Assessment in the clinical experience: student teaching and the edTPA

ABSTRACT

This article examines the edTPA, an assessment for teacher candidates in the United States that, in traditional teacher education programs, is completed within a student teaching placement. Exploring literature that highlights the function of the placement and the role of the teacher education program and cooperating teacher in shaping the placement, this text engages in an analysis of edTPA handbooks to explore how the edTPA frames the clinical experience. Findings suggest that the edTPA mischaracterizes student teaching within the clinical experience as teaching, positioning candidates as autonomous agents over their practice and the student teaching classroom, while failing to adequately acknowledge both external restrictions imposed on candidates and the educational nature of the clinical experience.

KEYWORDS:

• edTPA
• student teaching
• teacher education
• assessment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In New York, while the edTPA is a component of licensure, teacher candidates were permitted to take the ATS-W assessment, should they fail the edTPA, as part of an edTPA ‘safety net’ (New York State Department of Higher Education, 2017; Pearson Education Inc., 2016). The safety net was in place from May 2015 to 30 June 2018, with the exception of Library Specialist candidates, whose safety net expires 30 June 2019 (D’Agati, 2018; New York State Education Department, 2018).

2. Candidates are also encouraged to reference the support guide, Making Good Choices (Stanford Center for Assessment Learning and Equity, 2017d), though it serves as a supplementary, rather than primary, element of the assessment.

3. While state-specific definitions of traditional teacher education vary (U.S. Department of Education, 2015), traditional programs generally require the completion of ‘coursework, field-based experience, and the state-approved content area exams’ (Uriegas, Kupczynski, & Mundy, 2014, p. 2). This article focuses specifically on traditional teacher education programs.

4. Owing to the increasing standardization of curriculum in K-12 classrooms, cooperating teachers may have little control over content, and as a result, may prescribe curricular content to teacher candidates given these restrictions.

5. The authors of the edTPA handbooks direct candidates to Making Good Choices ‘prior to beginning the planning for the learning segment’ (e.g. SCALE, 2014a, p. 5).

6. This article centers on an analysis of the edTPA Handbooks in particular, and hence, this discussion of research used to justify the edTPA is limited to how it is framed in the handbooks. Elsewhere (Hébert, 2017), I have provided an overview of the research offered in support of the edTPA by SCALE more broadly, critiquing, like others (Dover et al., 2015; Heil & Berg, 2017), a lack of data available in support of the edTPA beyond that which has been produced by developers of the assessment.

7. In the 2012 version of the handbooks, candidates were asked to confirm that they were the ‘sole author’ of the commentaries and other written responses (Stanford Center for Assessment Learning and Equity, 2012a, p. 46). This change in wording is at least suggestive of a recognition that other parties may play a role in the construction of the assessment materials.

Additional information

Funding

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [Doctoral Fellowship].

Notes on contributors

Cristyne Hébert

Cristyne Hébert is an Assistant Professor of Assessment and Evaluation in the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina.