A Critical Evaluation of Criteria-Based Assessment of Subject Knowledge and Other Competencies of Teachers in Training: A Practitioner Research Journey

This paper draws together a portfolio of nine peer reviewed papers investigating the assessment of teacher competencies conducted as practitioner research at a Higher Education (HE) provider of initial teacher education (ITE) programmes working in partnership with schools in the North West of England. These were published between 2013 and 2019 and lead or co-authored by the presenter. The papers encompass a research journey in terms of the focus and methodologies utilised. Earlier papers studied the effectiveness of a particular model for delivering a subject knowledge enhancement (SKE) course in creating new physical science teachers from those without chemistry or physics first degrees. SKE courses are employed in England as one strategy for increasing recruitment to teacher shortage subject areas in schools. This programme was attended, year-long, full-time and higher education accredited. However, later papers widened the scope to include the assessment of teacher subject knowledge and other competencies in a range of school subjects in the English education system and focused on the issues associated with the practice adopted by some providers of number grading individual competencies and overall teaching ability for formative and summative assessment of trainee teachers on school experience placement. The portfolio adopted a mixed methods approach with an emphasis on quantitative analysis. In considering the body of research, a critical realism perspective was adopted to describe and interpret the findings in terms of many demonstrable phenomena concerned with assessment as an event. An underlying mechanism is proposed to explain these in terms of the assessment behaviours of teacher practitioners who also act as teacher educator practitioners and may experience role conflict: conflicted role, professional judgement. This approach locates the portfolio’s contribution to new knowledge against pre-existing work, identifies unifying and coherent themes and establishes the papers’ individual and combined methodological rigour. The research had great local utility in initial teacher education in England. It also demonstrated issues with criteria-based assessment of teaching described through competencies and the problems with adopting number grades to aid quality assurance and accountability. Findings have relevance and may be applicable to similar assessment systems in any profession