TEACHER ASSESSMENT AND THE QUEST FOR TEACHER QUALITY Teacher Assessment and the Quest for Teacher Quality is an essential resource that provides school leaders, administrators, and teacher educators with a wide range of perspectives on the complex issue of teacher quality. The book examines assessment in the context of preparation, licensure, hiring, tenure, and even dismissal and explores a wealth of relevant topics. Comprehensive in scope, the handbook includes contributions from leading experts in the field of teacher quality and teacher assessment. This important book contains basic information on a variety of approaches to teacher assessment and teacher quality topics including the science and psychology of teacher selection, performance-based assessments, and hiring decisions. In addition, the contributors explore the role of formative assessments in new teacher induction, assessing for teacher tenure, various approaches to annual performance assessments, assessing teacher contributions to student achievement, and the law regarding teacher dismissals. The expert authors also tackle broader assessment issues including the interpretation of assessments, standards for teacher evaluation, and the inherent dilemma posed by measuring the quality of teaching. For the goal of ensuring quality teaching for all our students, Teacher Assessment and the Quest for Teacher Quality is an important resource and a lasting contribution to the literature on the topic.

Effective language learning depends on effective instruction. In order to investigate whether or not this is taking place, teachers' classroom pedagogical practices, both in-service and pre-service, are frequently monitored by means of observation and feedback. However, research indicates that although this process has potential value for teacher learning and development, there are also a number of attendant problems and it is therefore important that practitioners share their experience with others in the field in order to expand the existing knowledge base. This volume investigates participant experiences, looking beyond the materials used and examining the way in which language teachers are evaluated and supported throughout their careers. Particular attention is given to the practices and frameworks involved, outlining key approaches and discussing tools for investigation and collaboration. The book highlights the importance of the use of talk to foster reflection and teacher learning, the value of learning from experienced others and the importance of giving voice to all those involved in the process of development and evaluation.

What constitutes a high quality teacher education program and what standards teacher candidates should meet before receiving their teaching credential? This volume advances deep understanding of the nature and sources of policy affecting the preparation of teachers in the U.S. and the conflicts or interconnections of these policies with the broader field of education policy. Contributions from actors in the policy world and experts representing the stakeholders are balanced and based on issues currently facing the field. Policy is viewed as evolving and political. The connection or lack thereof between policy and research is examined. Policy case studies ground the principles developed within specific chapters in practice and illustrate that policy questions and solutions are continually evolving and unsettled. Chapter-end commentaries by the editors relate the focus of each chapter to the overarching themes of the book: policy formation, policy influences, policy paradoxes, and connections to research. This volume is an essential resource for understanding and resolving today’s uncertainty and confusion over teacher education policy.

This book introduces how large-scale teacher reforms are implemented and impacting teachers around the world. Previous books on teacher policy or reforms have tended to focus on the background, development, and descriptions of teacher reforms.

This book discusses teacher evaluation and how it can provide the foundations for professional development. The editors and contributors illustrate how teachers with varying levels of expertise, experience and learning needs can benefit from differentiated evaluation and professional development designed to help them reach their full potential. The book examines various aspects of differentiation including levels of experience from pre-service to veteran, practices of school principals as they supervise and evaluate staff, and wider education policies that can support or hinder differentiation. Providing fascinating insights into how teacher evaluation policies can support practice in a variety of contexts, this timely collection will be of interest and value to students and scholars of teacher evaluation and professional development.

Who Decides Who Becomes a Teacher? extends the discussions and critiques of neoliberalism in education by examining the potential for Schools of Teacher Education to contest policies that are typical in K-12 schooling. Drawing on a case study of faculty collaboration, this edited volume reimagines teacher preparation programs as crucial sites of resistance to, and refusal of, unsound education practices and legislation. This volume also reveals by example how education faculty can engage in collaborative scholarly work to investigate the anticipated and unanticipated effects of policy initiatives on teaching and learning.

Performance-based assessments have become a critical component of every teacher education program. Such assessments allow teacher candidates to demonstrate their content and pedagogical knowledge, skills, and dispositions in an authentic setting. Evaluating Teacher Education Programs through Performance-Based Assessments analyzes and discusses the theory and concepts behind teacher education program evaluation using assessment tools such as lesson plans, classroom artifacts, student work examples, and video recordings of lessons. Emphasizing critical real-world examples and empirically-based studies, this research-based publication is an ideal reference source for university administrators, teacher educators, K-12 leaders, and graduate students in the field of education.

"1. The book offers teacher educators and stakeholders an overview of accountability in the era of education reform and embraces teacher education accountability as a lever for reconstructing its targets, purposes, and consequences in keeping with the larger democratic project. 2. The book introduces a framework, eight dimensions of accountability, for interrogating dimensions of accountability policy and practice by revealing an accountability initiative's operation but also exposing underlying values and principles, theory of change, and relationship to larger political and policy agendas. 3. Using the authors' framework, eight dimensions of accountability, the book deconstructs four of the most visible education reform initiatives relevant to teacher educators and education stakeholders. The book proposes a rallying call to teacher educators and stakeholders to reclaim accountability using a new approach: democratic accountability in teacher education" --

The SAGE Handbook of Research on Teacher Education offers an ambitious and international overview of the current landscape of teacher education research, as well as the imagined futures. The two volumes are divided into sub-sections: Section One: Mapping the Landscape of Teacher Education Section Two: Learning Teacher Identity in Teacher Education Section Three: Learning Teacher Agency in Teacher Education Section Four: Learning Moral & Ethical Responsibilities of Teaching in Teacher Education Section Five: Learning to Negotiate Social, Political, and Cultural Responsibilities of Teaching in Teacher Education Section Six: Learning through Pedagogies in Teacher Education Section Seven: Learning the Contents of Teaching in Teacher Education Section Eight: Learning Professional Competencies in Teacher Education and throughout the Career Section Nine: Learning with and from Assessments in Teacher Education Section Ten: The Education and Learning of Teacher Educators Section Eleven: The Evolving Social and Political Contexts of Teacher Education Section Twelve: A Reflective Turn This handbook is a landmark collection for all those interested in current research in teacher education and the possibilities for how research can influence future teacher education practices and policies.

This volume examines the agency of second/foreign language teachers in diverse geographical contexts and in both K-12 and adult education. It offers new understandings and conceptualizations of second/foreign language teacher agency through a variety of types of empirical data. It also demonstrates the use of different methodologies or analytic tools to study the multidimensional, dynamic and complex nature of second/foreign language teacher agency. The chapters draw on a range of theories and approaches to language teacher agency (including ecological theory, positioning theory, complexity theory and actor-network theory) that expand our understanding of the concept, while at the same time presenting various analytic approaches such as discourse studies and narrative inquiry. The chapters also analyze the connection of agency to other relevant topics, such as teacher identity, emotions, positioning and autonomy.