(Re)defining “good teaching”: Teacher performance assessments and critical race theory in early childhood teacher education

Abstract

Using three tenents of Critical Race Theory, this study examines the influence of edTPAs on diverse early childhood pre-service teachers in a graduate program. Findings suggest that (1) Color-blind admissions policy and practice were at odds with edTPA’s perceived academic language demands; (2) A tension emerged between financial demands of edTPA and the constraints of immigrant and linguistically diverse students; and (3) edTPA rubrics and requirements required students of color to write and rewrite their teaching selves to match the external standard.

Keywords

Critical race theory diversity early childhood teacher education Teacher Performance Assessments

This colloquium article poses a critical question for early childhood teacher educators: How have the newly mandated teacher performance assessment certification requirements (edTPA) affected linguistically and ethnically diverse early childhood pre-service teachers in an urban school of education?

Situating teacher performance assessments in early childhood

In more than 40 US states, early childhood teachers are required to complete the edTPA to receive certification and enter the teaching profession (American Association of Colleges, 2016). The edTPA is a series of standardized assessments, which include an external evaluation of each teacher candidate’s (1) lesson plans; (2) assessments of and reflections on student work; (3) ability to give and evaluate formal and informal assessments of students; and (4) video clips of instruction. The suite of items that constitute the edTPA are a key element in teacher certification and evaluate not only pre-service teachers’ teaching skills and abilities, but also their ability to write reflectively using professional teacher discourse.

The edTPA is believed to be a strong predictor of teacher performance (Darling-Hammond et al., 2012). However, it is also apparent that the edTPA narrows the focus of teacher education programs to certification requirements (Chapman, 2011). It could be also argued that as a result of its implementation, critical, in-depth engagement with multicultural knowledge and pedagogy may be hindered (Liu and Milman, 2013). In this context, it has become evident that early childhood issues such as play-based learning and social and emotional development have been neglected or undervalued. Additionally, research finds weak associations between student learning and teacher structural alignments to standards, as found in the Gates teacher evaluation systems (reflected by the edTPA; Polikoff and Porter, 2014).

While teacher education has been called to recruit and retain more linguistically and ethnically diverse teachers (Achinstein et al., 2010), there is a dearth of research on the influence of the edTPA on diverse early childhood pre-service teachers. Because of the endemic nature of racism in the educational system of the USA, policies like the edTPA are often treated as being color-blind, neutral, or objective (Ladson-Billings, 2011). Critical race theory suggests that policies are not color-blind and, in fact, assume “whiteness” as a form of property (Harris, 1993). Policies are written only when there is an interest convergence—when the interests of the majority are served by creating policy to address inequalities (Donnor, 2005). Thus, the policies of the state and federal Departments of Education regarding diversity should be critiqued and analyzed. To that end, the study reported here used three tenets of critical race theory (Brown, 2014)—(1) critique of color-blindness; (2) whiteness as property; and (3) interest convergence—to analyze admissions and completion data from one early childhood graduate program before, during, and after the implementation of the edTPA.

Methods and data sources

The study took place in an early childhood teacher graduate preparation program at a large urban university in New York. The two cohorts included in the study had approximately 42 students. Seven linguistically and ethnically diverse graduate students between the ages of 24 and 40—all female—participated in the interviews.

Demographic, admissions, and completion data

The researcher collected and analyzed 87 applications over three years. Five components were analyzed: (1) linguistic/ethnic diversity; (2) admission to the program; (3) letters of recommendation; (4) a writing sample; and (5) the grade point average.

Policy analysis

The researcher coded and analyzed documents related to New York State’s edTPA as well as the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education scale, including the students’ and supervisors’ handbooks and support documents, and New York State Department of Education documents (American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, 2016).

Interviews of students

The researcher interviewed seven graduate students as they completed the edTPA process. The students were asked to tell stories using a counter-storytelling method, which “aims to cast doubt on the validity of accepted premises or myths, especially those held by the majority” (Delgado and Stefancic, 2001: 144). All of the data was coded and analyzed (Gee, 2004) for the three tenets of critical race theory: (1) critique of color-blindness; (2) whiteness as property; and (3) interest convergence. The data was triangulated in order to contribute to a larger collective study of cases (Stake, 2010).

Initial findings

This study uncovered three ways in which the edTPA affected linguistically and ethnically diverse early childhood pre-service teacher admissions and completion of a graduate teacher certification program.

Color-blind admissions policy and practice

It was found that the edTPA writing requirements, in tandem with the demands for a shorter program, contributed to placing a large emphasis on grade point averages and writing samples for graduate program admissions. While evaluating admissions records, a faculty member reflected:

TOEFL [Test of English as a Foreign Language] scores aren’t enough for me to know if a student can learn to use written professional discourse. I don’t want to admit a student who cannot pass the edTPA because their written English has English language learner errors. We don’t have the time [financial support] to give them the writing classes they need to pass the edTPA.

In analyzing the data, a tension was found between the perceived edTPA language demands and the university’s mission to provide its linguistically diverse community with bilingual teachers.

Whiteness as property in completion and certification

The students admitted to the program in the first year of the edTPA had a 100% pass rate; however, three linguistically diverse students opted out of the edTPA by using an Individual Pathways certification process. One student noted: “I just can’t take the time off of work. I can’t afford to do student teaching.” A second student was concerned about the clarity of her English: “Sometimes I make mistakes. I learned English after I came here [to the United States].” The students who opted out worked in a private preschool or public school setting and used New York State’s Individual Pathways to gain certification without submitting an edTPA portfolio. However, as of spring 2016, this alternative option has been closed. Hence, a tension emerged between the financial demands of the edTPA and the constraints of immigrant and linguistically diverse students.

Interest convergence

How is “good teaching” being (re)defined? Instead of learning how to serve young students, the edTPA data suggested that pre-service teachers learned to write and rewrite their teacher self in order to meet the expectations in the edTPA rubric. One pre-service teacher reported:

I knew how to give a running record long before student teaching. We practiced how to do this with kids … But I just didn’t know how to write about it. It was like learning a new language. My cooperating teacher said her principal never asked her to do that kind of writing.

A tension was noted between the edTPA writing demands and the writing genre required in the graduate work and early childhood classrooms.

Discussion

The edTPA has changed the services and knowledge provided by colleges of education and how we define “good teaching.” The edTPA has become an agent of change, leaving little space for teacher educators to react, resist, and re-establish best practices in pre-service teacher programs. While the edTPA gives surface value to diversity and differentiated instruction, it also limits who gets certified. As early childhood faculty and researchers engage in and enact this new system of certification, critical questions need to be asked, such as: What value is added by the standardized tests, including the Graduate Record Examination advocated by the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation? Is the series of tests and assessments an accurate predictor of “good teachers” or is it creating financial, linguistic, and cultural barriers for those wanting to become teachers? How are we, the faculty, embodying these policies? And finally, how are faculty and researchers working to combat the unintended outcomes of edTPA policies, such as admitting fewer linguistically diverse students?

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Author biography

Sara Michael Luna is an assistant professor of Early Childhood Education at Queens College, City University of New York. Her areas of interest are early childhood teacher education, linguistic diversity, and academic language. She has published in such journals as the Urban Review, Early Childhood Education Journal, and Urban Education.

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