edTPA: An Assessment that Reduces the Quality of Teacher Education

Abstract

As one of the first students in my TESOL teacher education program to complete my edTPA submission, I recently shared my experience with a class where the majority of the students were at the beginning of their program. Afterwards, one of my classmates expressed that while my presentation was informative, it was also very depressing. My student teaching seminar this past semester should have been one of the most valuable and insightful experiences of my teacher development program. My class consisted of peers whom I have grown to respect over the course of our program, and a legendary professor who is able to espouse the ideals of teaching and working with emergent bilinguals and their families, while also tackling the realities of teaching in an urban public school. Nonetheless, my peers and I ended the semester describing our edTPA-focused student teaching seminar not as “inspiring” or “practical for our teaching,” but rather as “painful” and “as smooth as possible” considering the circumstances.

Keywords

• Teachers
• Teacher training
• Teacher certification
• Teacher certification standards
• Student teachers
• Student teacher evaluations
• Education
• Applied linguistics
• edTPA