Presented at the SMTE Symposium on Music Teacher Education in September 2019 and received the David J. Teachout Graduate Student Scholarship. I have also published an article of the same name in Arts Education Policy Review.
Abstract
The 1990s marked significant changes in philosophy, practice, and policy for arts educators. This decade marked an increase in accountability models developed outside of the scope of arts education, including observation models like the Danielson Framework of Teaching (Bernard, 2015; Danielson, 1996; Smith, 2017), in-service portfolio models like the Beginning Educator Support and Training Program, or BEST (Conway, 2002; Robinson, 2005). Additionally, pre-service teacher portfolios like the Performance Assessment of California Teachers, or PACT (Dover & Schultz, 2016; Petchauer, Bowe, & Wilson, 2018; Shaw, 2016) emerged alongside the in-service systems.
The 2000s, underscored by No Child Left Behind, marked a shift from soft policies based in recommendations, to hard policies requiring states to increase accountability in their schools via standardized testing (Hallam, 2011; Jones, 2009). Meanwhile, policymakers in California likewise adopted legislation to increase accountability among pre-service teachers through the use of performance assessments, such as the Performance Assessment for California Teachers, or PACT. By the end of the decade, Stanford University’s Center for Learning and Equity (SCALE) and the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (Parkes & Powell, 2015) had adapted PACT for national distribution. Upon hiring Pearson, a for-profit corporation, to facilitate test distribution, the test became known as the Teacher Performance Assessment, or edTPA (Kelley, 2014; Parkes & Powell, 2015).
Several studies have praised edTPA, contending that teacher education programs improve when they adjust to its teaching standards (Barron, 2015; Miller, Carroll, Jancic, & Markworth, 2015; Sloan, 2013). Still other studies have been critical of the evolution and implementation of edTPA, especially as a high-stakes determination of teacher preparation (Cochran-Smith, Piazza, & Power, 2013; Goldhaber, Cowan, & Theobald, 2017; Ledwell & Oyler, 2016; Lunsford, Warner, Park, & Morgan, 2016; Seymour, Burns, & Henry, 2018). However, only a few critical studies of edTPA have been published in arts education journals, with the exception of Parkes and Powell (2015), who stated, “Certainly the edTPA should not be implemented as standard policy” (p. 111). Even so, fewer studies in arts education have examined edTPA through the lens of critical policy analysis.
Using the method of critical policy analysis, or CPA, the purpose of this analysis was to examine the history and policies associated with edTPA in arts education. Specifically, I examined emerging literature concerning edTPA, with a particular focus on the policy documents released by Pearson, and considered the following questions: (a) How do those who created edTPA frame its function and importance?; (b) How have the standards and objectives of edTPA been justified as practice?; and (c) How has edTPA been used to privilege or marginalize individuals and groups? I will discuss emerging themes, including inconsistency, absence, and marginalization. I will also offer policy suggestions and implications, such as problematizing the separation of performing arts from visual art, opposing the exclusion of music educators from the development of the edTPA handbook, offering alternatives to high-stakes practices, and promoting music educator licensing decision at the university level.
References
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