Proven Approach to Improving edTPA Outcomes

PRESENTERS

Dr. Jaime Januse

Dr. Jaime Januse works for the University of Phoenix as a Lead Faculty Area Chair for the College of Education as well as an Advisor for Pearson Education. She has earned her Doctorate in Educational Leadership, a Master of Education in Cross-Cultural Diversity, and a Bachelor of Arts in English. She is an avid learner who continues to question the status quo to improve pedagogical practice. Noticing a need to better support teacher candidates with being successful on their edTPA performance-based assessments, Dr. Januse has developed a comprehensive edTPA video library, webinars, and quizzes to help candidates understand and meet the expectations of this performance-based assessment. These resources showcase her deep understanding of candidates’ needs and her passion for their success. Also, Dr. Januse’s expertise in curriculum development is vast. She has served as a subject-matter expert for over 70 courses in the College of Education (for the University of Phoenix, UCLA Extension, and Chapman University) mapping curriculum for diverse learners and ensuring alignment with state and programmatic requirements. Dr. Januse also spearheaded the creation of a virtual school, offering invaluable practical experience for teacher candidates. Her commitment to rethinking the educational experience and improving practice is unwavering.

Dr. Tammy Woody

Currently serving as a College of Education program chair, Dr. Tammy Lynn Woody supports the college and university leadership teams. Prior to joining the College of Education, she served as Director of Academic Affairs for numerous East Coast physically based campuses, a Dean of Faculty, and Faculty Development Chair for the College of Social Sciences. Dr. Woody is motivated by the desire to increase faculty and licensure candidate engagement and strengthen the professional learning community of the faculty she supervises. Dr. Woody received her doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction from West Virginia University, has an M.A.in Counseling with a concentration in school counseling and currently holds professional school counselor certification. Her research interests and conference presentations include topics such as K-12 student exposure to violent video games, technology used to support faculty, and the development of professional dispositions in licensure candidates who progress through online educator preparation programs. In the past, she served as the West Virginia higher education delegate to the State Consortium on Educator Effectiveness hosted by the Council of Chief State School Officers. She also served as an expert on children’s exposure to violent video games during former Senator Jay Rockefeller’s roundtable discussions related to the Violent Content Research Act of 2013. She is passionate about growth and opportunities for higher education faculty and strongly feels that in order to serve adult learners effectively, we must strive to continually hone our abilities, talents, and skills through comprehensive, relevant professional development opportunities and lifelong learning.

TRANSCRIPT

Matthew Short:

Hello, and thank you so much for joining ReAction here today. I’m Matthew Short and I’m a member of our client services team here at GoReact. Welcome to today’s session proven approach to improving ED TPA outcomes. Before we begin, just a little bit of housekeeping. Please feel free to introduce yourselves, share any thoughts you may have on the session, and share any relevant resources within the chat window and zoom. Make sure you change your message settings to everyone so that all group members, all participants can see anything that you’re adding within the chat window. If you do have questions for our presenters, please use the q and a window within Zoom to pose those questions. And if you see a question there that you would like to see answered, go ahead and give it the thumbs up icon to upvote it. We will try to answer as many questions as we can with the time we have for today’s session. So that housekeeping out of the way, I am glad to introduce Dr. Jamie Nui, ED TPA, lead faculty and area chair, and Dr. Tammy Woody, program chair at the College of Education from the University of Phoenix. So with that, I’m going to turn the floor over to Dr. Woody to get things started

Dr. Tammy Woody:

Again. Welcome and thank you for attending our session. As Matthew mentioned, I’m Dr. Tammy Lynn Woody, a program chair in the University of Phoenix College of Education. Dr. Jamie Jani is one of our lead faculty chairs and our resident at TPA Guru. I want to give credit where credit is due as this presentation really showcases Jamie’s passion and dedication to helping our licensure candidates succeed. I can really say that Jamie inspires all of us to bring our A game all day, every day, and that she role models innovation, persistence, and positivity. Just to name a few time is a finite resource and we want to respect yours. So we’re going to get this show on the road. Jamie, over to you.

Dr. Jamie Januse:

Thank you so much. Thank you, Dr. Woody. Yes, we are really excited to be here and kind of go over some ins and outs of a strategy that we have found that can really be helpful with our students with the edTPA. So without further ado, our focus on this presentation is we’re going to talk about examining the purpose of assessment, talking about addressing the problem of why students fail, the edTPA A, we have an intervention we would like to go over with you. And then there’s a connection between the intervention, which is a quiz and edTPA scores. And then we’re going to talk about how metacognition applies. So that’s the focus for today’s session. So let’s start with examining the purpose of assessment. And if we could throw up that first poll, that would be great. And in this poll, thank you, we are asking you to consider to what degree do you agree or disagree with the statements below. And we’ll give you guys about 30 seconds to respond. Another 30 seconds takes less time than I think. So I thought I would just set a timer.

Okay. And are we able to put those results up on here as well? Perfect. Thank you. So it looks like for most people, and I’ve got the polls written right here. The first one was assessments measure. So we don’t have a lot of responses to that one. Assessments measure memorization of content assessments, measure content, retained assessments, drive content specific instruction and assessments increase the learning of content being assessed. So it looks like that there’s right in the middle of mostly just kind of where we land on that. And I would definitely agree that there are some pros and cons to assessment tools as a whole. So, alright, now let’s go into assessments. What we know about them, if we look at historically assessments were used very differently years ago than they are today. Historically, we used assessments and education to measure what was retained right to measure.

We can memorize what we learned and we can hold in. That’s what assessments were used for. It was not a tool to promote learning, it was to measure learning. Today though assessments, we use it differently and we’re just evolving to this very new way about how we can use assessments to improve learning, not just measure learning. Now this is different than recently. As educators today, we frequently use assessments to drive instruction, right? That is a core of how we use assessments. But this newest approach is not the same thing. It is using assessments as a learning tool to increase learning. Now, this is not a pre-test versus post-test, which we’re all familiar with as well.

And this is not about using data to drive instruction. Again, it’s a twist by using assessment to increase learning. We are doing two things. The first is we’re promoting metacognition, our metacognitive skills by allowing students to learn what they know and what they don’t know. And then we are promoting reflection and strengthening learning opportunities. And when we use assessment as a learning tool, not as a means of measuring content learned, we are developing, helping our students develop this early foundational knowledge that we can actually build on as we go throughout the unit, the term, whatever the content is or the assessment in the case of the edTPA, which is taken during student teaching, we’ll kind of get more into that in a bit. But we’re able to develop this foundational knowledge and it enables students to understand the expectations of the culminating project early. And by taking a quiz on this, it helps students focus on the culminating projects, key directions and themes.

And in doing this, our students are then forced. Forced is kind of strong, but they’re tasked with, they’re forced with the idea of jump starting their culminating project, thus the content that’s associated with it. And this is aligned with this paradigm shift that this method has been proven to actually increase learning this assessment method as a learning task can increase learning when combined with the compulsory task. So we have this directional thematic quiz for us that goes over the TPA themes in week one. And it’s worth 10% of the student’s grade in the course. So enough to make it worth their while, but not enough to be a high stress type of assessment or something that they need to overly prepare for, but they have to dive in and really do the work. So that was where we got the 10% from. And as a result, students need to develop their metacognitive proficiencies associated with recall and understanding and is that metacognitive proficiency is the foundation of this study.

Now I want to go over a few terms that we’re going to be using throughout this presentation. We all know these terms, but we use ’em a little bit differently in here. So I just wanted to really quickly go over them. When we say quiz in here, we’re referring to a low stakes assessment. Formative assessment might be something that we use commonly. Its purpose is to assess specific knowledge of something. The edTPA. A overview quiz is an actual quiz that assesses students’ knowledge of the overarching themes and directions with the edTPA A, we use the term learning activity, and this is an activity that’s completed during the teaching process and its purpose is to promote understanding and assisting students with learning new concepts. And in our presentation we’re referring to the edTP overview quiz as a learning activity. So it is not just a means of measuring content understanding, again, it’s a little bit different than the edTPA assessment, which I think probably most of us in here are familiar with.

But in case you’re not, it’s a performance-based assessment that students complete during student teaching, which varies in length by the state you live in maybe 14 to 17 weeks, somewhere in there. And candidates are creating a portfolio of material around a series of lessons where they plan, instruct and assess and support students in real students in the classroom. So that’s what the edTPA is. When we use the term performance-based assessment, again, I know a term this is very standard. We use it the same as it is normally used. It’s just a multifaceted assessment that measures students’ knowledge and application. So it requires students to apply skills in a real world setting. And the edTPA is an example of a performance-based assessment and assessments we’re using. When we say assessments, we mean all assessments, quizzes at the edTPA assessment, formative, informal, all of it together. And then when we say candidate, we’re referring to pre-service teachers. So the student teachers that are in the classroom working to earn their licensure. Okay, so let’s talk about addressing the problem of why students fail. This is the crux of the issue. And if we can get the next poll pulled up, that’d be great about why might students struggle with performance-based assessments? Why might they struggle with it?

Again, we’ll give you guys 30 seconds

And there really are a lot of reasons, so we’ll see. All right, if we can go ahead and close that out.

I’m not able to view the answers. Are we able to see them? This is Karenna. I am not able to see them either on my side. So we may have hit a little bit of a glitch. I’m so sorry. That’s okay. We can move through it. And actually it leads us to the next slide where I’ve actually answered the question for us about why I’ve seen students fail. So in my experience, and I hope this is similar to yours, and feel free to type in the chat, I have that up on another screen as well, so we can dialogue through this without the poll. But I’ve seen many times students fail. And I know Dr. Woody has seen the same thing about maybe students didn’t prepare enough, didn’t study enough for assessments, right? That’s why they might fail procrastination, they didn’t understand the content. And a lot times there’s anxiety over the assessment. So those are some key reasons about why students that we’ve seen might fail.

Yeah, this is very true, Glenn. They stress over their grades and the TPA is definitely that. Actually Cornelia leads us to this next piece right here that when there’s research involved and a lot of reading involved, that’s when it takes the stress from here to here and the edTPA does that well. And there’s so much value in the edTPA. I am not putting down the value of this assessment, but it is a lot. There’s a lot to it. For the elementary handbook, for example, literacy with task math four, the handbook is 78 pages just for the handbook. There are 18 rubrics and they’re not linear rubrics like a chart. It is a document of rubrics that is 64 pages just for the rubrics and that’s not part of the handbook. And then there’s an additional 105 pages of resources, commentaries and templates, that’s 247 pages of reading that we’re asking candidates to do and process. And honestly, that’s a lot, right? That’s a lot. And they’re all essential. I could not point out one thing to say, Hey, get rid of this because they really all build on each other, but this could possibly explain the 28% failure rate based on the national cut score for the EDT PA.

Alright, then we have another poll here. And on this poll you’re going to indicate the degree to which teacher candidates struggle with these edTPA challenges. And so one is not strongly connected as to why a candidate may struggle, and five is very strongly connected as to why the candidate may struggle.

And hopefully we can see these results.

Such a good point, Lindsay, about being a reflective practitioner that is really fundamental and very connected with that metacognition we’re talking about here.

Alright, if we can close the poll and see where we land with this. Yeah, I don’t think it’s capturing everything on here, but that’s okay. So we do find that our candidates, oh, here we go. Candidates lack skills to follow intricate directions. Yes, yes. I would strongly agree with that. Many of our candidates do lack those skills. And I think this one, the number two one is core. I don’t know how many times I’ve worked with students that the idea of following a rubric, even a linear rubric, is really complicated for candidates for students today. And yes, our students procrastinate, right? I have two college, well one and almost college student and I could tell you for sure that that’s the name of the game and the TPA can cause anxiety and definitely candidates do lack some background knowledge, especially with pieces of it. So very true. Thank you for that.

Alright, and now we’re going to talk about an intervention with this. And this is where we get to the crux of it to help introduce this intervention though, let’s consider we’ve got some questions as a starting point. I want you to reflect on these as we go throughout the rest of this presentation. What if students aren’t failing simply because they lack proficiency? That’s a new thought. What if they actually fail because they don’t understand what they have to do to be successful? So again, this is a shift on, we don’t generally consider this as a reason as to why students might fail, but what if this is it?

I tell you what, let’s circle back to those questions, but just hold onto those as and rethink these how assessments can be used with the EDT PA and other performance-based assessments to help students improve achievement. Now let’s talk about some research. Research has shown that foundational knowledge really is essential. So we can establish meaning and then build on that. Developing a strong foundational knowledge is core. And with the use of an early assessment where students have to pull out information that they just learned, that is part of the really important part of the process is that pulling information out. And that’s what that early assessment does. And when we couple this with an accountability task, which is the nature of the quiz that makes the process so effective because it helps students develop this early understanding.

And now this leads us into metacognitive skills. It is through the use of assessment that students become aware of their metacognitive skills. And that is how metacognition is how we think, right? It’s thinking about how we think. And testing is a retrieval practice is a powerful tool that helps our learners improve retention because again, we’re pulling information out and if we just put information in, then our retention and our processing and our understanding drops. And this is cognitivism, it’s all based on the cognitive learning theory, which stresses that retention that we just discussed is more effectively accomplished with active learning versus passive learning. We know this, right? This is common in research, this is widely accepted. But what unlike what was known decades ago is that today’s research shows that student recall is actually increased by 50% when testing is used 50%. So if we just give students, there are many districts and schools that adopt in K 12, a policy of no testing because it causes anxiety, it’s high stress, whatever the reasons are.

But without that piece, we are decreasing our students’ retention, understanding comprehension and application skills. And the reason for this is that the use of tests and quizzes employs that active learning and it forces students to make those connections to what they previously learned, to what they are learning. And then we’re asking them to recall it. And that recall, I thought I dropped my headset, is what increases understanding and retention. And we already know that when students have this strong foundational knowledge, they’re able to apply it to a task. And that is where the edTPA performance-based assessment is so relevant. That is where this, it’s so connected.

And now let’s get to what this means for the EDT PA. So UOP subject matter experts create a quiz, not a quiz as in a punitive way of determining what students know. But as a learning activity, again, we made it worth 10%. That focuses solely on edTPA a overarching key themes and directions. By preparing for this quiz, we’re asking our candidates, they’re asked to dive into their EDT PA resources, specific resources early, and that establishes the foundational knowledge of these key expectations. And it helps students prepare them by letting them become aware of these key expectations early so they can prepare for the culminating task, which is the TPA assessment. And by learning a variety of ideas and concepts at the same time as what is the crux of multifaceted assessments, perform based assessments, they’re notorious for, there’s lots of moving parts, lots of places to apply and learn and demonstrate knowledge instead of learning one concept at a time, students are practicing interlead. And I’ll explain more about that in a few slides, in a few slides. But that interleaving is what is greatly connected to this part of learning. And it allows students to retain information for longer and it challenges them to identify the trends in their own learning and form those connections. And by doing this, by practicing retrieval, we are establishing the foundation for this active learning and that active learning is fundamental.

Now the logistics of this quiz is we is title the edTPA overview, but we portray it more as a show us what you know, learning activity. And it’s developed by subject matter experts. It’s multiple choice, true false, and it’s due at the end of week one in their seminar course. And that timing is really important because it forces students to jump in early and learn these pieces, learn these components, learn these requirements, versus waiting until weeks 3, 4, 5, and six. And then still wondering what is a focus student, which is a very fundamental part of the TPA.

The quiz that we designed is very inclusive for elementary and secondary. So we have one quiz for both groups and for all content areas of secondary. So we don’t go into content specific information here. Again, it is overarching, it’s overarching themes and ideas that can apply to both sets of, to all sets of elementary and secondary candidates. And here are some examples of the quizzes focus. I’m not going to read all these to you, but this is what we are looking for with our candidates. And you can see it really does we focus on the glossary from the tpa, A handbook which is very underrated by our candidates, but so important and the making good choices resource, that’s where the quiz was derived from. Again, we’re focused on developing knowledge because it’s a learning activity.

Now let’s talk about the connection between this ED TP overview quiz and ED TP assessment scores. So the study that prompted this presentation compared those two sets of scores over three terms and all candidates took both the TPA review quiz and the performance base and the TPA assessment and the results were clear. There is a positive correlation, a strong positive correlation between the quiz and the edTPA. A scores meaning students who do better on the quiz also do better on the assessment. edTPA assessment. And let’s show you some numbers. So this is for elementary candidates and you could see as the quiz score goes up, the TP assessment score also goes up. The fascinating part of this, my favorite part of this is that the 3.6 point increase that is accounted for. So candidates who earned one additional point higher on the edTPA a overview quiz, earned an average of 3.6 additional points on their edTPA assessment. I don’t know about you all, but I’ve had many candidates I’ve seen fail by 1, 2, 3 points. Many, if not even most candidates fail within those parameters. And this edTPA quiz, if the candidates take it seriously from early on and they focus on it, they can potentially increase their culminating assessment score by taking the week one overview quiz learning activity seriously and striving to do well on that from week one, which is really great. And the same can be seen for our secondary candidates. Secondary had a 3.02 point increase. So it is definitely strongly correlated.

Alright, now let’s consider the implications. If students just studied for the TP overview quiz during week one of student teaching, they could potentially earn over three points higher on the edTPA assessment for every additional point earned on the quiz. So if they earned an additional two points on the quiz, then that would be seven points on the edTPA assessment. And the same correlation can be seen in most of the content areas. So if you look at these scores, these are not, the orange refers to the edTPA assessment, but not the TPA assessment score. It’s the mean rubric score. And by using the mean rubric score, we can put elementary and secondary candidates together because the number of rubrics doesn’t matter. It just takes the mean of all the rubric scores. And the blue is the TP overview. Quiz scores the mean of that. And if you look like at the visual arts, for example, candidates scored higher on the edTPA overview quiz and they scored higher on the edTPA assessment. The same is true for the reverse. Our math candidates, they scored lower, they scored the lowest on the edTPA overview quiz, and they scored the lowest on the edTPA overview assessment.

Now let’s get back to the research, what the research shows on this. We talked about the interleaving and the retrieval. So let’s break that down a little bit. And remember, to be successful, the quiz candidates have to be able to read, understand, and recall the information in their handbook, the glossary specific and the making good choices. And through this, they can develop these two skills. Now, retrieval, these are both learning strategies, not assessment strategies, learning strategies, but retrieval involves bringing information back to our brains. So again, it’s not putting information in, it is pulling it out. And so it’s not actually an assessment strategy, it’s a learning strategy. But we now know that by bringing information back out of our brains, that is what actually increases learning, not putting it in.

And the quiz is where that happens. It’s where this magic happens is because by having a quiz, we are asking, we’re promoting the reconstruction of content and increasing understanding. And that brings us to interleaving, which is another learning strategy that allows students to form connections to prior knowledge, prior topics by working with all the parts at once. And it facilitates an increase in and a deeper understanding of it, of that concept. So lemme give you an example. Say you’re working with fourth, fifth graders and they already have a foundation in addition, subtraction, multiplication, division. They may not all be all strong in this, but they understand how each of those work. If you’ve ever taken a time test on any of those, that it’s much easier and much faster to do all of one even multiplication division, any of them than to go back and forth because it makes our brain work differently.

But if we do go back and forth, if we’re having students work on all four of those pieces at once, where are brains forming the connection that wow division actually is the direct result of multiplication. And you have to be able to add and subtract to multiply and divide. And so these pieces are now connected and working together, and that foundation is much more solid and then it’s built upon. And students who are able to practice multiple parts at once have that. And we know that this is much more effective than cramming. And students can promote stronger recall skills because there is no more cramming. It’s working on it throughout. And that’s where that foundation starts and then builds.

And that is why doing so well on the ED TPA overview quiz actually can lead to improved ED TP assessment scores. And it’s also interesting about this is that this process supports our underserved candidates as well. The FTP is complicated, right? We know that there’s lots of complex components in it, but research has shown that this process is likely to be more complicated for students of color and marginalized students as compared to their white peers. And so the process can be overwhelming that students can procrastinate for many reasons. And one of them is because they’re overwhelmed with the task via TPA. Also, it can cause anxiety, right? There’s a positive relationship between test anxiety and procrastination. So giving our candidates this quiz in the very beginning creates this even playing field because everyone is tasked to jump in early. Everyone is, all right, you have to learn this now. We’re going to make everyone jump in. And not all candidates jump in eagerly, right? That’s the nature of it. But they’re all forces jump in even if it’s begrudgingly. And now they’re learning and they’re building and they’re creating those connections. And that’s why using the overview quiz as a learning activity specifically supports our marginalized students as well, because it creates this even playing field.

And that’s where the metacognitive process applies here as well. And I’m going to turn this over to Dr. Woody to kind of go over this with us.

Dr. Tammy Woody:

So the process of researching performance-based assessments and leveraging cognitive strategies like retrieval and interleaving is inherently cyclical, fostering that constant interplay between our teaching, of course, content and that research, for example, because Jamie’s research highlighted how retrieval practice is particularly beneficial for student learning, we incorporated more opportunities for recall into assignments by asking, well, how can this task be structured to maximize its effectiveness? And in formulating research questions or designing experimental protocols, we really had to carefully consider how these choices might impact student learning and engagement. So this ongoing back and forth between research and practice allows us to continually reflect on our teaching methods, identify areas of improvement, and ultimately enhance student learning outcomes. We can quantify the efficacy of newly implemented strategies, and if a particular approach proves successful, we can seek out additional research and explore those underlying mechanisms and potential applications.

Conversely, if a strategy falls short of expectations, we analyze the reasons for the ineffectiveness refining our understanding of the learning process. This presentation today really is a result of the iterative cycle of research, application and evaluation, feeding that continuous loop of metacognition. Jamie and I were in the weeds when we were talking about this kind of heuristic phenomenon as we developed this presentation. So we felt like it was important to call this back out to you all. And I guess really what I’m saying is that it’s important to walk your talk. So in other words, metacognition and lifelong learning are foundational to all professional educators at any level.

Dr. Jamie Januse:

So much Dr. Woody. Yes, it really is. It’s foundational at all levels, and that’s exactly the key of where we’re going with it. Okay. Oh, there we go. So now let’s pause really fast and reflect back on those two questions that we talked about earlier. In the very beginning. Remember what we said that this is not about pre-test versus post-test, and it’s not about using data to form instruction. It’s about using assessment as a learning tool, as a learning strategy to outcomes. So designing and implementing this early directional quiz and asking students to complete the multifaceted assessment can transform the way that students learn. And this transformation leads to higher scores. And so using the directional, the week one quiz means that confusion no longer begets confusion, and that the fear of starting something does not engender debilitation. Instead, students after week one, they’re ready to learn and they’re ready to jump in and connect with the content. So, all right. We have one last poll for you, and we just wanted you to reflect on how assessments can be used to increase learning. If you can throw that last poll up and using the rating scale, how might your views, and there we go, have changed on using assessments as a learning tool to increase learning specifically with the TPA and one is little change and five is significant change.

Or maybe 10 more seconds on this.

We can see where we are with this. Hopefully the whole results come up. Oh, they do. Good, good, good. No, this is great. Yeah. So what degree do you agree with these assessments? Measure memorization of content? Yes. Right. Assessments measure. Oh, I think we have the wrong poll in here. That’s okay. That’s okay. We’re at the end of it anyway, so it’s no big deal. But I hope your views did change on this, and you’re able to see the connection between how requiring this culminating task, requiring this compulsory task can lead to the improved outcomes, specifically with the edTPA A. And any questions that you have, anyone, we can definitely open up the floor. Feel free to hop on the mic or type it into the chat.

Matthew Short:

Yes, absolutely. If anybody does have any questions, I’ve got the q and a window pulled up to pose those to our panelists here. So if you do have any questions, please, please drop them into the q and a while folks are thinking about those questions. I’m the father of a 16-year-old daughter who’s going through high school and everything feels like a life or death situation with tests and quizzes, and I’ve got to get perfect scores to get into my ideal college. So with me having that as kind of facing that on a practical way, on seemingly a daily basis from your perspectives, we see the research here showing assessment as a valuable instrument in engaging and furthering our learning. How do you all approach, I guess, dialing back that doomsday clock for students to recognize that, hey, this assessment is not make or break, this is more of like a GPS, I need to know where you are to help get you to where you need to go From your perspectives, what are those ways to dial down the temperature that you think are kind of beneficial or helpful with your students?

Dr. Tammy Woody:

I can start with this because Jamie and I had quite a bit of back and forth about calling this a quiz. We know that semantics are important and perception is important. And as Jamie referenced at University of Phoenix, our students often have some risk factors that can be very challenging. And so that doomsday feeling that you just talked about, that anxiety is certainly prevalent with many of our adult learners. So I think what Jamie does, and what we strive for our faculty to do is to just socialize that this is a temperature gauge, it’s something that is beneficial to you and helpful. And we had a lot of dialogue as well about how much should this count? We don’t want it to be so punitive or scary to them that they skip it, but we also need them to have enough buy-in to take it seriously. And so I think there’s a very thoughtful, deliberate approach to how you convey the importance of something to students while still allaying their fears and giving them the support and that reassurance that this is actually valuable to you. Jamie, I’d love for you to step in because you deal with this all the time with our candidates.

Dr. Jamie Januse:

No, that was so well said. And it’s just about helping candidates understand that this is part of the learning process. And so what I’ll do is give them the same kind of presentation we did here, the end results, showing that to them that this is your buy-in. So if you’re cheating on this and Googling the answers versus going to where I’m telling you to go and reading about it, you are only cheating yourself. So if you want to see those increase in scores, if you want to learn it, you have to dive into the material. This is not a quiz to determine knowledge. We emphasize the learning. This is about learning the information. This is about helping you become aware of your own thinking so that you can know what you know and what you don’t know. And that’s why this is so effective, I think, because it helps students, one, realize what they know and what they don’t know, and two, what they can help that foundational knowledge. And we don’t have another question. I can show something connected to this. I can pull it up on my screen. Were there any questions from the group?

Matthew Short:

I’m not seeing any in the q and a window at this

Dr. Jamie Januse:

Point. Okay. Well then with the one minute we have left here, I wonder. This was a poll that we gave candidates regarding, they finished the first half of student teaching and now they’re in the second half of student teaching. And they took the quiz during week one of student teaching. Okay. The first half of it. And candidates acknowledged that they had very little knowledge of the TPA in the beginning, and they still haven’t passed it yet. So they still, they’re in the weeds right now. But they thought the timing of it on the whole was very good. 4.1 out of the five point scale, it helped preparing for, helped them, preparing for the TPA overview quiz revealed that they had a lot to learn. So now again, that metacognition, they’re learning what they need to learn, and then two, it helped make them aware of what they needed to learn to be successful on the tpa, that foundation. So anyways, thank you very much for hosting, for having us, and helping us with this presentation. I hope this was helpful to everyone. So thank you all for being here. We really enjoyed being able to present this information to you all,

Matthew Short:

And we thank you, Dr. Jani and Dr. Woody for presenting and sharing these findings with our audience. I found this incredibly insightful and just a nice way to hopefully continue that process of reframing assessment as not the end of the learning journey, but very much an integral part of that forward progress.

Dr. Tammy Woody:

Well said Matthew.

Matthew Short:

Thank you. I appreciate that. So that wraps up day one.