Abstract
Introduction
How do knowledgeable and experienced practitioners in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) understand the standards for assessing assessor competence? How should these standards be described to meet requirements of clarity? This article answers these two questions. When standards are derived from literature only, the results are inadequate and insufficient in terms of clarity (CAEP 2013; Ingvarson, Reid, Buckley, Kleinhenz, Masters and Rowley 2014; Van Schalkwyk and Van den Berg 2025). Voices of scholars and ITE practitioners confirm the need for empirical research in this regard:
The authors of the InTASC standards argue that:
In the use of teacher education standards in a learning community, the voices of pre-service teachers, teacher educators, clinical teachers and school administrators, are valued ... (Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) 2013)
An experienced ITE programme manager in South Africa describes the need for clear standards as follows:
When we have clear standards and criteria, ... then we know at least what to focus on ... The standards that are available currently, ... even the IQMS and SACE standards, are not really clear enough ... I think we should start at the school ... and consider what a good teacher, a good assessor does ... and base standards and criteria on that. We have to move away from our theoretical understanding and approach ...
The purpose of this study was to hear the voices of information-rich and experienced practitioners in ITE, and to reformulate standards of assessor competence with clarity. Hermeneutical-phenomenological interviewing (HPI), grounded in and informed by literature study, including the analysis of relevant documents, was used to this end, within an interpretivist paradigm. The research focused on hearing voices regarding the context in which student teachers, as assessors, are educated and assessed at a distance education university in South Africa. The researchers used the findings from the literature, document analysis and HPI to derive and reformulate as set of clear standards, namely the JMD standards for assessor competence at experienced teacher level.
Background
In research in this field, insufficient efforts have been made to unpack existing, assessment-related standards to provide meaningful guidance for the development of pre-service programme curricula, instructional materials, and practical student teaching experiences to enable candidates to build a solid foundation in assessment competence upon graduation and certification (CAEP 2013; Reddy and Le Grange 2017). Attempts were made to define assessment-related competencies, yet the resulting objectives are incomplete, the measures superficial and generally lacking performance-based requirements, which are needed to gauge mastery. Standards for assessing the competence of student teachers, particularly in a distance education context, should describe such assessor competence standards in observable and assessable terms.
The notion of a teacher education continuum approach to teacher education and career development is also highly relevant to standards of assessor competence. The approach integrates Initial Teacher Education, induction and continuous professional development through teacher competence frameworks, evaluation or assessment, and quality assurance mechanisms (MacPhail et al. 2022; Caena 2014). When standards of assessor competence are described at student teacher-, beginner teacher- and experienced teacher levels, as envisaged in this study, the continuum is strengthened. Such standards indicate clear developmental targets for each stage in the continuum, enhancing seamless and continued growth in competence. Incorporating the voices of both scholars and practitioners in revisiting and reformulating such standards would also contribute to improving ITE and enabling more effective growth-oriented assessment of assessor competence toward continued competence development during beginner teacher years and beyond.
Theoretical grounding
This study is grounded in a thorough understanding of the context in which assessor competence is educated and assessed at the research site, namely Unisa College of Education as well as three related key constructs, namely standards and criteria; assessor competence and assessment in education. The researchers relied on summary descriptions of these constructs derived from in-depth literature studies undertaken for this purpose (Van Schalkwyk 2021), as well as document analysis emanating from the literature studied. During the literature study several documents describing both context and/or standards were identified. During the empirical phase, participants also referred the researchers to various such documents. These documents were analysed to bolster findings from the literature.
Research methodology
The focus was on conducting hermeneutical-phenomenological interviews with suitable participants. Reputation case sampling as well as snowball sampling were used to identify information-rich individuals. Fifteen (15) participants were identified across four categories, namely, programme managers in areas related to ITE; lecturers who taught ITE modules; receiving teachers and teaching practice coordinators at schools as mentors; and student teachers who recently completed their qualifications. A combination of informal conversations and interview guide-type interviews was used (McMillan and Schumacher 2014).
Data analysis
In analysing the data from HPI, the researchers used a process focused on bracketing of researcher perspectives and drafting significant statements; doing a first read to identify incidental themes; second reads to draft data sheets containing mostly verbatim statements; additional reads to identify or confirm themes; and finally the formulation of summary descriptions of themes and preliminary findings (Creswell and Poth 2018).
Findings
Incorporating insights from the literature and document analysis, and confirmed through the HPI, the researchers found that: Firstly, a fracture exists between the ideal of delivering sufficiently competent student teachers as assessors after ITE, and the reality, namely that such levels of competence are not adequately achieved in the current teacher education model employed at the research site. Secondly, several challenges contributing to this fracture were identified. Thirdly, the researchers identified several approaches proposed to address these contributing factors.
Regarding the actual standards for assessing assessor competence in ITE, the researchers identified through literature and relevant document analysis, eight broad themes describing the essential abilities and qualities of competent assessors in education, namely, experienced teachers. They argued that these themes provide a useful frame of reference for benchmarking standards at experienced teacher level. These benchmarks were then used to formulate the JMD standards for assessor competence at experienced teacher level.
NB. The standards presented here are named in honour of the late Prof. J.M. Dreyer, who dedicated an immeasurable amount of work and thought to assessment in education.
Recommendations
It is recommended that the findings in this study, including the JMD standards, be used to formulate standards at the beginner teacher and student teacher levels as well. There is a pertinent and urgent need to also identify criteria for assessing each standard, particularly at the student teacher level. The themes identified in this study as well as the JMD standards already describe more realistic expectations given the contextual constraints identified through the voices of HPI participants. This recommendation is grounded in the understanding that, in an ITE context, standards are only truly meaningful when the criteria by which they are assessed are also clearly described (Sadler 2005; Van Schalkwyk 2021).
Keywords: assessment in education; competence as assessor; hermeneutical-phenomenological interviewing; qualitative research methodology; teacher standards and criteria; teaching practice
- This article’s featured image was created by Pavel Danilyuk and obtained from Pexels.