Assessment, teacher education and the emergence of professional expertise

Abstract

This paper describes a new assessment tool that situates school literacy as a specific cognitive, cultural, social and emotional. It reports evidence of the extent to which this tool seems to have helped student teachers to broker and balance different kinds of data and knowledge flows. The study shows that the tool was helpful in encouraging student teachers to deepen their understanding of individual knowledge domains and to orchestrate across them to determine pathways to impact, learning priorities and actions. Its theoretical contribution is to suggest that there are benefits in recasting assessment and the professional knowledge that underpins it as a problem of how to align evidence from different theoretical and practice knowledge communities. Its contribution to the policy debate is to suggest that this could create a climate for more productive conversations between researchers, policy makers and practitioner communities.

Reference

Ellis, S., & Smith, V. (2017). Assessment, teacher education and the emergence of professional expertise. Literacy, 51(2), 84-93. https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/10.1111/lit.12115

Journal

Literacy

Analysis

Is this article part of a larger project or series of studies?

Does this study draw on a large, preexisting data set?

Research Approach

Grounded theory
Qualitiative

Geographic Setting

Scotland

Institutional Context

University based

Certification Level

Elementary

Programatic Focus

Literacy Education
Primary

Research Location Context

student-teaching seminar
University Reading Clinic

Preservice Participants

Undergraduates (university based program)

Preservice Sample Size

Duration of Data Collection

1 semester

Data Sources

Interviews
Written reflections

Data Analysis Tools

coding (non-specific)
iterative analysis
Qualitative Analysis

Researcher Positionality

not stated

Research Questions

How do Year 4 student teachers’ engage with the assessment tool?
Is this research question explicit from the manuscript? Yes

How does it impact on their professional learning?
Is this research question explicit from the manuscript? Yes