Following increasing criticism of the variability in graduate teachers' readiness to enter the profession, the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) introduced a program accreditation requirement that all initial teacher education (ITE) providers must implement a Teaching Performance Assessment (TPA) in the final year of…

Historically, written and oral assessments such as essays and group presentations have been the predominant modes of assessment used to assess pre-service physical education students' and sport coaching students' teaching and coaching knowledge the pedagogical content knowledge of preservice physical education students and sport coaching students.…

Performance indicators and other accountability measures are increasingly common in higher education internationally. Consistent with this trend, the Australian Federal Government's Teacher Education Expert Panel (TEEP) recently recommended new reforms to strengthen the link between performance and funding of initial teacher education (ITE).…

Australian teacher education programs must include a summative, capstone assessment of students' achievement against the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (a teaching performance assessment). This program accreditation requirement seeks to ensure graduate teachers are adequately prepared for the academic and practical demands of…

Teacher candidates are called on to create effective lesson plans to implement during their student teaching semester, and certain components of lesson plans are recognized as particularly significant. Viewing lesson plans as the foundation for impactful instruction, it is necessary for teacher candidates to have skills in evaluating their plans…

Accountability measures have quickly entered into formal teacher-preparation programs. As a response, we introduce the use of structural equation modeling vis-à-vis path analysis in secondary-grade mathematics teacher preparation as a methodology to test models to understand the strength of relationships to recommendations of prominent…

In the last two decades, education has come under scrutiny. In response, the edTPA was designed as a panacea for a successful cure for teachers' lack of effectiveness. A teaching preparation program, or teaching, is a historically situated social practice encompassing belief structure, attitudes, and actions (Cochran-Smith et al., 2016).…

Teacher education is broadly seen as a policy problem in that it has failed to produce sufficient 'classroom ready' teachers. One accountability measure that has been introduced in Australia to address this purported problem is the capstone teacher performance assessments (TPAs). All Australian pre-service teachers must pass this hurdle assessment…

The aim of this manuscript is to provide PHETE program coordinators/faculty with recommendations for improving CTs ability to better support TCs during the physical and health education edTPA process. The authors will provide specific examples of how they used their own empirical research findings to improve edTPA success within their respective…

Study abroad programming has seen substantial growth at U.S. institutions of higher education over the past few decades. It has cemented itself as an integral educational option at nearly all U.S. colleges and universities, including for students in teacher preparation programs. While a growing body of research shows evidence that teacher…

Students' perceptions of assessment in higher education (HE) are critical, since such perceptions can enhance or diminish student motivation for learning. Despite this, research on students' perceptions of assessment in HE is scarce. To initiate a new agenda in this area, the present study explored Iranian doctoral students' (N = 16) perceptions…

Initial teacher education programs in Australia require all preservice teachers to complete a mandated teaching performance assessment. This places significant performative pressure on preservice teachers undertaking their final teaching placement. This paper reports on an action research project that aimed to co-construct a series of workshops…

Ensuring that teaching candidates are well prepared to enter the classroom is a critical mission for teacher preparation programs and state agencies that approve programs and set teacher licensure standards. Teaching performance assessments (TPAs) can be used to assess the readiness of potential teachers because they require candidates to provide…

Global attention continues to focus on the quality of teaching, teacher quality, teacher education programs and the preparation of graduates who are ready to teach. This self-study research focuses on one aspect of the preparation and assessment of graduates for teaching: the marking and moderation of a Teaching Assessment Performance (TPA), a…

In the state of California, the Education Specialist Teaching Performance Assessment (EdSp TPAs) is the latest accountability measure to be required of aspiring education specialists. Existing literature has been overwhelmingly critical of the TPAs (Dover, 2022; Valdez et al., 2020). And now, in the dawn of the EdSp TPAs, there must be a candid…