From Clinical Preparation to Professional Practice: A Case Study Assessing Teacher Evaluation Outcomes and School District Domains in First Year Teachers' Performance Evaluations
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Date
2015-01-01
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Department
Language, Literacy & Culture
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Language Literacy and Culture
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This item may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. It is made available by UMBC for non-commercial research and education. For permission to publish or reproduce, please see http://aok.lib.umbc.edu/specoll/repro.php or contact Special Collections at speccoll(at)umbc.edu
Distribution Rights granted to UMBC by the author.
Distribution Rights granted to UMBC by the author.
Abstract
National accrediting agencies, such as the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP), are requiring teacher preparation institutions to provide follow up and mentoring to their graduates. However, few research-based practices have currently emerged to help teacher education institutions address this requirement. This study is one of the first of its kind to address the accreditation agencies? mandate to collect ongoing evidence on teacher effectiveness in the state of Maryland. The study examines how preservice and inservice teacher evaluation systems (Danielson, 2007) can align and work together to support the continuous development of teachers and positively impact student achievement. The study monitored the development of five African-American female teachers through their first year of teaching. The participants in the study were recent graduates from an accredited teacher education program at a Historically Black Institution. The first year teachers in this mixed methods case study participated in a professional development process that included focus groups, semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, and teacher performance evaluations to analyze the ongoing development of their teaching practices in relation to the knowledge, skills, and dispositions gained in their undergraduate program preparation. This process required teachers to analyze their baccalaureate evaluation experiences as well as their first year professional evaluation experiences in order to determine how preservice and inservice performance expectations align. The study provides initial evidence of a positive association between teacher performance, as measured by the school district'sevaluation system, and the university'sconceptual framework. The overall findings support that teacher evaluation processes and professional development processes are interconnected and foster impactful methods to promote the development of first year teachers. Results of the study indicated a triad of benefits to teachers including: opportunities for self-assessments and reflection, opportunities for conversations and feedback on teaching, as well as, the need for ownership and choices in improving their practice. This study contributes knowledge to inform teacher preparation programs, especially Historically Black Colleges and Universities, on how to create cultures of evidence to inform the evolution and impact of preservice and inservice performance evaluation systems.