Trudy-Ann Sweeney

Using a Developmental Assessment Rubric to Revitalise Stakeholder Conversations in Professional Experience

This chapter reports a study that sought to examine the impact of introducing a developmental assessment rubric for professional experience for preservice teachers in one South Australian university. The rubric was designed to focus the mentoring and formative and summative assessment of professional experience to align with the new Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST). The study engaged with all the stakeholders on multiple dimensions of the mentorship and assessment of professional experience. The aspects selected for reporting in this chapter focus on the scope, value and changes in the nature and quality of the conversations between various stakeholders. The study has produced evidence that as a result of introducing the developmental rubric, the conversations changed from generalities and platitudes to more professional conversations that encompassed the full scope of what is expected of a graduate teacher, clarifying their level of performance and informing their orderly development. Those engaged in the assessment process using the rubric valued the shared language to talk about teaching and its developmental properties. The use of the rubric was shown to increase preservice teachers’ capacity and willingness to exercise agency in managing their own learning needs. This chapter argues that such an approach makes professional experience a pivotal element that defines, forms and assures the readiness of preservice teachers to teach and, more importantly, prepares them to be active agents of their learning in their future teaching careers.

Promoting Powerful Positive Affect

This chapter describes how one teacher’s innovative attempts to promote powerful positive affect (PPA) in her Mathematics classroom gave rise to the development of concerns and tensions related to her practice. Tensions and concerns are identified and discussed using the theoretical tools of Activity Theory (AT) (Engestrom, 1987) and the Stages of Concern (SoC) (Hall & Hord, 2006). The findings suggest that using these tools together provides a helpful theoretical lens through which researchers can understand the challenges of change and teachers’ specific professional development needs. The identification and resolution of these tensions is of crucial importance for understanding and facilitating the efforts of sustainable pedagogical change. This chapter highlights the tensions and concerns of one participant as she attempted to promote PPA.