Testing Teachers' Professional Knowledge: Legal and Educational Policy Implications

Melnick, Susan L.; Pullin, Diana

doi:10.1177/0895904887001002004

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…Similarly, analyses of the professional knowledge sections of the study guides for the Arkansas Educational Skills Assessment and the Texas Examination of Current Administrators and Teachers found that the tests consisted almost exclusively of de® nitions of vocabulary (Melnick & Pullin, 1987;Tyson-Bernstein, 1987). ª If this is the domain of knowledge competent teachers are required to know, then an analysis of the impetus for such a de® nition of professional knowledge is warrantedº , Melnick and Pullin remark.…”

Section: Issues In Test Content and Validitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Teacher Testing and the Improvement of Practice

Darling‐Hammond

2001

Teaching Education

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Previous approaches to teacher testing have been criticized for poorly representing the knowledge base for teaching, for oversimplifying teaching decisions, and for lacking criterion-related validity evidence supporting their use. A new generation of teacher assessments has been developed in the United States through the efforts of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and a corollary organization of more than 30 states. These performance-based assessments use videotapes of teachers' practice, examples of lessons and assessments, samples of student work, and analyses of classroom events and outcomes to provide evidence about teaching. Early research on the effects of these assessments suggests that they may be more valid measures of teacher knowledge and skill and that they may help teachers improve their practice. The stimulus to teacher learning appears to occur through task structures that require teachers to learn new content and teaching strategies as part of their demonstration of performance and through the processes of required re¯ection about the relationships between learning and teaching.As a knowledge-based economy emerges, few doubt that many more students need to be educated to much higher standards and that, as a consequence, teaching is increasingly challenging work. Many educators and policy-makers also agree that the capacities teachers need in order to succeed at teaching much more challenging content to a much more diverse group of learners can only be widely acquired throughout the teaching force by greater investments in teacher preparation and development. Such reforms, a number of recent reports have argued, will require comprehensive restructuring of the systems by which states and school districts license, hire, induct, and support teachers, and provide for their continual learning

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Section: Issues In Test Content and Validitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Teacher Testing and the Improvement of Practice

Darling‐Hammond

2001

Teaching Education

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“…By 1986, 46 states had increased require ments to improve teacher qual ity (Melnick & Pullin, 1987), and by the late 1990s, more than 40 states were using teacher tests rather than enti tle ment for cer tif i ca tion (Coun cil of Chief State School Offi cers [CCSSO], 1998).…”

Section: The Con Texts For Teacher Testingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An impor tant com po nent of any of the validity stud ies required by pro fes sional stan dards is an anal y sis to ascer tain what an indi vid ual should know and be able to do to per form a job suc cess fully (Lindemann & Grossman, 1998;Melnick & Pullin, 1987). It is the obli ga tion of the orga ni za tion using a test to offer valid ity evi dence to show, through pro fes sion ally accept able means, that a test is "pre dic tive of or sig nif i cantly cor re lated with impor tant elements of work behav ior which com prise or are rel e vant to the job or jobs for which can di dates are being eval u ated" (Asso ci a tion of Mex i can-Amer i can Edu ca tors v. Cal i for nia, 1999).…”

Section: Va Lid Itymentioning

confidence: 99%

Can You Take Dictation?

Melnick

Pullin

2000

Journal of Teacher Education

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The new teacher test ing ini tia tives pres ent a new op por tu nity and a new chal lenge to clar i fy thinking about the na ture of the teach ing pro fes sion and about the prep a ra tion of well-qual i fied in di vid uals to meet the im pend ing short age of teach ers for the na tion's schools. This ar ti cle ex am ines re cent im ple men ta tion of the con tro ver sial Mas sa chu setts Ed u ca tor Cer tif i ca tion Tests and the ed u cational, le gal, and pub lic pol icy is sues in the im ple men ta tion of a teacher test ing pro gram.

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“…The terms competency testing or competency-based certification have been used prominently in the early literature and even the current literature (e.g., Baker & Herman, 1984;Weitman, 1985;Lehmann & Phillips, 1987). However, a shift is occurring to terms such as teacher testing, certification testing, and educator testing (see, for example, Melnick & Pullin, 1987;Wolf & McDonough, 1987;). An active recognition seems to be developing that the earlier terms, and particularly the term competency, are probably inappropriate since they carry the implication that the testing process insures the competence of someone who passes.…”

Section: Why Competency Tests For Certification?mentioning

confidence: 99%