What happens after edTPA?

Abstract

The teacher certification process can be overwhelming for early-career educators. Negotiating teacher identity, completing fieldwork hours, and navigating institutional expectations can stress the most resilient teacher candidates. These pressures are further compounded as teacher certification assessments, such as the edTPA, introduce additional hurdles to achieving state licensure. This study approaches these obstacles by examining the stories of a diverse group of 14 early-career teachers as they reflect on completing edTPA and their current teaching practices. Through social constructivist perspectives and professional learning continuum framing, we interpreted narrative data to examine early-career teacher discussions of completing edTPA and developing pedagogical practices. These 14 teachers elucidated that the collaborative nature of their preparation program was integral to their completing the assessment, that the program approach to completing the portfolio assessment positioned them to think reflexively about their practice, and that the skills and tools used on edTPA remained useful to them throughout their early-career teaching. We suggest ways that preparation programs can interpret this teacher certification policy as an instructional touchpoint and can limit the gatekeeping capabilities of certification exams through collaboration, building capital, and supporting reflective portfolios. This work has implications for policymakers in teacher education and induction programs.

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

“…This finding contrasts with some critiques of the edTPA that characterize it as inauthentic and constraining (Jones et al, 2021; Olson & Rao, 2017; Paugh et al, 2018). On the contrary, we believe that these protected teaching spaces might even be able to address some of the inequities that arise in preparing teachers for their own classrooms, which result from the uneven quality of placements that PSTs encounter in terms of apprenticeship into exemplary practice (Napolitano et al, 2022; Windschitl, Lohwasser, & Tasker, 2021; Windschitl, Lohwasser, Tasker, Shim, & Long, 2021). We also wonder whether other performance assessments that do not carry the authority of the edTPA can protect novices’ teaching spaces equally well.…”

“…We found that such spaces allowed PSTs to aim for prioritizing student-centered teaching, designing appropriately challenging learning tasks, eliciting and using students’ ideas, and providing multiple ways for students to show what they know. This finding was especially important for PSTs in host classrooms where some of the TEP-promoted practices that they implemented were uncommon or even discouraged (see also Ahmed, 2019; Braaten, 2018; Napolitano et al, 2022). We suggest that protected teaching spaces not only allow novices to enact pedagogy that reflects research-informed practices before they encounter the complexities of their first year of professional service but also enable mentors to observe and perhaps learn from the approaches that their mentees are trying.…”

“…Other studies, however, report that adhering to research-informed teaching and learning frameworks, such as the ones detailed in the edTPA rubrics, has a positive effect on PSTs' understandings of their own instructional practices in relation to their students (Chung, 2008), which novices can carry into their future classrooms (Napolitano et al, 2022). A survey by Pecheone and Chung (2006) of more than 1,000 student teachers indicates that by completing such performance assessments, PSTs gained knowledge and skills that are commonly recognized as important for teaching.…”

“…In addition, the PSTs designed assessments that asked students to explain their ideas so that they could analyze students' progress and improve their teaching. Because PSTs had planned for such teaching on their own and felt responsible for the outcomes, their reflections on teaching during the interviews were detailed and critical (Paugh et al, 2018), and their commitment to improve in certain areas was more focused compared with the comments we had heard in interviews prior to the edTPA (Napolitano et al, 2022). Regrettably, not all PSTs were able to use the remainder of their clinical experiences to work on improving in the areas they had identified.…”

“…Yet, for their learning segments, PSTs were required to use "multiple forms of evidence to monitor students' progress toward developing understanding" (SCALE, 2018, p. 17) and "analyze evidence of student learning" (SCALE, 2018, p. 32), and therefore move toward more authentic ways to recognize their students' challenges (Chung, 2008). Learning from students' assessment data is an essential element of student-centered and equitable teaching and one of the most difficult to teach, in the abstract, through TEP coursework (Napolitano et al, 2022).…”