Planning for Ongoing Faculty Professional Development: What an EdTPA Coordinator needs to know about Faculty

Concerns and ImplementationJoyce Many, Judi Wilson, Karen Kurz, Carla Tanguay, Mary Ariail, Tamra Ogletree

Members of Georgia’s Teacher Education Research Consortium

Teacher Education Policies and edTPA

• Currently 640 Educator Preparation Programs in 35 states participating in edTPA

Policy in Place Taking Steps Toward Implementation Participating States

edTPA as a Driver for Reform in Teacher Education

• Consistent with CAEP calls for valid and reliable assessment• Developed by teacher educators• Concerns about use of edTPA as high stakes

assessment

Previous Research on Implementing Educational Reforms

• Understanding faculty concerns with respect to adoption of innovations can be related to the degree to which they make changes in curriculum and should influence the nature of professional development that is offered (Hall, 2010; Overbaugh & Lu, 2008).

Today’s Session ~ edTPA Coordinators’ Perceptions of Faculty Concerns

• How might the CBAM Model help edTPA coordinators understand faculty concerns?• How can edTPA coordinators understand the

levels of integration of edTPA related initiatives going on in programs or courses?• What professional development opportunities

might be helpful light of faculty members’ stages of concern or level of implementation?

How might the CBAM Model help edTPA coordinators understand faculty concerns?

Concerns Based Adoption Model

• http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Concerns+Based+Adoption+Model&id=48DF34D011CAE704A70C17D7790947E1CFB81B2E&FORM=IDBQDM• SEDL.org

• Stages of Concern• Levels of edTPA

Integration

• 2 Phase Study• Statewide Survey• Follow up

Interview

Stages of Concern – Handout A

Learning About edTPA

• Unconcerned• Informational

Self• Personal

Task• Management• Consequence

Implementing edTPA

• Collaboration• Refocusing

Unconcerned - Awareness

• Faculty are focused on other things and not concerned about edTPA.

• edTPA coordinators in Georgia did not address this stage as representative of their faculty.

Informational• edTPA coordinators in Georgia did not report many of

their faculty were at this stage.• Primary areas of concern for faculty within this stage

were around exemplars and smaller content areas such as art, PE, and music.

Informational

• “Well, because still some are not—for their content-specific areas are not that familiar with what edTPA is asking. There’s some that are, but some that aren’t.”

• “Now the biggest concern was that everybody wanted to see a well done portfolio. So and this is something that the students would all ask also. “So if I’m going to prepare an edTPA portfolio show me an example of a really well done”, and they didn’t have those examples that’s another concern that we were limited in the resources that we had which we can share with our faculty and students.”

Personal

• Faculty are uncertain about• the demands of edTPA, his or her adequacy to meet those

demands, and/or his or role with implementing edTPA. • his or her relationship to the reward structure of the

organization, determining his or her part in decision making, and considering potential conflicts with existing structures or personal commitment.

Personal

• edTPA Coordinators felt faculty in this stage of concern were focused on:• Prioritization of Tasks• Time Constraints• Relevance

Personal ~ Prioritization• Faculty are concerned with competing priorities and where

edTPA fits within those. • “We are always going to have new people coming in, so …what

happens is when people are worried about I am a brand new faculty member, I am first year, I have to learn a new program, I have to get tenure, I am going to have to publish, you’ve got to help them. I’ve got to help them deal with how to handle those personal issues or they don’t have enough mind free to focus about the management of their course, you know if that is where their concerns are. That calls for a real different kind of support I think, than from those people who sort of know how to balance, who know how to balance and juggle those responsibilities how to do research and publish at the same time.”

Personal ~ Prioritization• Faculty are concerned with competing priorities and where

edTPA fits within those. • “We are always going to have new people coming in, so …what

happens is when people are worried about I am a brand new faculty member, I am first year, I have to learn a new program, I have to get tenure, I am going to have to publish, you’ve got to help them. I’ve got to help them deal with how to handle those personal issues or they don’t have enough mind free to focus about the management of their course, you know if that is where their concerns are. That calls for a real different kind of support I think, than from those people who sort of know how to balance, who know how to balance and juggle those responsibilities how to do research and publish at the same time.”

Personal ~ Time Constraints• Faculty are concerned about having the time to complete

edTPA associated tasks. • “It’s more about getting the faculty to buy in to the

commitment level. And it goes back to, I think, their many other commitments. Not that they don’t feel like it’s important to support candidates – they very much feel that way – but it’s a matter of how is that time honored in the higher ed environment.”

• “I can’t think of any other resource, a tangible resource that they would ask for. Other than more time to talk with each other. Time to talk about what’s working, what’s not working. We do that in faculty meetings and then we meet outside of faculty meetings and come to area teams and all of that is just again, it takes time that they could be home writing.”

Personal ~ Relevance to Personal Beliefs

• Faculty are concerned with how edTPA aligns with his/her personal or academic beliefs.• “Okay. I’m looking at it and it’s saying, “Individuals uncertain

about the demands of edTPA,” I don’t know that they don’t think that they can do it. I think that they’re not quite sure—they’re not really sure why they have to do it, is really, [laughter] probably the main issue.”

• “They [faculty} also had personal concerns for how this was going to impact their course, teaching their course. At the time this was a big factor because they were integrating now things into their course, and they didn’t want it to be at the expense of other things, you know having to come out.”

Personal ~ Relevance to Students

• Faculty are concerned with whether edTPA will benefit students.• “I don’t know if hearing any more from the PSC, or from Pearson, or

from people at edTPA would have helped them to feel that edTPA was beneficial to students, and that it is really going to improve their teaching.”

• “They’re still very much questioning, I’d say we all are, really, how this program is better for our students than what we had, what we worked hard to implement and put into place – the teacher portfolios we had before.”

Management

• Faculty are focused on the processes and tasks of implementing edTPA and the best use of information and resources. Issues related to efficiency, organizing, managing, and scheduling dominate.

• According to edTPA coordinators, faculty in Georgia are very concerned about management issues.

ManagementedTPA Coordinators felt faculty at the Management Stage of Concern were focused on:• Integration with Coursework/Program• Technical Aspects of Implementation• Staffing/Role Definition• Time/Scheduling

Management~ Integration with Coursework/Program

• Faculty are concerned about the effects of implementation on existing coursework and programs. Additionally, they are concerned about adapting the curriculum and coursework to new tasks. “DefiI have people who plunge in there… and its funny when they get into it and they learn just enough, that then they are l, we have to change our whole program.” • “Now maybe some of them are more in the Management

where it’s “Am I efficiently incorporating these signature assignments?”

Management~ Technical Aspects of Implementation

• Faculty are concerned with hardware and software management that supports the implementation of edTPA.

• “Yeah I think a lot of the stress was related to the complexity of getting it completed exactly right, getting it uploaded etc. etc.”

• “How are we going to make sure we got everybody with the ability to do the videotaping? Make sure we have got all of the release form in every language for every school we are in that are translated. Who is going to go out there to the schools when the principal doesn’t want to be able to let our student teachers do this? All the management issues become huge. How are we going to do the upload process? Who is going to help us? Who is going to be there is going to be there when we got 30 who need to upload at the same time and we can’t get it all done.”

Management~ Staffing Role Definition

• Faculty are concerned with new tasks related to edTPA and who will accomplish those tasks.

• “Who facilitates [retakes]? Who sets up that placement? Who obtains the school they’ve got to do their teaching in. So they’re a lot of management questions that are still buzzing around for us here.”

Management~ Time/Scheduling • Faculty are concerned with the amount of time needed to

complete tasks and scheduling with other colleagues to do work associated with edTPA.

• “They realized that if they were doing their student teaching in elementary schools, they wouldn’t see them every day. This is because art or music is offered once a week, so that became a big logistic issue in developing the portfolio and they had to switch around placements and have the second replacement come in and meet their students every day, and be able to deliver those 3 to 4 lessons in the way the edTPA expects them to, and then develop a portfolio. “

• “If you were to ask them, I’m sure they would still say that they need more, that they need more help managing the time and the planning and all of that.”

• “What they would probably request is a time issue. They would probably request a course release. Because it’s a lot of extra planning and time is the biggest factor for faculty: “I get this, we know what we’re doing now, and we know how to do it. But it’s that whole element of time.”

Consequence• Faculty are focused on edTPA’s impact on students in his or

her program, department, or college and the relevance of edTPA for students.

• Sub-Categories which edTPA Coordinators believed are the focus of Georgia faculty:• Impact on candidate• Impact on program • Candidate support• Data-driven Decision Making• Implementation during consequential and non-consequential years

Consequence ~ Impact on Candidates• Faculty are concerned with learning a new assessment system

and learning about-all the parts and pieces of the assessment; cost, time needed to do edTPA; must pass - certification requirement

• “We’re very concerned about the impact of edTPA on our candidates. Not that they won’t pass, we know that they’ll pass, because we know that we know how to ensure that they do. What we’re concerned about is that it takes so much time to comply with the specific things being required and it’s taking away from the student-teaching process and there is not time to do some things that are more valuable. And so that’s our concern. The consequences that we’re having to give up to reach assignment and to reach experience, …. and of the clinical practice, because they can’t do it all ...”

“Everybody wants their students to be successful, and they’re just hoping that’s what we’re doing, that the signature assignments that we’ve incorporated are going to be effective.”

Consequence ~ Candidate Support• Faculty are concerned with designing curriculum learning

experiences and activities in courses and seminars, specifically activities to develop and support knowledge and skills for edTPA.

• “We have been doing pilots for the last three years, so we are more prepared by curriculum mapping back into our curriculum the different pieces and making sure the students have the skills. We’re just are like anticipating did we really do it. you know the fear of finding out if it worked or not.”

• “They understand now that they are examining their programs and curriculum, so I think that their concerns now are more in … if I were to guess I’d say they’re more in the ….. They’re more in the how to support our students.”

Consequence ~ Data-Driven Decision Making

• Faculty are concerned with the use of candidate data to make curricular and program changes.

• “edTPA is probably not a focus for them, however, when we meet together as a faculty to work on, for example, local scoring or when assessment results come in there are certain time periods when there is a lot of focus on it. And usual that focus is, ok here is the information we have, how does it affect us? What do we need to do to adjust our program to plug this hole up or take care of it?”

• “… we’re looking at the data and I know there is something that we can learn, but given the very [indiscernible 00:23:45] nature of what we get back, we get just really general thing that we know that assessment issue and feedback -- student feedback is a problem.”

Consequence ~ Consequential Implementation• Faculty are concerned with the certification

requirement in 2015-16; stress on candidates as a high-stakes accountability measure.

• “...I think it’s a natural anxiety until we get started consequentially of not being sure we’ve adequately prepared the students and what the ramifications of that are going to be…”

• “Anxiety. Because of the high stakes. Because in Georgia you cannot become a certificated teacher without passing.”

Consequence ~ Non-Consequential Year• Faculty are concerned with pilot data indicating that some

candidates may be strong in the program but did not do well on the edTPA.

• “We actually had one particular middle grades student who did not do well on the assessment, and I could pull my data, but who really was a leader in her cohort as far as everyone asking her, how to do this and how to do that, and then did not do well on the edTPA.”

Collaboration – Among Faculty & Others

• Faculty are focused on coordinating and cooperating with others regarding the use of edTPA.

• edTPA coordinators did not feel many of their faculty were at this stage.

• “I do have a small handful of faculty that are moving towards that collaboration level because they are beginning to go out to make presentations at conferences and talk to others outside of our college.”

• “Collaboration, maybe some, because they work with one another so well.”

Refocusing ~ Other Option to Evidence Impact on P-12 Student Learning

• edTPA coordinators did not feel faculty were at many of their faculty were at this stage.

• Faculty are focused on exploring ways to reap more universal benefits from edTPA implementation, including the possibility of making major changes to it or replacing it with a more powerful alternative.

• “There’s been absolutely no opportunity, no space in conversation to stay, “We would prefer to refocused and replace with the more powerful alternative.” Not only -- Well that just has simply not been allowed in the conversation, which disturbs me or higher ed, it’s not, “Okay, let’s takes time and compare these three performance outside edTPA, teacher work [sample] ...”

How can edTPA coordinators understand the levels of integration of edTPA related initiatives going on in programs or courses?

edTPA Levels of Integration Survey (LoI)

• Adapted from two CBAM constructs, (a) levels of use and (b) innovation configuration.

• The Levels of Use explains the behaviors of people involved in this implementing the change (Hall & Hord, 2015).

• The construct of Innovation Configuration focuses specifically on mapping the nature of content or activities undertaken during implementation of an innovation.

edTPA Levels of Integration (LoI)

• The level of integration of edTPA within programs and faculty’s personal practice may be inconsistent. Thus, LoI investigates use at the program level and at the faculty level in courses.Total 19 questions

10 questions at Program level9 questions at Personal level

Rate Level of Integration

Not implementing at this timeNonUse

Acquiring Information about

ThisOrientati

onPreparing to

Integrate ThisPreparati

onCurrently

ImplementingMechanical Use

Have Implemented and are Making

AdjustmentsRefineme

nt

Have Implemented and are

Collaborating with Others and Studying

Professional Resources to Make

Refinements

Integration

Level of edTPA Integration

• Significantly higher level of integration at the program level than at the course level.

• Most attention was at the Mechanical Use Level – where focus is technical use of implementation.

• Less attention at course or program level on helping candidates use information from edTPA to plan induction experiences.

What professional development opportunities might be helpful light of faculty members’ stages of concern or level of implementation?

Professional Development at the Informational Stage of Concern

• Most professional development seemed to emphasize information relevant to meeting concerns at this stage.

• Understanding edTPA Process• General Knowledge• Tasks• Academic Language• Rubrics

• “They had access to all of the things that were provided in the state where

they went to local evaluation training. I did local evaluation training for

them here at XXXXX, just really detailed to the Elementary Handbook. We

had pulled out a portfolio that we could use to do local evaluation because

they needed more. They went to the one at the state, and not all of them

attended the one that the state offered so we had to do more here at

XXXXX. We also broke it down by task and really went into each task into

depth. We had retreats. We did the rubric analysis where we looked at the

rubric level progression. We evaluated portfolios in pairs, where they had

to look at something and then try to score it and talk about why they

scored it a certain way. Of course we would dissect the handbook, read the

handbook, just pretty much every meeting we’d look at different

components.”

• “We set up the edTPA liaison meetings, we meet once a month. It is for the liaisons, but everyone is invited and I send that out on the email so they know the general agenda and what we are going to be talking about. I began with a gallery walk and I down loaded some of the key things that are on the website from AACTE and made like science fair poster displays of the key pieces of power-point and then I printed it off and made a copy of it and had a sign up sheet if they wanted me to send them the electronic file. Because I really felt they were at an informational stage, looking at this now, I didn’t know that, that was a stage at that time.”

Types of Professional Development at the Informational Stage of Concern

• edTPA Conferences, workshops• Review/analysis of handbooks and manuals• Electronic access to edTPA resources • edTPA Coordinator Webinars• Liaison Meetings• Local evaluation training• One-on-One Support from coordinator

Professional Development at the Personal Stage of Concern

• Support from administration may be key• Institutional specific approaches/resources • Focus• Helping faculty deal with reward structures• Faculty autonomy and power in decision making.

• “The open forum that we had, it really aired….it was a place for them to air a lot of those personal concerns. And the issues about the reward structure of tenure and promotion (or promotion for clinical) and how much control do we have over this process and what is in it that is within our power.”

• “Well, getting a positive—getting a positive vibe from administration. I think that—I think that would help a lot, for those who are still the naysayers, and why are we doing this, it’s just gonna go away.”

• “And I think part of what has helped in this area of people, to support them, is giving as much autonomy left at the program level that I can. I didn’t want program faculty to feel they did not have control…and so anything that I could keep as a program decision I kept as a program decision. It was only when we had to set a policy that we realized had to cut across all of our program that it had to become a unit level policy. That just didn’t happened, that evolves as you talk about concerns and talk at the liaison meetings of concerns and building a sense of what is it that we think should be at the program level. How are you going to deal with grading at the program level? How is this going to count at the program level? It is that kind of reassurance and realizing that was going to be our orientation and that was going to be our way of approaching this. That I think that helped people move through that concerns or helps them move through those concerns…..to get to those management issues.”

Types of Professional Development at the Personal Stage of Concern

• Institutional Open Forums• Liaison Meetings Focusing on Faculty

Concerns

Professional Development at the Management Stage of Concern

• Faculty Support Structures at the Institutional Level• Focus included• Structuring deadlines• Using Livetext• Peer editing and preparing files• Course experiences• Matrix for curriculum mapping• Uploading

• “The management, the technical parts…they had been to those trainings, we have had academic language. But really it is those two faculty who have just incredible knowledge and expertise, sharing what they do. Here is how we structure it, here is how we set up deadlines for week 1, week 2, week 3. Here is how we do it on LiveText, and this is the template and we give that to every program if they want to use that template. The LiveText documents that we have as templates have all the resources that people had created for good peer editing, here is document that you can use if you want to have a peer editing session where they go through and check everything off, a checklist for file types and was is everything correct. So, a lot of those things they don’t have to go and redo for themselves if they are new to it because we talk it through and then share it together. So, when people get to those management issues, that is the way they find out about it in the liaison group.”

Types of Professional Development To Support Faculty at the Management Stage of Concern

• Faculty Support Structures at the Institutional Level• Focus included• edTPA Coordinator Support• Stipends for Faculty Work• Peer Mentoring• Liaison Meetings • Cross Departmental Briefings/Forums

Professional Development at the Consequences Stage of Concern

• Using Data to Focus on Strengths and Weaknesses• Focus included• Future plans to look at data and plan program specific

support• Examining student exemplars, local evaluation data,

and national scores

• We did share data, we compared our local evaluation scores to the small number that we sent out for national and did the state results. We gave everybody those results so that right off the first year we could see our local evaluation scores are way too high. Even though we had a small, small group the first year. But, this helped people know in general is always a problem and here is what we know think we are doing great and you know what we are doing crummy. We don’t really have a good concept of what that piece means on the rubric. Then that tells us that we need to train more all of our supervisors and our faculty. We are going to continue to do that.

Types of Professional Development To Support Faculty at the Consequences Stage of Concern

• Additional Local Evaluation Training for Faculty and Supervisors

Professional Development at the Collaboration or Refocusing Stage of Concern

• No specific discussion of professional development relevant to these stages.

Summary

• Importance of Understanding Faculty Concerns• Potential Relationship between Concerns and

Levels of Integration• Valuing of Recognizing Connections between

Concerns and Supports Needed