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Attitude, Perceptions and Development of edTPA as an assessment process among ECE senior cohort students

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2019, MA, University of Cincinnati, Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services: Educational Studies.
edTPA serves as a teacher performance assistance and support system that measures new teachers’ readiness to teach young children (About edTPA, Pearson Education, 2018; edTPA Early Childhood Assessment Handbook, 2017). When the study was conducted in Ohio, the state was still working on implementation of edTPA. Even though it was not mandatory for the teaching license in Ohio, the University of Cincinnati made edTPA mandatory in order for the teacher candidates to graduate. This made the teacher candidates very reluctant and formed negative opinions towards edTPA. This mixed method study includes both quantitative and qualitative methods, with more emphasis being put on the qualitative section. The study tried to determine any changes in the teacher candidates’ attitude towards edTPA throughout the academic year. The study also tried to gauge the relationship between the edTPA sessions provided by the university and the candidates’ attitude towards edTPA as a whole. With the help of the Early Childhood Education department, the study also tried to see if there was any relationship between the support sessions arranged by the department and attitude of the teacher candidates towards edTPA. The overarching question this study answered was: How do Early Childhood Education senior year students’ perspectives of edTPA change across the academic year? - What are the major themes/trends in the perspective changes? - What experiences/activities have contributed to the changes in perspectives? The total participants for the quantitative section of the study was 63 across all the five data collection sessions. One of the quantitative data sources included a five point Likert scale and another used a ten point Likert scale. The one in which the candidates rated their attitude towards edTPA used ten point Likert scale while the one in which the candidates rated the support sessions used a five point Likert scale. Data was analyzed through descriptive statistics (mean, and S.D.) and ANOVA between the sessions. For the qualitative study, 12 participants’ responses, who had attended all the five support sessions for edTPA were selected for the analysis. Themes were taken out from these 12 participants’ responses and they were thoroughly described. The results from the study indicate that the attitude of the senior cohort teacher candidates were highest for edTPA in the second session of data collection which took place in the month of November. The candidates rated their attitude lowest during the fourth session of data collection, which was after they had submitted their portfolios and was awaiting edTPA results. The rating of each edTPA session was provided to the researcher by the Early Childhood Education department. According to the data, the highest rating was given to the last session, session 5, which was held at the beginning of March. There was a weak positive correlation between the candidates’ attitude towards edTPA and the edTPA support sessions provided by the university. Few overarching themes that seem to have surfaced during the qualitative interpretation included lack of time to complete edTPA assignment, overburdening with other coursework, edTPA was referred to as expensive, and a lot of tedious writing work was involved. A few positive points for edTPA was identified as providing individualized attention to the children by the teacher candidates, video recording was regarded as a good indicator of candidates’ teaching practices, as well as similarity with RESA was advantageous. These findings suggest that edTPA is useful for improvement of skills among teacher candidates. It is important to now motivate the candidates to look and take edTPA as a learning guide and not as an extra burden. The university needs to find ways to make edTPA look lucrative to the candidates.
Marcus Johnson, Ph.D. (Committee Chair)
Amy Mayfield, M.Ed. (Committee Member)
172 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Roy, A. (2019). Attitude, Perceptions and Development of edTPA as an assessment process among ECE senior cohort students [Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1574417390691589

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Roy, Anuja. Attitude, Perceptions and Development of edTPA as an assessment process among ECE senior cohort students. 2019. University of Cincinnati, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1574417390691589.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Roy, Anuja. "Attitude, Perceptions and Development of edTPA as an assessment process among ECE senior cohort students." Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1574417390691589

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)