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Collaborating for preservice teacher assessment.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

Teacher education programs are responding to increased accountability, data reporting measures, and performance-based assessment requirements for certification. This article describes a university-PDS collaboration to create a performance-based instrument to capture teacher candidates' emerging competencies. The collaborative effort served both the institution's goals of a commitment to Professional Development Schools and data reporting for accreditation purposes as well as serving asa prototype for other institutions seeking models for collaboration with colleagues in P-12 contexts.

Introduction

Institutions involved in the complex endeavor of preparing future educators find themselves in a milieu of massive reform. In addition to increased accountability and data reporting measures, teacher education programs are responding to new standards and performance-based assessment requirements for teacher certification. Designed to provide coherency and quality in program structure, the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) standards serve as one example of outside accountability. Performance data needed for both state and national accrediting bodies must be captured both in on-campus courses as well as in K-12 school contexts. Therefore, meeting these accountability measures is inextricably tied to partnerships with P-12 schools and teachers. Partnerships can take many forms, some informal and others more structured. For the purpose of this article, we reference our long-established consortium of partner schools as Professional Development Schools (PDS). These Professional Development Schools provide a real-life context for preservice students to learn the skills of effective teaching and bridge the cultural gap between schools and higher education (Beardsley & Teitel, 2004).

Capitalizing on a university-PDS partnership, this article describes the collaborative process utilized to create a performance-based instrument to capture teacher candidates' emerging competencies. Achieving both the institution's goals of a commitment to Professional Development Schools and data reporting for accreditation purposes, this collaborative effort also serves asa prototype for other institutions seeking models for collaboration with colleagues in P-12 contexts.

Professional Development Schools

The Professional Development School (PDS) concept emerged in the mid-1980s with the Holmes Group (1986) report Tomorrow's Teachers. Four years later, Tomorrow's Schools: Principles for the Design of Professional Development Schools (Holmes Group, 1990) emerged providing principles to guide the design of Professional Development Schools. Professional Development Schools provide (1) mutual deliberation on problems with student learning and their possible solutions; (2) shared teaching in the university and schools; (3) collaborative research on the problems of educational practice; and (4) cooperative supervision of prospective teachers and administrators (Holmes Group, 1990). The vision for PDS partnerships involves creating, implementing, evaluating, replicating, and disseminating a model for teacher preparation that is powerful in improving the quality of both preservice and inservice teachers. In an attempt to provide rigor to school/university partnerships, NCATE created standards for Professional Development Schools. In the rationale for the creation of these standards, NCATE (2001) writes:

PDSs are important because they bring together these two streams of reform. They support that necessary...

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