Insights into an Australian practice-oriented teaching performance assessment for prospective teachers: benefits and complexities

ABSTRACT

This research examines the consequences of a mandatory assessment for pre-service teachers in Australia that is completed during their final teaching placement. The Teaching Performance Assessment (TPA) is an analysis of practice that incorporates video of teaching episodes, observation feedback, and analysis of pupils’ work samples. Semi-structured focus groups and surveys were conducted with pre-service teachers and teacher educators to investigate how the assessment item contributes to developing professional understanding and professional practice. Data were analysed using inductive coding that was thematically categorised. The study established that the process of completing the TPA contributed to expanding pre-service teachers’ understanding and comprehension of the ways their teaching can improve pupil learning. These results lead to several insights about how a high-stakes assessment task such as the Teacher Performance Assessment can promote the educational growth of pre-service teachers but also brings risks of redirecting the purpose of the placement from its ambition to focus on compliance tactics.

KEYWORDS:

• Evaluative thinking
• initial teacher education
• professional reasoning
• professional learning and development
• teaching performance assessment

Introduction

Since 2014, policy regulation for preparing pre-service teachers (PSTs) for the profession has expanded in Australia. It now features mandatory assessment on entry and prior to graduation with a further requirement to pass a government-regulated literacy and numeracy test. The Action Now: Classroom Ready Teachers (Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group [TEMAG], 2014) report was a landmark in policy regulation as it required that Initial Teacher Education (ITE) graduates be assessed to determine that they are classroom-ready at course completion using the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST) (Australian Institute Teaching and School Leadership [AITSL], 2011 revised in 2018). This report heralded new assessment processes in ITE programmes to meet accreditation standards arising from the recommendations.

A feature of the Accreditation of Initial Teacher Education Programs in Australia: Standards and Procedures (2015, and updated in 2018 [Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership [AITSL], 2019]) was the new requirement that PSTs must pass a rigorous teaching performance assessment (TPA) that is practice-oriented and framed by the Professional Standards at the graduate career stage in the final year of their course (AITSL, 2019). The Australian TPA has been influenced by policy reform in the United States, where capstone assessment is common, and is designed to demonstrate that graduating teachers are “classroom-ready” (Stacey et al., 2019).

This paper reports on the pre-service teachers’ and teacher educators’ perspectives on a practice oriented TPA, the Assessment for Graduate Teaching (AfGT), during 2018–2019 —its second year of implementation. It seeks to contribute insights that may inform other Australian institutions that are required to design and implement TPAs.

Overview of the assessment for graduate teaching

The AfGT is an integrated capstone assessment that seeks to capture teaching as a complex activity. It was designed by a consortium of0 ITE providers across Australia and was piloted during 2017 (Melbourne Graduate School of Education, 2018). Since full implementation in 2018, over 4500 PSTs have completed an AfGT. It has four elements (Figure). Elements One, Two and Three are interconnected and focus on a sequence of taught lessons. Element One asks PSTs to plan a sequence of teaching and learning. In Element Two, PSTs are asked to video-record short sequences of their teaching to be used in analysing their teaching practice. This is designed to foster deeper levels of analysis in PSTs, in collaboration with their mentor teacher and their university teacher educator. Element Three requires PSTs to evaluate the impact of their planning and teaching on student learning by drawing on evidence of learning. These three elements of AfGT result in a carefully detailed account of teaching alongside commentary, in which PSTs explain their intentions and critically examine their teaching through analysis of student data. In Element Four, PSTs complete four scenarios about authentic and recognisable teaching situations in which they must choose a response and justify their decision. It provides an opportunity for PSTs to demonstrate their knowledge, understandings, and decision-making processes that they may not be able address while on placement or in their responses to Elements One, Two and Three.

Figure. Summary of the four AfGT elements.

Literature review

The teaching performance assessment

The compulsory TPA as a reflective and educational experience has been identified as a topic deserving of further study, as the use of TPAs is becoming widespread. The U.S.A is at the forefront of the TPA discourse, where TPAs were introduced in California in the990s. They are now enshrined in 22 states’ policies (www.edtpa.aacte.org). Reports on the student experience of the edTPA, acknowledge that it can be both a beneficial and subtractive experience for PSTs (Clayton, 2018; De Voto et al., 2021). In Australia, a significant ITE review (TEMAG, 2014) mandated the use of a TPA designed to assess how PSTs integrate knowledge and skills in their practice. It is premised on the belief that the ITE graduate standards cannot be guaranteed by existing work-integrated and university-based study assessments (Cochran-Smith et al., 2013).

Research demonstrating that teachers have the greatest in-school impact on student learning (Barber & Mourshed, 2007) has influenced policy change that now requires ITE providers to assess using a TPA. This research has driven the requirement for quality control mechanisms in ITE programmes as these programmes provide a critical foundation in preparing prospective teachers. The Australian TPA asks PSTs to demonstrate that they are prepared for the challenges of classroom teaching – that they are “classroom-ready” (TEMAG, 2014). Critical to this development is their ability to understand the standards by which this readiness will be measured, as well as their ability to engage in thinking and decision-making to put them into effect. The process of measuring “classroom-readiness” has been the subject of much discussion, including negative commentary that TPA discourses at once narrow the field of view and overclaim what can be measured (Charteris & Dargusch, 2018; Churchward & Willis, 2018). Yet more affirming discourses describe TPAs as able to capture what PSTs know, believe, and do, as well as how their knowledge, beliefs, and actions grow, and how they can demonstrate their professional reasoning capacities. Teachers are recognised for their knowledge and their capacity to continuously improve their practice through professional reasoning, and critical enquiry is a persistent theme across the literature (Clarke & Hollingsworth, 2002; Shulman & Shulman, 2009).

TPA and teaching standards

Professional teaching standards, as a framework, are viewed as an organising structure for teacher assessment, or in other words, for credentialing and appraisal (Darling-Hammond, 2001, 2010). Teaching standards seek to represent knowledge about what constitutes successful teaching. These are limited representations, especially if the standards statements are perceived as discrete and disparate. Standards are typically defined in performative terms as what a teacher knows and can do (Kriewaldt, 2009). The relationship between teaching standards and the TPA is important in this study because the TPA must assess against the APST, which are widely acknowledged as a useful structure that guides course design and prospective teachers’ development.

Darling-Hammond (2001) defined teaching standards as a point of reference for certification, recognising that standards can play a role in appraising teaching quality, asserting the importance of designing evidence-gathering processes. These include techniques such as classroom observation, student ratings, test scores, student work samples and portfolio submissions of a variety of lesson documentation – all of which might indicate how the applicant has met a standard. Teaching standards are key instruments for improving teaching, when focused clearly on gains in student learning (Darling-Hammond, 2017). The seven Australian standards (Table 1) are organised in three domains and elaborated in 37 focus areas (Australian Institute Teaching and School Leadership [Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership [AITSL], 2018).

Table. Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST).

Domain	Standard
Professional knowledge	Know students and how they learn
	Know the content and how to teach it
Professional practice	Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning
	Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments
	Assess, provide feedback and report on student learning
Professional engagement	Engage in professional learning
	Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers and the community

Teacher quality should be viewed as a holistic idea, a synthesis of attributes, rather than a separate collection of measurable behaviours that may be achieved independently of one another. Teaching standards can be biased to indicate cognitive behaviours rather than teacher attitudes or intelligence (Evans, 2011), and as such are only incomplete representations of teaching. When standards are considered as a full map of teaching, there is a danger that narrow teaching concepts will be adopted. Yet there are opportunities to use a TPA to expand views of complexity that draw on the instructional knowledge base that must inevitably underpin these notions.

Reasoning as a professional

The concept of employing professional reasoning connects with concepts about holistic and complex teacher quality judgements. Professional reasoning is defined as the “processes that professionals utilise to arrive at the best determined ethical answer in a specific practice-based scenario” (Kriewaldt & Turnidge, 2013, p.07). Professional reasoning is the defining feature of a teacher’s skill. It is based on the notion that teaching is a profession founded on an enquiring stance (Cochran-Smith & The Boston College Evidence Team, 2009), that employs analyses to make action judgements rather than the routine application of taught repertoires (Burn & Mutton, 2013).

To decide how to improve their teaching, teachers use thinking processes, and the phrase “reflective practice” has been used as a portmanteau term holding a collection of ideas. However, there is value in distinguishing between them. Teaching necessitates recurrent cycles of planning, acting, data collection, analysis, and evaluation. While reflection is frequently used as a shorthand for the thinking that occurs in this cycle, implicitly incorporating the cycle as “reflection” risks overlooking reasoning as a crucial component of education improvement.

Explicitly orienting teacher thought processes to professional reasoning shifts the emphasis to developing student learning that is guided by two types of evidence: evidence about the student and research evidence at various phases of each cycle (Kriewaldt et al., 2017). Cochran-Smith and & The Boston College Evidence Team (2009) argue that professional teaching is learner-centred and necessitates an evidence-based culture that centrally and routinely uses evidence to make decisions. Professional reasoning, rather than trial and error, leads to a forward-thinking approach to teaching. Professional reasoning is a concept that supplements a reflective practice that focuses on learning from instructional episodes. Campbell et al. (2016) and colleagues report that TPAs can build professional reasoning through explicit attention to evidence. TPAs can compel PST to engage with learner data and foster a data-informed mindset (Buchanan et al., 2020) more rigorously.

The introduction of a TPA is not without criticism. Characteristically, the processes are burdensome and place considerable pressure on PSTs (Campbell et al., 2016). Risk-averse PSTs may select a low-stakes goal for their lesson sequence, avoiding the opportunity to stretch, and may also downplay their struggles to create a success story (Buchanan et al., 2020). These complexities have sparked a debate about the increased regulation of teacher education, and questions arise about the assessment’s restricted focus, among broader questions about who assesses PSTs. Critics of the inclusion of a TPA in accreditation requirements argue that the consequence of top-down regulation can diminish innovation and lead to more standardised yet lower quality outcomes (Charteris, 2019). While this was and is a concern to those who design and implement the AfGT, this TPA is also seen as an opportunity to design a rigorous and targeted assessment that can serve two roles: candidate licencing and formative improvement.

Methodology

This study explored views and perceptions of a TPA and its impact on PSTs’ professional understanding and practice. The research question that guided this study was “What benefits and complexities does a practice-oriented TPA have on prospective teachers?”

Using a case study research design, this study focused on two distinct groups of participants that were enacting and directly impacted by the TPA, pre-service teachers and teacher educators. This approach allows for an in-depth, rich and diverse description from two different perspectives of a single phenomenon occurring in a bounded context (Akkuzu, 2014; Miles et al., 2020). The case study design provided the opportunity to study the implementation of the TPA using the bounded context of a single institution and diverse perspectives of PSTs and University-based Teacher Educators (UTEs).

This study received approval to proceed from the lead institution (The University of Melbourne Ethics Approval Number749479) and endorsement by all of the member institutions’ ethics committees before data were collected. The data were sourced from focus groups and open text response items from surveys conducted during the annual evaluation process of the AfGT assessment. An abstract of the focus group questions and survey items are provided in Table 2. The focus groups were conducted by a team of researchers who do not work directly in the implementation of the TPA at the institution.

Table 2. Focus group questions and open text survey items for University-based Teacher Educators and Pre-Service Teachers.

Focus Group Format	Questions
Pre-Service Teachers (PST)	In what ways did the AfGT contribute (or not) to your own professional learning?
	As you know, the AfGT is based on the Australian Graduate Teacher Standards. How and how well do you think the AfGT assesses the content of the Graduate Standards?
	When you were giving feedback to students about their learning in your classes, what was the main way you did this? Please suggest additional or alternative ways in which you imagine this could be done.
	One of the aspects of the AfGT is that you were encouraged to reflect on your teaching and planning. What was it like for you being frequently required to reflect throughout that assessment phase?
	Element 4 was developed to provide the types of scenarios that pre-service teachers might experience and was also a way to address some of the Graduate Standards that you might have not otherwise had an opportunity to experience on your placement. Please make some comments about completing Element 4.
University-based Teacher Educators (UTE)	To what extent do you consider the AfGT provided a comprehensive and coherent assessment of pre-service teachers’ teaching practice and ability to meet the Graduate Standards?
	To what extent do you think the AfGT adequately measures these aspects of teaching practice: planning, teaching, assessing and reflecting?
	Please make some comments about whether the AfGT is having an impact in schools and on the teachers supporting the Pre-Service Teachers.
Survey Format	Open text survey items
Pre-Service Teachers (PST)	Please comment on the efficacy of each of the four inter-connected elements: a. Element: Planning for student learning b. Element 2: Enabling student learning through teaching c. Element 3: Assessing for impact on student learning d. Element 4: Expanding practice
	From your experience, to what extent did the AfGT provide a coherent assessment of your teaching practice?
	Please make some comments about the contribution of the AfGT to your own professional learning.
	Please comment on AfGT’s strengths and weaknesses.
University-based Teacher Educators (UTE)	Please make some comments about the contribution the AfGT provided for the PSTs’ professional learning.
	The elements of the AfGT require pre-service teachers to critically reflect on the impact of their planning, teaching and assessing on school students’ learning. Please make some comments about the focus of the AfGT being on the impact on school students’ learning.
	Thinking about the work you do as an initial teacher educator, what impact/s has the AfGT as a mandated Teaching Performance Assessment had on your work?
	Please comment on AfGT’s strengths and weaknesses.

The focus groups were conducted in November 2018 using a semi-structured format. The sessions were audio-recorded with the participants’ consent, then transcribed and de-identified prior to analysis and coding. The surveys were conducted over two time periods, once in September to October 2018 and then in August to October 2019. Participants were asked to provide consent before responding to the survey and all data were de-identified prior to data analysis.

Participants

Table 3 shows the number of participants for the two groups, UTEs and PSTs who participated in this study. UTEs are academics whose role is to support PSTs to successfully complete their professional experience placements and the TPA. For the AfGT, UTEs promote a self-directed approach to learning, support PSTs to take an active role in developing their own professional understanding and encourage continuous learning and development.

Table 3. Number of participants for University-based Teacher Educators and Pre-Service Teachers.

	University-based Teacher Educators (UTE)		Pre-Service Teachers (PST)
Participants	n	%	n	%
Survey	23	64	108	96
Focus Group	13	36	4	4
TOTAL	36	100	112	100

PSTs are prospective teachers whose role is to ensure that they achieve their educational and professional goals, including successful completion of their teacher education qualification and effectively transition to teaching. The AfGT provides PSTs with the opportunity to demonstrate teaching performance prior to graduation, including the attainment of graduate professional standards for teachers.

The data code used in the results section is represented by YYYY-FG/S-PST/UTEXX. This is defined as year, followed by data source format (focus group or survey), then participant group (Pre-Service Teacher or University-based Teacher Educator), and finally the unique number assigned to each participant for deidentification purposes. For example, “2018-FG-PST02” represents data sourced from the 2018 focus group with Pre-Service Teachers, participant number 2.

Data analysis

Two researchers applied a constant comparative inductive analysis (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), and analysed the data using NVivo12. Initial coding identified emergent ideas before proceeding to focused coding, where concepts and themes within the transcripts and survey response texts were identified (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016) to build a potential list of thematic categories. Once the thematic categories were finalised, theoretical coding was done by removing the codes and a second researcher recoded the data using the finalised thematic categories. This was followed by researcher discussion of differences and commonalities in coding with constant reference to the data.

While the comments provided insights into a broad range of themes, including the strengths and challenges of the assessment tool, three of the four final categories reported on in this paper focus on the affordances of the AfGT as a Teaching Performance Assessment. The themes were chosen for their capacity to demonstrate the potential for a teaching performance assessment to assess the graduate standards, and the emergent knowledge and skills required for the teaching profession. The relationships among the thematic categories reported in this paper were explored, and analytical memos were created to reflect the theoretical insights and questions about these relationships. The analysis was further strengthened by presenting the insights from the theoretical coding process to other members of the research team for discussion, elaboration, repositioning and refinement.

Results

The four themes that emerged from the analysis suggests that the AfGT:

1. Promotes deeper analysis and articulation of teaching practice, and its relationship with teaching standards

2. Expands understanding of praxis: linking theory, research and practice

3. Supports and builds evaluative thinking through professional reasoning

4. Can redirect students to focus on compliance tactics

Each of these themes was articulated by both participant groups, but in different ways and from slightly different perspectives. These are further explored in the following section.

Promotes deeper analysis and articulation of teaching practice, and its relationship with teaching standards

Promoting deeper analysis was evident in the focus group and survey data with comments from PSTs describing how the AfGT enhanced their ability to analyse their own teaching in that “it contributes to my ability to know my own actions in the classroom very well because you’re constantly thinking about this” (2018-FG-PST02). In their terms, it prompts thinking which is colloquially their way of expressing analysis. Similarly, teacher educators described how the AfGT deepened PST analysis and encouraged their development as a self-directed professional: 2018-FG-UTE04 reports “It actually requires them to internalise their own practice, analyse that and think about what’s the professional behaviour and learning that would be complementary and contribute to … I think they enter the profession not with the view that I’m new and I’ll just follow what everyone is telling me to do.”

PSTs reported that completing the AfGT provided the opportunity for them to focus on the reality and complexity of teaching. 2018-S-PST75 stated, “it really helped capture the different elements of the teaching profession and exposed us to the reality of what really is involved.” Additionally, it required them to articulate their professional decision making whilst undertaking their teaching practice in the classroom. As highlighted by 2018-S-PST35, “the AfGT directed my focus to critical pillars of teaching practice. I was forced to explain my choices using professional knowledge in concise terms.”

Teacher educators noted the importance of fostering graduate teachers articulating their practice specifically in writing, with the AfGT providing a way for this to be visible as it provides an opportunity to express elements of their practice, and link this to literature and theory. They also highlighted that this is a desirable skill in working in professional learning teams in a school: “When you employ them you want to know that they can take their place on a professional learning team with other teachers and be able to express their understanding of teaching and learning” (2018-FG-UTE07).

The AfGT is designed to illustrate the teaching standards using evidence from authentic classroom practice. It asks PSTs to express their understanding of teaching and the subsequent impact on student learning with explicit connections to the APSTs. 2018-S-PST55 describes how they navigated the standards saying, “I became familiar and confident with the AITSL Standards and displayed examples of how I can integrate these into my teaching practice.” The APST are an expression of the components of teaching, and their quality. The standards provide a framework to understand practice. PSTs reported that the AfGT facilitates high quality processes of thinking about practice in reference to the APST. PSTs described the centrality of the standards in framing their thinking about teaching: “one of the areas that AfGT excels is that it actually constantly makes you think about which of the standards … which teaching standards you’re addressing” (2018-FG-PST04). Using the standards in this assessment of their practice supported thinking about components of teaching and how these connect. 2018-FG-PST02 observed: “As you go through the assessment … you’re thinking about how your practice actually address those standards.”

As the standards are articulated at four levels – graduate, proficient, highly accomplished and lead, they can also act as a map to development. As 2018-FG-PST04 said, “I found it quite useful to have the idea that you can move up to the proficient standards because some of the regular standards … were really vague and … luckily enough that [it] occurred to me maybe I should look at the proficient standards to tell me what I should be doing in this area.” PSTs found that the task supported them to identify their competencies, to target areas that they can improve on and conceive of themselves as developing professionals.

Expands understanding of praxis: linking theory, research and practice

“Situating teaching practice” refers to specific contexts related to individual students, learning, curriculum and pedagogy, and the broader contexts of diverse classrooms and the school community in which these activities take place. Pre-service teachers are required to meet the mandated standards that specify the critical components of teachers’ work. The interrelationships between and across standards and their inherent complexity, owing to the nature of a “teacher’s role”, can be challenging to capture through assessment tasks and processes. The following PST interview excerpt provides insights into how the AfGT provided the impetus to consider specific and notable classroom events, using reasoning to align and justify them using a research-based approach:

“I just thought it was a really useful task. I mean so much of what you do as a teacher is making those kinds of snap decisions and figuring out what’s required of you in a particular situation, and where the boundaries are and what your role is as a … Having those scenarios that easily happen in any classroom next year and having to pick which is the best option and then justify with just a little bit of literature.” (2018-FG-PST03)

The immediate relevance of the assessment task was also noted by 2018-FG-PST01 in the following quote. There is a sense that the AfGT is not simply a task that needs to be completed in order to graduate, but that there is an authentic link to the “real” work of teachers and the type of situated practice that is both meaningful and relevant for their future teaching practice.

“I thought that was just super practical and actually a bit of representation of how schools work on an everyday basis and the kind of decisions you have to make when you’re a teacher and felt a bit more genuine and less superficial.” (2018-FG-PST01)

While completing the requirements for the AfGT, PSTs are mentored by a classroom teacher and supported by a teacher educator. The classroom experience and processes of collaboration, observation and feedback are central to supporting the PST in making links between what is taught in their academic studies and enacted in practice. This ensures that there is coherence and integration between content covered in the pre-service teaching course and the PSTs’ experience in the classroom. Pre-service teachers shared how the AfGT was useful in improving their teaching and in assisting them to identify gaps or possible improvements in their practices such as, “you’re becoming more aware of … what you lack and the things that you’re doing that you didn’t realise you were doing before. In that way, I think it contributes to our ability to teach … we become more in tune with our actions” (2018-FG-PST02). Others identified specific goals for improvement moving forward, including “well, one thing that I want to improve is that to develop a rubric for students together” (2018-FG-PST01), whilst others looked back at their practice and proposed what they could have changed: “I would change it to, I think, more one-on-one [teaching]” (2018-FG-PST02).

Both PSTs and University Teacher Educators commented on engaging in praxis or linking theory and practice.

“Mostly the amalgamation of them living out the theory within their action … rather than a stand‐alone assessment task that shows they’re understanding content theory but practically actually applying it throughout the student placement is very valuable” (2018-FG-UTE02)

”It also prepares the student for what is now common practice in schools that we’re increasingly going to … We all have coaches and peer mentoring, and it is that whole process now of observation and feedback and accepting the feedback and moving on with your … own professional growth. I think it’s like a handshake with the mentor.” (2018-FG-UTE12)

Supporting praxis has been a perpetual challenge for initial teacher educators but it was noted by PSTs and Teacher Educators alike that the AfGT provided the scope for being able to articulate classroom decision-making processes and justifying it using theory and research.

Builds evaluative thinking through professional reasoning

Both participant groups agreed that the TPA provided opportunities for PSTs to build their capacity in evaluative thinking. It is evident that the PSTs regarded teaching as a profession that lends naturally to reflective practices, consistent with one of the aims articulated in the APSTs, which is to “inform the development of professional learning goals, provide a framework by which teachers can judge the success of their learning and assist self-reflection and self-assessment.” (Yinger & Hendricks-Lee, 2011, as cited in AITSL, 2018, p. 3).

PSTs felt that “we’re pretty used to critical reflection” (2018-FG-PST03) and “I think I was quite used to it” (2018-FG-PST01). Similarly, UTEs viewed the AfGT as “great for reflection of the teaching process” (2018-S-UTE12) and “really brought the focus on reflection and evaluation” (2019-S-UTE01).

However, evaluative thinking consists of more than just reflection. It requires incorporating purposeful reasoning within the iterative cycles of planning, enacting, collecting evidence, analysis, and evaluation by PSTs. The AfGT was found to facilitate critical reflection, requiring PSTs to draw on evidence to provide a thoughtful account of the basis on which decisions about their teaching practice have been made.

“Although I disliked having to video myself teaching, watching it back and actually seeing how a lesson went was a very beneficial way of reflecting on my teaching practice.” (2018-S-PST20)

“Sure. I think that’s the greatest strength of the entire AfGT. I personally feel it’s because reflection is pretty much a big part of teaching anyway.” (2018-FG-PST02)

“The AfGT requires pre-service teachers to deeply reflect on their planning and teaching. This would have had direct results on students learning as effective evaluations and re-planning of lessons would have occurred.” (2018-S-UTE01)

Although these PSTs reflected on their own teaching practice, these reflections are not insular but were very much learner-centred in applying evidence to inform the continuous improvement of their teaching.

“I can now follow a similar method of assessing my own teaching in future classrooms by delivering a series of lessons involving different assessment types and creating assessment data trends to understand how much my students have learnt. If the class shows good results, it would indicate good teaching from my end, and if results are poor for summative assessment, I would have an indication that perhaps I need to utilise different teaching pedagogies.” (2018-S-PST77)

Apart from effects on PSTs, teacher educators also expressed the impact that the AfGT was having in building an evaluative culture in schools and among teacher educators themselves.

”Can I add to that comment from many mentor teachers? They’re highly impressed with the footage, the photographic footage being used as a tool for feedback [sic] … . It’s actually re-energising their teaching practice at the school level I believe. They’ve opened us to those practices in their classrooms. They’re not afraid to put their hand up. You can come and film me or you can come and observe me tomorrow whatever.” (2018-FG-UTE08)

“It makes a mentor reflect on their own practice, that’s for sure.” (2018-FG-UTE12)

“It has enabled me to reflect on the fundamental elements necessary to support the Pre-Service Teachers.” (2019-S-UTE07)

The perspectives of PSTs and UTEs were mainly in alignment though UTEs did differ in that they also recognised effects of this TPA on in-service teachers developing expertise in building an evaluative culture by gathering data and analysing data about teaching.

Can redirect students to focus on compliance tactics

Whilst participants reported that the AfGT promoted deeper analysis and articulation of their teaching practice, there was also evidence that several PSTs viewed the AfGT as predominantly a compliance task. They used phrases such as “box ticking” to describe how the task structure limited their responses and detracted from their professional growth. One PST said, “I found it tedious and not very helpful for furthering my practice. I felt like it was just ‘ticking the boxes’ to show that I was competent” (2019-S-PST6).

Data showed that some PSTs felt the AfGT did not improve their teaching. 2018-S-PST16 stated, “this has not improved nor allowed me to focus on developing my teaching practice.” Another PST said that it didn’t change their reflective orientation not their focus on using data which they described thus:

The AfGT didn’t change anything about my pedagogy. I was already creating lesson plans to work towards a goal, being critically reflective of my own practices, and interpreting assessment data. It was just another box to tick, another task to chip away at during my free periods … we are constrained in too many ways. Students become more obsessed with how to tick the box of an unknown assessor than focusing on how to make this be a learning experience.” (2019-S-PST14).

The challenge of completing the task was palpable for 2018-S-PST41: “It was such an arbitrary task to fit my teaching around the AfGT requirements. I felt like I was not … learning in an authentic way because I had to manipulate my teaching to fit the mandate.” Set within limited opportunities to practice, this challenging task has left this PST feeling like they could have been learning more about teaching if they did not need to meet the requirements of the task. Compliance prevailed.

Discussion

There is no question that the requirement to complete the AfGT is demanding and that the suites of assessment that PSTs completed in their programmes before the introduction of this TPA also have positive effects. Nonetheless, PSTs and UTEs reported that there were several constructive consequences. They found that the requirement to link standards to practice through an in-depth example of teaching sequence deepened their understanding of teaching. The AfGT led to PSTs deepening their analysis of their teaching, framed by teaching standards. In so doing they linked research to their practice and used this to articulate the reasoning behind their practice decisions. The PSTs were better able to articulate their teaching decisions drawing on the standards in an integrated way.

Using the rich perspectives of PSTs and UTEs, the data analysed in this case study demonstrate that in addition to assessing teacher readiness using the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (Graduate level), the instrument facilitated growth in PSTs towards bringing together their understanding of the complex intellectual work of teaching. The UTEs recognised that the AfGT can positively impact on PSTs’ readiness to teach. PSTs reported that they improved in their capacity to apply and integrate teaching standards. This led to an expanded view of teaching as a developmental continuum in which they will continue to improve throughout their career.

With praxis at its core, the TPA aims to link the standards, theory and research (academic endeavours) to classroom practice (professional knowledge, practice and engagement). The AfGT tool provides a framework for the articulation and expression of praxis in a form that is supported with evidence from the classroom, incorporating analysis of student data to support PSTs reasoning and decision-making. The results indicate that there is potential for a TPA in establishing the importance of praxis firmly as a lifelong endeavour. The TPA supports the need for teachers to demonstrate awareness and responsiveness to the ongoing evolution of theory, research and practice mediated by the needs of students, temporal factors and emergent pedagogies and practice. The purpose of a TPA is immediately relevant in pre-service teacher courses, but ongoing professional engagement in praxis is valued and evident in the AITSL standards at all stages of a teacher’s career progression. The TPA is a critical assessment task for successful completion of initial teacher education courses and as a cornerstone for assessing praxis.

A hallmark of professional reasoning is the ability to link theory and research to classroom practice in an iterative and purposeful way, drawing on evidence of impact on students. The inclination to engage in a feedback loop as PSTs progress through different career stages is more than a professional development and capacity building exercise. As school and learning contexts shift, teachers must rely on their professional reasoning to design and enact authentic pedagogies and practices. The TPA cannot form professional reasoning, however, a TPA can and should elicit evidence-based reasoning that fosters reflection and growth in professional understanding. The results show emerging evidence of PSTs interrogating their teaching practices in a safe and guided environment and a nascent indication of this having an impact on schools and ITE institutions. As PSTs prepare to become classroom ready, the critical skills of professional reasoning and having an evaluative mindset may be the enduring qualities that transcend a compliance framework and establish them as self-directed professionals.

Yet a small subset of the data suggests that the task may have failed to foster growth for some PSTs, who merely fulfilled the requirements without benefit. As a result, they felt frustrated that their time was consumed by the task. However, it is also possible that the task had a positive impact, but they were unable to recognise it at the time of data collection. Although these PSTs reported that the assessment tool was compliance focussed, this was not reflected in the university educator responses across all data sets who reported benefits.

Conclusion

The policy of mandating a TPA is designed to measure PSTs preparedness to enter the profession – in essence, it is offering a gatekeeping function. The AfGT has made explicit a range of components of teachers’ work that can provide rigorous evidence of PST’s readiness to teach and situates this in classroom practice. This article reports on a robust case study of the lived reality and lessons learned from implementing the AfGT through the lens of two key stakeholders: pre-service teachers and university-based teacher educators. Each has negotiated the requirements of the AfGT and recognised its value in promoting professional growth by fostering rigorous analysis of teaching practice, set within the guiding framework of teaching standards. Most importantly the AfGT expanded PSTs capacity to link theory, research and practice by using the vital skill of professional reasoning and is establishing the centrality of praxis in their growth as a professional. Though several PST found the AfGT solely an exercise in compliance, their beliefs need to be held against the UTEs view, that it was an assignment that promoted critical thinking about teaching and learning and that resulted in PST professional growth. Nevertheless, we acknowledge that not all participants reported this, and this prompts those implementing the AfGT to closely evaluate ways to foster growth through the experience of completing a TPA.

This research provides evidence that a TPA can transcend compliance objectives. Yet it comes with several caveats. First, the AfGT relies on providing a clear task description that has a strong alignment with all components of course design in the teacher education programme. It needs to be supported by UTEs who can provide expert guidance to PSTs and their supervising mentors. When these conditions are met, the instrument can not only assess readiness but contribute to PSTs development. Second, completing the requirements of the assessment task is demanding for PSTs and is commensurately demanding for the supervising teachers and UTEs that support the process. With this demanding and high-stakes assessment, there is a risk that students may focus on compliance tactics by selecting a simple teaching sequence to ensure their success (Buchanan et al., 2020). It remains a risk that instead of challenging PSTs to strive to expand their practice it can have the opposite effect.

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the part funding from the Australian Institute for Teaching & School Leadership (AITSL) in the first year of the project (2017) and the significant and ongoing financial support provided by member institutions of the AfGT Consortium. The authors also thank members of the AfGT Consortium for the enthusiastic and collaborative work in developing the Assessment for Graduate Teaching.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the interpretation of the data by all members of the AfGT Consortium.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jeana Kriewaldt

Jeana Kriewaldt is Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne. Her research focuses on initial teacher education, teacher learning and their interrelationships.

Natasha Ziebell

Natasha Ziebell is a Lecturer at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. She has worked extensively in designing and implementing initial teacher education programmes and conducts professional learning programmes for teachers.

Katina Tan

Katina Tan is a Research Fellow at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. Her research focuses on assessment and evaluation in initial teacher education, early career teaching, student dispositions and learning outcomes.

Nadine Crane

Nadine Crane is a Lecturer at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. She has worked extensively on integrated curriculum and inquiry-based learning, student voice and agency, pedagogy and assessment, and developing clinical teaching skills in the classroom.