Description and Rationale for the edTPA

The Illinois Teacher Performance Assessment, more commonly known as the edTPA, is an Illinois licensure requirement administered by the Evaluation Systems Group of the Pearson Education Company for all teacher candidates who graduate on or after the Fall 2015 semester.  A major component of the edTPA is video-recording a portion of a learning segment planned and taught by the candidate. Like the current Illinois teacher evaluation system (PERA) adapted from Danielson’s (2013) Framework for Professional Practice, the edTPA expects teacher candidates to:

• plan for culturally and developmentally appropriate instruction in writing,
  
  
• implement instruction and document the learning segment (edTPA requires video-recording and artifacts, such as student work samples),
  
  
• reflect on student learning and document these reflections in writing, and
  
  
• determine ways to improve instruction and document these future plans in writing.

The edTPA requirement is a high stakes assessment that is required for licensure in Illinois and cannot be waived or dismissed.  Teacher candidates from Illinois must submit their video-recorded learning segment, student work samples, and written documentation to the Pearson company midway through their student teaching semester.  If a candidate’s edTPA submission is not deemed acceptable by the evaluation team at Pearson, the candidate will only have one opportunity to revise or remediate this first submission.  Failure to pass the initial or subsequent submission will mean that the candidate cannot be licensed to teach.  Therefore, it is crucial that teacher candidates have multiple opportunities to practice video-recording of their teaching, as well as planning, implementing, observing, and reflecting about their instruction prior to student teaching.  Teacher candidates need to acquire basic planning, teaching, observation, and reflection skills to meet the edTPA requirement.  They will also need practice and guidance during clinical practice prior to student teaching to develop and hone these skills at levels that will be expected for a well-prepared, novice teacher.  The SIUe faculty is adjusting the curricula of teacher preparation programs to meet these needs.  Research supports the use of video-recording of the teaching practice as a medium to improve observational skills, recognize unintentional behaviors/language, and recognize hidden assumptions and unexamined behaviors (Nelson, 2008; Star & Strickland, 2007; Amobi & Irwin, 2009), and SIUe faculty application of this research with teacher candidates since 2011 continues to be encouraging.  This SIUe edTPA website is an important step towards more comprehensive communication with cooperating teachers that will support SIUe teacher candidate success with edTPA assessment.

Nelson, T. H. (2008). Making the hidden explicit: Learning about equity in k-8 preservice science education. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 11.

Star, J. R., & Strickland, S. K. (2007). Learning to observe: using video to improve preservice mathematics teachers’ ability to notice. Journal of Math Teacher Education, 11.

Amobi, F. A., & Irwin, L. (2009). Implementing on-campus microteaching to elicit preservice teachers’ reflection on teaching actions: Fresh perspective on an established practice. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 9(1).