In 1987, Educational Testing Service (ETS) began a large scale project to provide a framework for state and local agencies to use for making teacher licensing decisions. The resulting program is called The Praxis Series: Professional Assessments for Beginning Teachers®. Many states use Praxis I: Pre-Professional Skills Assessments and Praxis II: Subject Assessments to grant an initial teaching license. Praxis III: Classroom Performance Assessments is for use in assessing actual teaching skills and classroom performance.
I worked with ETS to help prepare and validate the criteria for Praxis III. The criteria were based on formal analyses of important tasks required of beginning teachers; reviews of research; analyses of state regulations for teacher licensing; and extensive field work that included pilot testing the criteria and assessment process (Dwyer and Villegas, 1993; Dwyer, 1994; Rosenfeld, Freeberg, & Bukatko, 1992; Rosenfeld, Reynolds, & Bukatko, 1992; Rosenfeld, Wilder, & Bukatko, 1992).
My particular responsibility in the development of Praxis III was to design the training program for assessors. Because the Praxis system is used to license beginning teachers, assessors for Praxis III must be able to make professionally and legally defensible judgments. Indeed, throughout the pilot and field testing of both the instrument and the training program, the rates of interrater agreement were high.
As valuable as Praxis III is for states in the licensing of qualified teachers, I came to see its usefulness as extending far beyond that limited role. In training hundreds of assessors to use the Praxis III framework for assessing the teaching of novices, I witnessed the quality of the participants' conversation. It became clear that in their daily lives, educators have (or make) little opportunity to discuss good teaching. As participants watched videotapes and read scenarios of teaching during the assessor training, they had to determine how what they observed represented the application of the various criteria in different contexts. For example, they noticed that a kindergarten teacher's actions to help students extend their thinking were quite different from those employed by a chemistry teacher. And yet, both teachers might be extending their students' thinking, so both sets of action constituted examples of a particular criterion in different contexts.
As educators (particularly teachers) watched and discussed the videotapes with one another, they also engaged in side conversations or reflection about their own teaching. That is, they saw a teacher's action that they could adopt or adapt to their own setting. They heard a teacher phrase a question such that it provoked deep thinking by students—and they might determine to try something similar. Hence, as teachers went through the training program, they interacted with the activities on several different levels. On the surface, of course, they were preparing to become certified assessors, which meant that they had to pass a proficiency test. On a deeper level, they were finding that the conversations themselves were helpful and that their own practice would be changed as a result.
Because of its impact on their own teaching, many Praxis III assessors reported that the experience of training was some of the most powerful professional development they had ever participated in. It gave them a structured opportunity to discuss teaching with colleagues in a concrete and research-based setting. Such opportunities are indeed rare in our schools. A participant's statement expresses the thinking of many: “By participating in the Praxis III training, I have focused more on my own teaching. I have become more thoughtful in my teaching and more concerned that my instructional activities fulfill my goals.” I, too, was changed by the experience. I developed a profound appreciation for the power of structured conversation to enrich the professional lives of teachers.
To restrict such conversations to those who serve as Praxis III assessors in states that choose to use that framework for licensing beginning teachers appeared to be too narrow an application. What about teachers in every state? What about those who already have their license? What about those who supervise student teachers or mentor beginning teachers? Wouldn't all those relationships and experiences be enriched by a comprehensive framework for teaching?
This line of thinking resulted in Enhancing Professional Practice: A Framework for Teaching. The framework is based on the Praxis III criteria, augmented to apply to experienced as well as to novice teachers and used for purposes beyond the licensing of beginning teachers. It is a framework that will, I hope, enrich the professional lives of those who choose to use it.
Other work also influenced the development of the framework: documents from the standards committees of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS); work at the University of Wisconsin (Newmann, Secada, & Wehlage, 1995); Michael Scriven's (1994) conceptions of teacher duties; and recent research on the pedagogical implications of constructivist learning. The framework has been subjected to a further intensive review by ETS colleagues Carol Dwyer, Ruth Hummel, and Alice Sims Gunzenhauser. The research foundation for the framework is provided in the Appendix.