Teacher performance assessments in the early childhood sector: wicked problems of regulation

Abstract

Teacher performance assessments are positioned as a high stakes assessment that are aimed to ensure that preservice teachers are ready for professional practice in education contexts. The move to incorporate them in institutions has its origins in concerns that teacher education is a policy problem with varying standards of preparation across the sector. The article draws from research literature on the USA edTPA, which is used widely to benchmark graduate and undergraduate teaching capacity across the schooling and early childhood sectors, to consider how teacher performance assessments evoke a range of wicked problems for the early childhood sector in Australia. While they can be seen as a means for the teacher educator sector to regulate itself to ensure that "high quality" "profession ready" graduates are credentialed, there may be an attendant narrowing of pedagogy and emerging issues for a sector that is already undervalued, underfunded and fragmented. The authors highlight the importance for Australian preservice teachers to focus their efforts on pedagogical relations in early childhood education settings, gain proficiency in play-based learning, and participate in relationships that produce ongoing, socially and culturally contextualised assessments.