The Teaching Performing Assessment (TPA) and its Impact on Graduates' Preparedness for Employment

The preparation of effective school teachers for employment has been a prevalent concern across the OECD countries for many decades (Schwartz et a., 2007). While some countries focus on attraction and recruitment of teachers, others are grappling with increasing quality and preparedness for employment in a complex profession that teaching has proven to be. There is mounting pressure on Initial Teacher Education (ITE) providers in Australia to ensure that graduates are work-ready for employment, or as others propose, “classroom-ready” (TEMAG 2014). Following recommendations from the Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group (TEMAG 2014) and subsequent changes to national accreditation standards and procedures (AITSL 2015), ITE providers must ensure that pre-service teachers successfully complete a Teacher Performance Assessment (TPA) as a graduation requirement. This assessment must reflect classroom teaching practice, be valid, have clear, measurable and justifiable criteria and be reliable (AITSL 2017). Similar high stakes assessments operate internationally, including in the United States (Darling-Hammond et al. 2013). This chapter reports on initiatives by three ITE providers to develop and implement such an assessment. While this capstone assessment that measures readiness for employment must be developed to simulate the planning, teaching and assessment cycle of the teaching role, it also requires evidence of the impact on student learning. How has the teacher impacted, through their work, individual students’ progression of learning? Drawing on focus group data, this chapter will examine pre-service teacher views on how each university ITE provider prepared them for this graduate assessment and how this assessment improved their confidence to teach and their capacity to demonstrate readiness for employment. Finally, the implications for graduate employability are considered in relation to further research