In the Classroom

Beginning in the fall of 2017, teacher candidates at West Virginia University were required to complete the edTPA, a multifaceted performance assessment that comprises the core aspects of teaching. The implementation fell in line with a new State mandate requiring all West Virginia teacher candidates to take a performance assessment as part of both program completion and program certification.

Dr. Bernard Jones, program director of assessment for educator preparation at CEHS, coordinates the implementation of the edTPA in all teacher preparation programs at WVU. According to Jones, the edTPA was selected because of its compatibility with the University’s teacher education curriculum.

“I think that a lot of the things that we do in our programs are aligned,” Jones said. “And I think the edTPA puts our teacher candidates in a position where they are more classroom-ready at the end of their programs.”

Before the State enacted the change, CEHS students were required to take the Principles of Learning and Teaching exam, known as the PLT, to earn certification. The key difference between the two forms of assessment is that the PLT is a traditional exam that tests teacher candidates’ knowledge, whereas the edTPA focuses more on teaching in action.

Because current teacher candidates had not planned to take the edTPA, CEHS faculty have stepped up to offer support to prepare them for the assessment. Dr. Heiko ter Haseborg, an assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction/Literacy Studies, leads a student seminar to prepare students for the assessment.

“We, of course, want our students to do really well, so we are doing everything to help them and support them,” ter Haseborg said.

The seminars walk students through each component of the edTPA, which includes three tasks for secondary education teacher candidates and four tasks for elementary education teacher candidates.

The Tasks at Hand

The three primary components of the edTPA, referred to in the assessment as tasks, encompass the major functions of the teaching profession – planning, instruction and assessment. 

Task 1 of the edTPA requires teacher candidates to write a context that details information about their classroom environments, including student demographics and individual student needs. Candidates then write a series of three to five lesson plans with instructional materials and assessments, accompanied by a commentary that details their thought processes in developing those lesson plans.

“It’s really important, first, to know about where you are teaching and who you are teaching in order to plan successfully,” said Rachel Sager, a teacher candidate in secondary social studies. “On top of that, you have to have well-developed lesson plans. You want to be delivering content, but at the same time you want to be challenging your students in a way that allows them to understand the content.”

Teacher candidates implement their lesson plans for Task 2 of the edTPA, filming themselves teaching in their student-teaching classrooms. Ultimately, the candidates create a 20-minute video that showcases their rapport with classroom students and instructional adjustments based on student responses to the lessons. Like the lesson plans, the video is accompanied by a commentary that details the adjustments the candidates made as they taught the lessons.

“In an actual classroom where a teacher is teaching, the teacher has to know how to make immediate adjustments during instruction,” Jones said. “Many times, novice teachers struggle with that. I think the edTPA pushes teacher candidates at an early stage in their development to examine those things.”

For Task 3, teacher candidates must show how they’ve assessed student learning after teaching their lesson plans. As with the first two tasks, the teachers must include a commentary that reflects on the process.

“You have to have concrete ways in which you can gauge whether students are actually learning, understanding and able to apply that information,” Sager said. “In both the program and in edTPA, we’ve been taught about how to reflect successfully as an educator to determine what went well, what did not go well and why.”

Candidates in elementary education have a fourth task that includes planning, instruction and assessment in mathematics. For those candidates, the first three tasks revolve around student literacy. Because secondary education students complete content-area specific versions of the edTPA, they are not required to complete a fourth task.

An Authentic Assessment

Though the edTPA requires a more extensive process than the PLT, ter Haseborg argues that the assessment is a better reflection of the work that CEHS teacher candidates complete throughout their programs.

“It’s much more practical,” ter Haseborg said. “You’re actually seeing them doing the work. And it’s not anything above and beyond what we already have them doing. They’re already planning lessons and considering the contexts that they’re in, the students that they’re working with, and the standards that they need to address. They have been reflecting on their work and their lessons all throughout their program, so it actually aligns more with the work they’ve been doing for several semesters.”

Though navigating the process of completing the edTPA has been a challenge for teacher candidates, many agree that that their time at CEHS has prepared them for it.

“As teachers, we’re taught that we need to be providing our students with authentic forms of assessment,” Sager said. “For us, edTPA is that authentic assessment. We’re used to planning, implementing and reflecting on our lessons daily, and that’s what we’re doing. It’s just a more drawn out process.”