RM Winter 2017

Learning to PracticeWhat I Preach: Designing Authentic Literacy Assessments for In-Service and Pre-Service Teachers

By Robin Jocius, The Citadel

Reading Matters Teaching Matters

for developing and examining teachers’ thinking and actions in situations that are experience based and problem oriented and that include or simulate actual acts of teaching” (Darling- Hammond & Snyder, 2001, p. 524). In this article, I introduce six authentic assessment ideas that can be adapted for both pre-service and in-service teachers enrolled in a variety of literacy courses and share the success stories and roadblocks that my students and I encountered in this journey. Assessment of Pre-Service and In-Service Teachers “The work of teaching is both complicated and complex…if we understand teaching as a highly complex endeavor undertaken by professionals, then we are compelled to develop assessments that are highly sophisticated and nuanced.” (Ladson-Billings, 1998, p. 266) In recent years, researchers, policy-makers, and teacher educators have begun to develop summative performance- based assessments of pre-service teacher candidates. One such assessment, the edTPA, was developed by faculty and staff at Stanford University’s Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity to emphasize, measure, and support the skills and knowledge that all teachers need from Day 1 in the classroom. In 2015- 2016, it was used by more than 800 teacher education programs across 40 states (Pecheone &Whittaker, 2016). Proponents argue that the edTPA is a “step toward more authentic ways to assess readiness for teaching than the typical standardized tests about pedagogy that use multiple choice items and are disconnected from authentic teaching situations” (Sato, 2014, p. 2). While some critics have questioned the role of Pearson Education (Au, 2013), other scholars have decried the assessment’s lack of attention to local cultures and contexts (NAME, 2014). Despite the controversy, recent analyses of the edTPA, such as a policy brief released by the National Education Policy Center (Cochran-Smith et al., 2016), have found that this tool has the potential to “prompt professional learning for candidates, programs, and institutions under some conditions” (p. 15). As Sharon Robinson, the president of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education stated, “These findings [regarding edTPA] are very encouraging. They certainly indicate that, to date, the wisdom of the profession has created the most viable tool for innovation in teacher education” (McCabe, 2016, para 5). However, despite the growing attention to more comprehensive and performance-based assessments of pre- service teacher candidates, there have been few efforts to re- envision assessments used within teacher education coursework.

ABSTRACT — In South Carolina, the introduction of the Read to Succeed (R2S) Act has presented new possibilities—and new challenges—for literacy teacher educators. As more pre-service and in-service teachers seek to fulfill the R2S coursework requirements, literacy teacher educators must find new ways to provide meaningful assessment experiences. This article introduces six authentic assessments that can be adapted for pre-service and in-service teachers enrolled in a variety of literacy courses: a multicultural book blog, literacy videos, literacy action plans, coaching observation reports, professional development presentations focusing on culturally and linguistically diverse learners, and Teaching Tips. It’s the second day of my Literacy Foundations course, and I’ve asked my group of seasoned in-service teachers to do a quick think-pair-share around the following topic: Discuss a positive personal experience with assessment. I’ve intentionally left the question open to interpretation, and I’m expecting a rich discussion of best assessment practices.

At first, there’s silence. Gradually, students begin to pose questions to their colleagues, sounding both doubtful and hesitant.

“Like on the SAT?”

“The Praxis? The Teaching and Learning one, maybe?”

“Not the GRE.”

“Do you think it can be an assessment that we did in our real classrooms?”

As I move around our not-real classroom, prompting students to think outside the standardized assessment box, I soon realize that my class – filled with talented in-service teachers with more than a century of collective teaching experience— is stumped. While one student points out, “I just don’t think I’ve ever had a positive experience with assessment,” another puts it more bluntly: “Assessments are always terrible.” As I reflected on this conversation, I realized that even as I espoused the benefits of authentic formative assessment in the P-12 classroom, my own assessments often failed to make meaningful connections to the practices that shape the schools and classrooms in which my students would and did work. In short, I had often failed to practice what I preached.

So, I set out to transform my not-real assessments into authentic measures of learning that involved “opportunities

Reading Matters | Volume 17 • Winter 2017 | scira.org | scira.org | 45 |

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