138
to teach. This reflects an international trend in which most high- performing school
systems work ‘in partnership with schools to train teachers’ (Ingvarson et al., 2014 ,
p. 51). This imperative to assure the learning of preservice teacher education gradu-
ates against nationally imposed standards provided a stimulus for the development
of a unique developmental preservice teaching assessment rubric for our courses.
The intent was to facilitate a more transparent, focused, consistent and accountable
assessment of preservice teachers’ development during their professional
experience.
The Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST) articulates the
knowledge, practice and professional engagement required of preservice teachers at
the point of graduation, which is the focus of this study, as well as mapping the
development of professional expectations of teachers across their careers (Australian
Institute for Teaching and School Leadership [AITSL], 2014 ). The APST provides
a framework organised in four career stages: graduate, proficient, highly accom-
plished and lead (AITSL, 2014 ). The framework provides teachers the opportunity
to self-assess their performance and leadership capabilities and inform and plan the
development of their professional learning goals. Yinger and Hendricks-Lee ( 2000 )
systematically researched the efficacy and impact of a similar process of teacher
standards in the United States, arguing that they are a powerful tool in the develop-
ment and empowerment of teaching as a profession. More recently Clinton et al.
( 2015 ) argued that engagement with standards is most effective in professional
practice in schools as a reference point for efforts to improve professional
learning.
As a result of the APST at graduate level being the final achievement standard for
graduation from an initial teacher education program, it is imperative that a pre-
graduate level framework be developed against which supervising teachers, school
coordinators and teacher educators can assess and guide the developing capabilities
of preservice teachers during their studies in terms of their emerging competence to
teach. In response to this gap, a new multifaceted, developmental assessment rubric
was created to explicate a developmental learning process, making clear what is
expected of preservice teachers as they progress through their program of studies at
our university. Through this rubric, we can also address the critical need to accu-
rately assess preservice teachers’ emerging knowledge and capabilities and assist in
the formation of more valid and reliable judgements to support and guide their
learning (Sim et al., 2012 ).
The developmental assessment rubric (hereafter referred to as ‘the rubric’)
describes the professional expectations leading up to the APST graduate level, pro-
viding two additional levels (novice level and emerging), which precede the expec-
tations of a graduate teacher. Ure, Gough, and Newton ( 2009 ) found that without
such explicit expectations, preservice teachers received very limited feedback on
the full scope of professional practice. A potential benefit of the alignment of the
rubric with the APST was that graduates would be better prepared to confidently
guide and demonstrate their ongoing professional development throughout their
teaching careers.
T.-A. Sweeney and B. Nielsen