Unstandardized Responses to a “Standardized” Test

Abstract

We examine edTPA (a teacher performance assessment) implementation at one private university during the first year that our state required this exam for initial teaching certification. Using data from semi-structured interviews with 19 teacher educators from 12 programs as well as public information on edTPA pass rates, we explore whether the edTPA served its intended roles as a gatekeeper to the teaching profession and a catalyst for curriculum change. Although the edTPA did not serve as gatekeeper in our context, we did find a wide variety of consequential program-level gatekeeping practices. To explore the test’s function as a curriculum improvement lever, we created weighted change scores to represent the range of edTPA-related curricular changes across 12 programs. We found a wide range of curricular responses to the edTPA, from marginalization of the assessment to deep edTPA integration in program coursework. Finally, we explore teacher educators’ analyses of the edTPA as an instructional tool.

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