Assessment in Teacher Education: North & South [ATENS]

Central to successful learning and teaching is assessment. Therefore, this small-scale, Irish, cross-border research project investigates the assessment of and satisfaction with school-based placements as experienced by a sample of primary and post-primary students and their college tutors. The resultant connections between such professional practices and subsequent planning, teaching and learning are also examined. Reflective of current practices in formative modes of assessment and being particularly relevant to the experience of pre-service teachers, Rogoff’s (1995) socio-cultural theory has been chosen to underpin this project. It explores the balance between personal, interpersonal and cultural factors in learning as student teachers journey toward newly-qualified status. Due to the ‘lived’ nature of this research project, an interpretative approach is taken in the form of descriptive, thematic analysis.The project illuminates the reduced time and space students have to explore, integrate and reflect upon theory-pedagogy links and to conduct professional, collegial conversations. Completing extraneous and repetitive college paperwork, often excluded many from their schools’ communities of practice. Current assessment methods are deemed subjective and somewhat non-representative of teaching practice placement especially in terms of relationships forged and learning completed. A disconnect exists between the reality of practice within individual, engrained school cultures and procedures and college provision. Despite both tutors and students largely endorsing assessment for learning as a journey, students tended to formalize the process to achieve high grades. Sadly, few if any linkages were made between the students’ own experiences of being assessed and their subsequent planning, teaching and assessment of their pupils.