edTPA:
Impact on Teaching and Learning
in a Common Core World
Facing the Challenges
MARY JANE KREBBS, PH.D.
ASSOCIATE DEAN
ST. JOHN’S UNIVERSITY
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Backdrop
A learning goal or standard is only as good as the
instructor’s ability to imagine what it would look
like when it is being met.
Sarah Fine
Education Week
10/28/10
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Backdrop
We need to fix our schools to teach “entrepreneurship,
innovation and creativity” so students can emulate the
“new untouchables” in our workforce today.
Thomas Friedman
New York Times, Oct. 2009
Today’s students will need such tools (of creativity) to
tackle the problems they stand to inherit…Knowledge
will need to be combined across disciplines, and
juxtaposed in unorthodox ways.
Creativity: A Cure for the Common Core
Dan Berrett
The Chronicle of Higher Ed
April 5, 2013
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Have as your mantra: Explicit literacy instruction
is now a shared responsibility of all teachers
throughout a school.
Ross Wiener
Teaching to the Core
CCSSO and the Aspen Institute
March 2013
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Content mastery is not sufficient. We should view
content acquisition as a means to an end, not an end in
itself. If students do not have numerous opportunities
to use content knowledge to solve interesting
problems, grapple with key questions and issues of the
discipline, and examine sound issues, they will be
unlikely to perform well on the common assessments.
David Coleman
Building on the Common Core
Educational Leadership, March 2011
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School of Education Challenges
 Prepare faculty, students, supervisors for the edTPA
certification process
 Understand the Common Core
 Align Common Core, edTPA and our programs with
the task prompts
 Align edTPA with our accreditation agency - TEAC
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Curriculum Components
Content:
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knowledge/skills/understandings
depth over breadth
ability to transfer
interdisciplinary
learning goal – it has to be about something
writing, writing, writing
Task I
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the intended teaching
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Curriculum Components
Instruction:
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“heartbeat” of Common Core
use knowledge to…
non-routine (cf: brain theory)
creativity
intrinsically motivated
writing, writing, writing
Task II
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the enacted teaching
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Curriculum Components
Assessment:
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integral – not intrusive
“imagine what it looks like when being met”
evidence of understanding
Backward Design
formative and summative
writing, writing, writing
Task III
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impact on student learning which informs further planning
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Sample Prompts
 Describe how your planned formal and informal
assessments will provide direct evidence that students
can use the literacy strategy and requisite skills to
comprehend or compose text throughout the learning
segment.
 Explain how you elicited student responses to promote
thinking…
 Use evidence from 3 student work samples and the whole
class summary to analyze the patterns of learning for the
whole class and differences for groups or individual
learners…
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Our students have to learn how to do this by our
teaching them and by our modeling these
components in our planning, teaching and assessing
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NJDOE
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What do these claims look like?
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Are teachers giving content area reading materials (Scientific
texts, Historical texts, Art texts, Math texts) greater focus?
Is academic vocabulary front and center in every subject and
every grade?
Is the teacher asking text-dependent questions?
Are the questions posed by the teacher worth answering?
Is the teacher facilitating evidence–based discussion and leading
the students to draw from that evidence in their writing?
Are all students actively participating?
Is appropriate scaffolding given to raise the bar for all?
Is the teacher providing immediate effective feedback?
Adapted: Danielson & Marzano
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Overview of Standards for History/Social
Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects
 Reading Standards for History/Social Studies, Science,
and Technical Subjects
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knowledge of domain-specific vocabulary
analyze, evaluate, and differentiate primary and secondary sources
synthesize quantitative and technical information, including facts
presented in maps, timelines, flowcharts, or diagrams
 Writing Standards for History/Social Studies, Science,
and Technical Subjects
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write arguments on discipline-specific content and
informative/explanatory texts
use of data, evidence, and reason to support arguments and claims
use of domain-specific vocabulary
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NJDOE
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What do these claims look like?
 Is the teacher developing the students’ capacity to make sense of a
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multi-step problem and persevere in solving it?
Do students understand the relationship between a real-world scenario,
its mathematical representation and the strategy needed to solve it?
Is academic vocabulary front and center?
Can the students engage in a mathematical discourse? Can they express
mathematical reasoning?
Is the teacher developing the students’ capacity to use appropriate tools
and to focus on precision?
Are assignments coherently designed; are math exercises given in
intentional sequences?
Do assignments contain different types of problems that are presented
in a simple to complex format?
adapted: www.engageny.org
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 Coupling practice with content gives the learning
context, whereas practices alone are activities, and
content alone is memorization…
 The integration of rigorous content and application
reflects how science and engineering is practiced in the
real world
Executive Summary
New Generation Science Standards
Facing the Challenges
1. Aspects of edTPA
 Coordinating Committee
 course/Program Design Sub-committee
 communication/Training Sub-committee
 infrastructure Sub-committee
 edTPA/TEAC rubric alignment Sub-committee
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Facing the Challenges
2. Gap Analysis
 The Common Core State Standards are integrated throughout
every course
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the way knowledge is learned and transferred
reflections on learning
assessing student work
 Instituted a new writing course: Writing for Educators
 co-taught by a content person and a literacy person
 same or different department
 Created a course, Educational Theory To Practice, taken with
student teaching to assist students in the kind of reflection
necessary for the effective cycle of teaching (intended;
enacted; impact on student learning)
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Facing the Challenges
 Assessment mantra: students are only limited by what it
is we ask of them as proof that they know it.
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integrated into every course
Backward Design
looking at student work as a means toward student achievement,
curriculum alteration and “learning more about what students know
and can do and what they think” (Darling-Hammond and Falk, p. 6)
thinking outside the box in designing assessment protocols
 Faculty Retreat: Where can the learning take place in
preparation for the assessment of effective teaching
(edTPA)
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Facing the Challenges
3. Training
 Full Faculty Council: November 12, 2012 (Beverly
Falk) and March 4, 2013 (in-house team of faculty)
 All Adjunct faculty in the Department of Curriculum
and Instruction
 All Supervisors for student teachers
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Facing the Challenges
4. Train the Trainer Professional Development
 Design Committee comprised of representatives
from administration, faculty, adjuncts and
supervisors from 2 campuses
 Two-day design process in August 2013
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Facing the Challenges
5. edTPA Teaching Modules
(2 hours each; offered at night and on Saturday)
 Academic Language
 Instruction
 Assessment
 Mathematics
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