Wrong Answer to the Wrong Question: Why We Need Critical Teacher Education, Not Standardization

Overview & Synopsis

The authors contend that teacher education (like K-12) is under attack by those seeking to exploit the public good and privatize education. Teacher educators find themselves on the defensive, compelled to answer questions about efficacy and accountability that do not reflect their understandings of their work, questions that do not address the most pressing concerns of critical multicultural educators: making schools sites for social justice and advocating for education as liberation. Into this moment comes edTPA, promoted as an answer to the perceived shortcomings of teacher education. EdTPA is a 40-plus-page document featuring Pearson Inc.'s logo. The final product is submitted to a "calibrated scorer," whose evaluation reduces student work to a number. As such, states these authors, it is the wrong answer to the question of how teacher education should be improved. This article argues that the edTPA distorts the teacher education process, narrows the possibilities of teaching and learning, distracts from critical multicultural and social justice education, is an invitation for corporate encroachment, and restricts academic freedom.