Note that the respondents in this case are imagining how raters might interpret
their work products, not explaining how raters actually evaluate them. This seems
peculiar, given that the edTPA’s handbooks include at least 15 separatefive-point
rubrics that carefully describe performance expectations for planning, instruction,
and assessment. As one preservice teacher noted,“I would expect the raters to just
follow the rubrics and not impose any judgments on our artefacts and commentaries
beyond what’s in them.”However, many more candidates implied that interpreting
artifacts and commentaries via the rubrics inevitably involves reading subtext,
searching for preferred descriptions, prioritizing certain competencies and activities
as more significant than others, and even introducing personal beliefs or biases that
make the precept of“not imposing judgment”impossible. Consider, for instance,
the middle school science candidate who was concerned that a short video segment
of one student playing with a pair of scissors might derail her entire portfolio, and
then was surprised to learn that she had attained a mastery-level score of 56 out of
- This illustrates the common lament that participants did not really know how
evaluators would assess their representations of practice.
Generally, participants took one or more of the following four approaches when
choosing what elements of teaching to demonstrate or conceal via their edTPAs:
(1) arational approach, whereby the candidate included only artifacts and expla-
nations directly linked to the rubric criteria, forsaking additional contextualizing
and supporting information; (2) asanitized approach, whereby the candidate
selectively edited potential artifacts to strike a“best practice”tone, emphasizing
strengths and omitting faults; (3) aconfessional approach, whereby the candidate
treated the edTPA as a formative tool, including difficult predicaments and dis-
cussing how the process of learning from missteps made her or him a better teacher;
and (4) amisrepresentational approach, whereby the candidate fabricated an image
of teaching that met the edTPA’s assessment criteria but did not approximate typical
practice. Examples of these approaches are found in the following explanations:
Rational approach:“I cut things off for the edTPA because they only wanted a snapshot.
I had to scaffold certain skills, and I kept working on them with my students [after the
edTPA lessons], but I didn’t feel like there was space to talk about that.”(secondary science
candidate)
Sanitized approach:“When you’re just starting student teaching, that’s when you’re
learning, and that’s when you’re making mistakes andfiguring things out. But I basically
feel like–any mistake that I made, I had to never show it in the edTPA...Thefirst day I
tried videotaping, one of my kids had the biggest meltdown that I have ever handled...You
can’t send that to the state.”(elementary candidate)
Confessional approach:“I think it’s important to demonstrate that you’re not perfect.
I think that probably pulls at the heartstrings of your rater, for lack of a better word. It says,
‘Hey, listen; I know I’m not perfect, but I’m learning.’There’s that human element to it.”
(elementary candidate)
Misrepresentational approach:“I think there’s certainly areas where I kind of fudged it for
edTPA, where I had to make it sound like I was doing something that I didn’t really feel
like I’d accomplished...It’s not that edTPA doesn’t align with what I want my practice to604 K.W. Meuwissen and J.M. Choppin