FORMATIVE IMPACTS OF HIGH-STAKES PORTFOLIO ASSESSMENT ON PRE-SERVICE ENGLISH TEACHERS: A QUALITATIVE STUDY OF BELIEF, ATTITUDE, AND IDENTITY

Abstract

Policymakers are promoting high-stakes performance assessments under the assumption that such assessments are valid measures of the work of teachers and of the skills or knowledge necessary to provide effective instruction, and that, therefore, requiring teacher candidates to pass such exams prior to licensure will help to increase the quality of America’s teaching force, and, with it, increase the achievement of American students. A large number of teachers and teacher educators are concurring in hopes that these examinations will help to professionalize the field of teaching. This qualitative case study (Merriam, 2001; Stake, 2005) examines the interactions of a cohort of pre-service English teachers at a major research university in the Midwest with a state mandated, state created high-stakes portfolio assessment—which, in order to protect anonymity, will be referred to generically as the Pre-Service Teacher Portfolio Assessment (PTPA). Methodologically centered in the interpretive paradigm of Lincoln & Guba (1985), this study utilizes in-depth interviewing (Seidman, 2006) and content analysis (Marshall & Rossman, 2006) to gather data, which is interpreted using constant comparison and open-coding techniques (Corbin & Strauss, 2008; Glaser & Strauss, 1967). The study found that participants viewed the PTPA as wholly irrelevant or only tangentially related to becoming good English teachers. While the high-stakes nature of the assessment required them to devote significant time and effort to completing it, in general they viewed the PTPA as separate from the actual work of learning to teach. The inquiry also revealed that the PTPA was having some impact upon participant conceptions of good teaching, helping them to broaden their understanding of the work of teachers to include not just dispositional and relational aspects of teaching, but elements of technical teaching practice as well. Additionally, participant dislike for the PTPA and its concurrent impact upon their perceptions of good teaching produced a series of identity tensions. The works of Rennert-Ariev (2008) on bureaucratic ventriloquism and Wenger (1998) on participation and reification were used as a lens to understand and interpret the implications of these findings. The study concluded by postulating a theoretical framework of pre-service teacher identity development in an era of professionalization, drawing upon the findings in this study and influenced by Bhahba’s (1994) construct of third space and Alsup’s (2006) description of borderland discourse.