GTPA as Enabler: Review, Renewal and Evidence of Preservice Teachers’ Assessment Practices

Abstract

In this chapter, we consider our use of a teaching performance assessment (TPA) as a mechanism for review and renewal, with a particular focus on the ways in which our initial teacher education (ITE) programs prepare and support preservice teachers to develop assessment skills, practices and dispositions essential in the contemporary classroom. Our discussion foregrounds the Graduate Teacher Performance Assessment Project (GTPA) as an enabler in our institution in several ways. First, its implementation enabled our professional inquiry into pedagogical and assessment practices across our ITE programs. Second, the GTPA enabled our preservice teachers to demonstrate their assessment practices in ways that are contextually responsive and that offer evidence of their professional competence. As part of this research-informed inquiry, site-level data is presented to discuss how a collaborative, collegial response to implementation provided opportunities to review how our ITE programs develop preservice teachers’ assessment practices. Data in the form of preservice teachers’ completed GTPAs provides evidence of their developing assessment identities, highlighting growth in both confidence and reflective practice. This chapter foregrounds the essential nature of review in ITE, and the opportunities that review can bring for strengthening our practices within our institutions and across institutions.