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?
no
Does this study draw on a large, preexisting data set?
no
Research Approach
- Grounded theory
- Qualitiative
Geographic Setting
Institutional Context
Certification Level
Programatic Focus
- Literacy Education
- Primary
Research Location Context
- student-teaching seminar
- University Reading Clinic
Preservice Participants
- Undergraduates (university based program)
Preservice Sample Size
98
Duration of Data Collection
Data Sources
- Interviews
- Written reflections
Data Analysis Tools
- coding (non-specific)
- iterative analysis
- Qualitative Analysis
Researcher Positionality
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