The appropriate use of academic language demonstrates a learner's understanding of discipline specific--arts or education--knowledge. Educators are responsible for ensuring that learners acquire and correctly apply academic language in context. Entrance into the teaching profession requires teacher candidates to develop facility with the academic…

This study examined 388 elementary education teacher candidates (n = 388) across four semesters in one educator preparation program about their experiences completing the performance-based assessment edTPA. Candidates were in one of three programs at a large, public research university in the Southeast region of the United States. These programs…

The Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT) is a high stakes summative assessment that was designed to measure pre-service teacher readiness. We examined the inter-rater reliability (IRR) of trained PACT evaluators who rated 19 candidates. As measured by Cohen's weighted kappa, the overall IRR estimate was 0.17 (poor strength of…

The construct of academic language has been part of the field of education for many years. Academic language is included in education initiatives such as the Common Core State Standards and the Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA). Due to the inclusion of academic language in these initiatives, teacher education programs must incorporate…

The edTPA Teacher Performance Assessment was recently implemented at a regional public university to replace the previous paper-and-pencil evaluation of candidates' teaching effectiveness. To determine the teacher educators' professional beliefs toward using the edTPA as an assessment of readiness to teach, semi-structured interviews were…

To better prepare preservice science teachers to work with English language learners (ELLs), teacher education programs must devote more time and attention to best instructional practices for ELLs, broadening their focus beyond general approaches to include disciplinary-specific ones as well. In the context of such a teacher education program, we…