Clayton, 2018). Curriculum design is increasingly shaped to facilitate the ease of edTPA execution (Donovan and Cannon, 2018), and reportedly, there are "fewer conversations about teaching" beyond a focus on edTPA assessment (Cronenberg et al, 2016, p. 129).…”