Section archive - Assessment & Evaluation

This case study examines the impact of implementation of a standardized teacher performance assessment (TPA) on the infusion of multicultural education across a secondary education teacher preparation program. The findings reveal that teacher candidates exhibited movement toward the TPA’s objectives of supporting culturally and linguistically diverse learners by helping them to access core lesson content. However, at the same time teacher candidates observed a disconnect between the TPA and multicultural education-related topics and expressed desire for the opportunity to make such connections in class. The authors recommend to develop professional learning communities cultivate relational trust and transparent critical reflection on personal background, bias, institutional inequity, and examine the impact of each on the teaching and learning process.

The purpose of this study was to determine how teachers rate themselves as compared to how students rate teachers. The authors used the Teacher Efficacy the External Influences Scale. This study demonstrates the utility of asking students to rate their teachers. In addition, the results indicate that students and teachers might perceive what influences students from different perspectives.

In this article, the author contrasts two motivation theories often used to guide thinking about teacher evaluation, in order to develop an overarching theory of how evaluation works. The external motivation theory relies on economics and extrinsic incentives, and the internal motivation uses psychology and intrinsic incentives. These theories and available evidence raise doubts about performance-based pay, but not the use of other extrinsic incentives.

This article reports on the evaluation of a model for assessment of content knowledge used by researchers in the Problem-Based Learning (PBL) Project for Teachers of Science. These assessment strategy and scoring methodology result in scores for each teacher about the quality of their understanding of each Big Idea before and after PD. The compilation of scores by teacher facilitates assessment of the strength of teachers’ incoming knowledge and changes in their knowledge both in terms of number of Big Ideas and the clarity, accuracy, and completeness of that use. The assessment strategy offers advantages and limitations of this method.