From the perspective of historical institutionalism, based on several critical junctures of the past half-century in China, this paper divides over 40-year history of China's teacher certification institution into four stages and elaborates on mechanisms and processes of critical junctures that impact even determine teacher certification…

While teacher preparation in the United States continues a long period of decline, the largest-producing state, Texas, is experiencing substantial changes in how it prepares teachers. The number of teachers prepared by traditional university pathways continues to decline, and the number from alternative pathways is rising. Using extensive da ta…

In response to increased accountability demands placed on teacher preparation programs across the United States, some programs are using standardized teacher performance assessments, such as edTPA. In our elementary teacher preparation program, a recent state mandate stipulated that teacher candidates had to successfully complete edTPA in order to…

The edTPA, a recent example of a teacher candidate assessment, has influenced how teacher education classes are taught and how teacher candidates are learning. We describe three tensions present in candidate narratives during two separate years of edTPA implementation: attention to the edTPA rubrics vs. the student teachers' real teaching, a focus…

We study the effectiveness of teachers certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) in Washington State, which has one of the largest populations of National Board-Certified Teachers (NBCTs) in the nation. Based on value-added models in math and reading, we find that NBPTS-certified teachers are about 0.01-0.05…

Unqualified paraprofessionals are teaching many elementary physical education (PE) programs around the United States. These teachers have neither the experience nor the education to provide quality instruction to students. Few researchers have identified the essential nature of teacher feedback in teaching motor skills, and it has been…

This commentary on the article titled "Examining the Internal Structure Evidence for the Performance Assessment for California Teachers: A Validation Study of the Elementary Literacy Teaching Event for Tier 1 Teacher Licensure" provides an overview of Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT), its relationship to edTPA and…

With the adoption by most states of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English language arts and literacy and for mathematics (CCSS Initiative, 2010a, 2010b) comes major changes in public education that will affect instructional practice, curriculum, and assessment across the nation. Heritage, Walqui, and Linquanti (2015) argued that the…

This investigation examined the perspectives of twenty National Board Certified Teachers toward the use of growth measures of student learning for teacher evaluation. An analysis of responses from four focus groups that included elementary and secondary teachers, showed that there is much concern about the validity and efficiency of current…

The purpose of this report is to explore the content-related validity evidence supporting the English language arts (ELA) components of the "ETS"® National Observational Teaching Exam (NOTE) assessment series, a kindergarten through 6th-grade teacher licensure assessment. To establish the content knowledge required for the effective…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of a curriculum design-based (CDB) professional development model on K-12 teachers' capacity to integrate engineering education in the classroom. This teacher professional development approach differs from other training programs where teachers learn how to use a standard curriculum and…

The practice of teaching a foreign language in primary schools in Italy was first officially provided for by a decree in 1985, but it was only in 1991 that the figure of the Foreign Language (FL) teacher was actually defined. The issue at that stage was how to select and train the prospective L2 teachers, and so in-service courses were organised…

The purpose of this report is to explore the content-related validity evidence supporting the mathematics components of the "ETS"® National Observational Teaching Exam (NOTE) assessment series, a kindergarten through 6th grade teacher licensure assessment. To establish the content knowledge required for the effective teaching of…

Interpretations for licensure tests involve a series of inferences or a validity argument, leading from the test score to decisions about who is accepted or denied entry into a profession. Utilizing an argument-based framework for validation based on the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing, we explore the evidence for the ongoing…

The edTPA, a nationally available performance assessment for teacher candidates, has recently been developed and implemented in teacher education programs across the United States. Advocates make arguments for the need for such an assessment while critics of standardized performance assessments point out the dangers of standardization. This…