As teacher preparation programs across the country evolve in response to criticism, declining enrollment, and increasing competition, research is needed to guide and inform their evolution. In response, faculty at one teacher preparation program embarked upon a two-year journey to transform a program to make it more conceptually coherent as well…

What constitutes accountability in teacher education? This article reviews research on elements of teacher preparation program quality and argues that professional standards can leverage greater quality if they are incorporated into professional policies governing accreditation and licensure that encourage schools of education to adopt the…

Educator preparation programs across the United States are increasingly adopting performance-based assessments, including edTPA, as a mechanism to measure candidates' development of the knowledge and skills necessary to enter the classroom upon program completion. Within this context, this investigation examined associations between elementary…

The edTPA, a performance assessment designed to generate reliable and valid measures of teaching practice, increasingly is used as a gatekeeping mechanism for beginning teacher licensure in various states, including New York, Washington State, Wisconsin, and Georgia. One of the edTPA's key components is the demonstration of instructional practice…

To evaluate the impact of the emergent national teacher performance assessment (TPA) on student teachers, this study examined a pilot implementation at one university in Washington State during Spring 2011. The qualitative research focused on the lived experience of those directly affected by TPA implementation: student teachers, mentor teachers,…

Professional integrity and changing demographics in the public school system in the United States coupled with standards for teacher preparation require that preservice teachers possess knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to work with diverse populations. Using the Teacher Work Sample, a plan for instruction serving as a teacher…

This article addresses the debate on college literacy achievement by focusing on teacher education students. In addition to acquiring the academic tools for teaching, many of those students might need to remediate their literacy gaps while mastering graduate-level academic writing skills. This study inquired into variables that might help predict…

Discusses the development of digital portfolios as part of one university's authentic preservice teacher assessment. Grant money funded a pilot program that facilitated the development of performance outcomes based on NCATE standards for teacher candidates, revealed implementation issues, directed the construction of scoring rubrics, and guided…

Chronicles the Providence College Elementary/Special Education Program's move from one which relied upon input measures to evaluate student teachers to one focusing on output measures (performance in coursework and the classroom). The paper describes steps taken to implement standards and their measured attainment into college coursework and…

Considers the use of electronic portfolios in teacher education, evaluating survey responses of preservice teachers who used presentation software and multimedia to recreate instructional units they had taught to elementary students. Respondents rated the assignment positively, noting such advantages as opportunities to learn about educational…

Performance-based assessment will have little impact unless it is part of a coherent process of teacher development. Success requires local ownership and identification. Using the experiences of faculty at Alverno College (Wisconsin), this paper addresses essential aspects of coherent, performance-based programs (clarity of outcomes, coherence of…

A team of teacher educators, preservice teachers, and host teachers collaborated to develop and pilot a performance-based assessment model involving multimedia portfolios for evaluating student teachers' and P-12 students' learning. Analysis of this model's effectiveness indicated that the process approach helped document preservice program…

This article describes an innovative pedagogical strategy, the use of teaching portfolios in peer interviews. It will first describe the process designed to prepare preservice teachers to demonstrate professional competence through the use of a standards-based working portfolio developed during a reading practicum. Then it will report on…

Describes how conceptual frameworks, portfolio assessment, and faculty mentoring were used to transition a teacher preparation program to a standards-based approach, explaining that standards-based teacher education and authentic assessments have the potential to greatly change teacher preparation programs, though there must be ways to ensure that…

Discusses the roles of testing and assessment in meeting real academic goals in standards-based reform, arguing that performance-based alternative assessment has advantages over high stakes testing. To help teachers design appropriate alternative assessment, the paper offers suggestions on what they should know and be able to do according to the…