Standards of practice to standards of evidence: developing assessment capable teachers

Abstract

Teacher education is a hotly debated policy area in higher education and schooling portfolios, with increasing emphasis on standards and accountability. It is in this environment that The Standards Project (2013–2015) presented in this article began. It has at its core a three-part commitment: first, to undertake a comprehensive audit and analysis of all teacher education programmes in the state of Queensland, Australia, to establish the approaches and practices Universities relied on to preparing beginning teachers as assessment capable; second, to take account of multiple perspectives and approaches in initial teacher education to integrating data into how beginning teachers are prepared to source and use evidence for improving learning and teaching; and further, to develop new principles, policy and practices for reviewing and moderating teacher education programmes against professional standards. The paper proposes a move beyond the discourse of professional standards of practice towards a complementary discourse of standards of evidence. In our collaboration we drew on two fields, namely the writing on teacher education including reviews, and the field of assessment, both considered within broader sociocultural theory applied to assessment.

Keywords:

• Standards
• evidence
• assessment
• teacher preparation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The Queensland College of Teachers is the regulatory authority for the teaching profession in Queensland.

2. The term data is taken to refer to the assessment evidence that teachers collect and interpret for the purposes of critically reflecting on teaching effectiveness and using system data including large-scale standardised test data for improvement.

3. The next stage of the research reported in this article includes the development of a research-informed assessment curriculum in ITE. The aim is to develop beginning teachers’ assessment identities by (i) embedding studies in assessment in both academic programmes and professional experiences and (ii) building resilience through attention to teacher attributes/dispositions and underpinning principles of assessment.