From our journals: Teacher performance assessments, dubious education practices and CAM in the classroom
By: Cara Faith Bernard and Douglas Kaufman, University of Connecticut; Mark Kohan, Citizens Alliance for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; Glenn Mitoma, University of California, Santa Cruz
Published in: Education Policy Analysis Archives, April 18, 2023
edTPA is a widely used teacher performance assessment, but studies have raised concerns about its use. The researchers conducted a study of candidates’ and faculty members’ perceptions of edTPA on their learning and performance. The analysis of responses revealed six themes: confusion about the meaning of “ready to teach”; interference with relationship building; narrowed responsive teaching practices; concern for placements’ impact on assessments; mistrust of evaluators’ understanding of their contexts; and increased barriers for marginalized candidates. Findings suggest that edTPA can be interpreted as perpetrating forms of “epistemic injustice” and “slow violence” that impede diversity in the profession. To realize the promise of a more diverse teacher workforce (equity for all students and justice for marginalized communities) teacher educators and policymakers must ensure that the ways in which they prepare and evaluate teachers are increasingly more relational, diverse, equitable and just.
Review of Duck and cover: Confronting and correcting dubious practices in education
By: Paul Shaker, Simon Fraser University
Published in: Education Review, May 3, 2023
“Duck and Cover illustrates the potential of school reform while documenting the frailties of past efforts at change,” says Shaker. Schools can be somewhat resistant to change, but often it’s a form of survival since educators have been faced with wrong-headed remedies externally imposed by Washington, DC and statehouses, he says. Bureaucratic structure and its authorities, as well as the public and media have become hide-bound by traditional conceptions of how school should be conducted. Yet, as Shaker says, “There have been revolutions in American public education before. It could happen again. The stars align. Heroic leaders emerge. Fundamental renewal is possible.”
Complementary Medicine in the Classroom: Is it Science?
By: Frank Trocco, Lesley University
Published in: Current Issues in Education, Feb. 8, 2023
This academic essay provides a strategy for teaching complementary and alternative medicine, or CAM, in the classroom — a subject typically critiqued as unconventional and non-scientific. It demonstrates how students can enhance their critically reflective skills by examining polarizing and controversial medical topics, which are often considered by conventional doctors and researchers to be on the fringes of credible Western medicine. Included are examples of hands-on CAM experiments that can easily be incorporated in the classroom. It demonstrates how, by using an inquiry-based constructivist pedagogy, examining controversial and sometimes pseudoscientific ideas deepens learning.
About our journals
MLFTC sponsors three innovative, open-access journals on education scholarship. EPAA is a peer-reviewed, international, multilingual and multidisciplinary journal designed for researchers, practitioners, policymakers and development analysts concerned with education policies. Education Review publishes reviews of books on education topics and Acquired Wisdom essays by esteemed educational researchers, and CIE is a peer-reviewed journal led by MLFTC graduate students.
Contact Stephanie McBride-Schreiner to learn more about our journals.