International Portal of Teacher Education
The online resource of academic content on teacher training and teacher education
Section archive - Assessment & Evaluation
Page 1/18
179 items
1
Teacher educators’ practices include providing written feedback to preservice teachers.
Aims of written feedback include providing information to preservice teachers about their ideas and practices as well as sustaining ongoing relationships.
In this article the authors argue that factors mediating written feedback practice support the informational purposes of feedback while displacing time and space for relational purposes.
This argument stems from their self-study using dialogic analysis of three mathematics teacher educators’ conversations and narratives about their written feedback.
Analysis of their narratives and transcripts of conversations focused on written feedback practice through the lens of relational teacher education.
They found three factors that mediated their written feedback practices: their mathematics identities, assignment structures, and accreditation.
To illustrate the factors they share three vignettes crafted from transcripts of conversations and narratives of their written feedback.
These themes, while unique to their contexts, illustrate ways teacher educators’ explicit values and goals for teaching about teaching can be crowded out by unexamined factors living within enactments of professional practice.
Their findings are contextually bound, but coupled with other self-studies of written feedback illustrate that written feedback practice is informed by teacher educators’ values and context.
Published: 2020
Updated: Jul. 01, 2021
2
Classroom management skills are essential for effective teaching and consequently form an integral part of undergraduate teaching degrees. Self-efficacy in classroom management influences an individual’s willingness to undertake specific actions and their perseverance in the face of difficulties in executing these actions.
In order to track the progress of pre-service teachers’ self-efficacy in classroom management, an easy to administer Classroom Management Self Efficacy Instrument (CMSEI) was developed and piloted with a third year cohort of pre-service teachers.
This article reports on the psychometric properties of the CMSEI as determined through a Rasch analysis.
The analysis supports the Classroom Management Self Efficacy Instrument (CMSEI) as an accurate and internally consistent, unidimensional scale for use with undergraduate pre-service teachers.
Published: 2020
Updated: Jun. 06, 2021
3
This mixed methods study explores a comprehensive survey administered in one induction program of over 2000 novice teachers and 1000 of their coaches.
Quantitative analyses through Structural Equation Modeling indicate the mediating impact that coaches have on various design features of induction, which then have an impact on novice teacher learning and pedagogy.
Qualitative analyses of comments reveal respondent satisfaction with programmatic structures in influencing their induction experiences while reiterating the importance of coaching.
Findings have two main implications:
1) the impact of quality coaching for novice teacher professional growth, in conjunction with the importance of matching novice teachers and their coaches appropriately, and
2) the significance of curriculum, technology, and customer service in having an impact on the overall novice teacher and coach experience throughout induction.
These findings have implications for the work of coaching and design features of induction programs.
Published: 2020
Updated: Apr. 20, 2021
4
This phenomenological research explores the opinions of social studies teacher candidates about self and peer assessment.
It is a descriptive study using qualitative data from a sample of 21 teacher candidates.
Research data were collected using a semi-structured interview and the researcher's observation notes.
The data were analysed using the descriptive content analysis method.
The findings showed that self and peer assessment could serve as a powerful learning activity rather than simply an assessment tool.
The results also indicated that self and peer assessment support the development of skills, such as self-regulation, critical thinking and decision-making.
Teacher candidates reported that self and peer assessment had positive effects, such as recognizing their own shortcomings, learning by sampling from peers’ work, constructive contribution to each other's work, comprehension of the skills and criteria that form the basis of assessment, being part of the assessment process, gaining assessment skills, recognizing individual differences and developing critical thinking skills.
Self and peer assessment facilitate the development of a learning environment that is more cooperative, participative and appropriate to the educational needs of initial teacher education students in the 21st century.
Published: 2020
Updated: Jan. 04, 2021
5
This article reports on the results of an exploratory study, based on an ‘intervention’, to determine pre-service teacher student responses to new feedback processes in an initial teacher education course.
The results indicated that responses to feedback varied considerably, ranging from those students who preferred more regular feedback mechanisms (such as criteria sheets and annotations on student scripts), to those who preferred a different approach that de-emphasised the role of assessor feedback, and encouraged critical self-reflection and ownership of the learning process in order to promote the development of tacit assessment knowledge.
The conclusions are that there is no one feedback mechanism that works best for all students, and that feedback processes are most effective when customised to individual students.
Published: 2020
Updated: Dec. 10, 2020
6
A convergent parallel mixed methods study investigated the potential of one teacher preparation approach for promoting candidate reflection.
Thirteen candidates participated in clinical field experiences and four corresponding seminar classes with guided video analysis activities.
Candidates were systematically guided through focusing on others before focusing on self and explicitly learned about a reflection continuum using an instructional framework to build prerequisite skills and ultimately improve reflective abilities.
Results of paired-sample t tests indicated candidates demonstrated significantly higher reflective ability scores over time as measured by a reflection checklist.
Qualitative analysis of structured interviews revealed candidates felt activities were
(a) a systematic approach to authentic growth,
(b) a challenging approach to necessary self-confrontation, and
(c) allowed for connections between self and other. Methodological triangulation was used to validate the findings.
Implications for teacher preparation research and practice are discussed.
Published: 2020
Updated: Oct. 26, 2020
7
The authors investigate whether the attention payed to students’ learning status predicts judgment accuracy of preservice teachers and whether this attention moderates the effect of student characteristics on judgment accuracy.
In a virtual classroom, 168 preservice teachers judged the math-performance of 12 students.
The attention allocation (AA) was operationalized twofold (“mean AA” and “student-specific AA”) both via log-file data.
Mean AA predicted the judgment accuracy (rank component) positively. A higher student-specific AA reduced the “level error”.
A moderating effect only occurs for student-specific AA but not for mean AA. We conclude that judgment accuracy can be improved through increased AA.
Published: 2020
Updated: Sep. 30, 2020
8
In many teacher preparation programs at institutions of higher education in the United States, pre-service teachers receive mentoring and constructive feedback during their internship placement from an experienced supervising teacher and a university coordinator.
Often the feedback loop is closed by asking interns, ‘was this useful?’
To better answer this question, researchers employed a phenomenological approach to collect interview and focus group data on the lived experiences, perceptions, and understandings of six pre-service special education interns during their internship experience.
Emerging themes included satisfaction with level of support provided by supervisory stakeholders, a feeling of isolation from peer support, special consideration of the components within the evaluation tool, and a request to be provided with additional background information for their assigned university coordinators.
These lessons were aggregated, presented, and then integrated into the experiences provided to forthcoming pre-service educators.
Published: 2020
Updated: Sep. 21, 2020
9
This qualitative multicase analysis investigated the role of “educational niceness” and “neutrality” in preservice English teacher feedback on sociopolitical issues in student writing.
As part of the field experiences for several English Language Arts (ELA) methods courses at two universities, one urban and one rural, the teacher-researchers used Google Docs and other technologies to connect preservice teachers (PSTs) with high school writers at a geographical distance so that urban-situated PSTs could mentor rural-situated writers and vice versa.
Five methods courses over two semesters served as cases, and 12 PSTs from those courses participated in focus groups.
Data included audio recordings of nine focus groups and PSTs’ digital responses to student writing.
Using thematic analysis, the authors explored how PSTs responded to sociopolitical perspectives in students’ writing — both engaging them and staying neutral.
Although authentic opportunities for responding to student writers supported PSTs’ critical reflection on teaching writing, analysis of PSTs’ responses indicate that such authentic practice may not be sufficient for preparing PSTs to navigate sociopolitical issues and may, in fact, exacerbate PSTs’ impulse to enact educational niceness.
Published: 2019
Updated: Apr. 18, 2020
10
This sequential explanatory mixed-methods study examines the impact of analytic rubric use in peer feedback on preservice teachers’ ability to recognize indicators of best practice for second language lesson planning and lesson delivery.
53 preservice teachers in a university-level, semester-long Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) practicum course received direct instruction on indicators presented in the analytic rubrics.
They were then randomly assigned to control and experimental groups.
The experimental group used rubrics with the indicators during peer feedback tasks, while the control group used a modified rubric without the indicators.
The result from an independent samples t-test on posttest mean scores indicated a significant difference between groups for both lesson planning and lesson delivery, favoring the experimental group.
Qualitative data were also collected via written comments on the posttests and from focus-group interviews.
From thematic analyses of qualitative data, three key themes emerged, including specific tensions that resulted from the type of feedback preservice teachers desired and the type of feedback they were willing to give to their peers. These findings provide further insight into the use of analytic rubrics in peer feedback practices in second language teacher education (SLTE).
Published: 2019
Updated: Jan. 29, 2020