Integrated Assessment Practices

A key feature of clinical teaching models is the integration of theory and practice, this approach is also reflected in assessment practices in programs which identify as ‘clinical’. Clinical models of teaching make it possible for new and more integrated assessment practices which focus on student learning to be undertaken by pre-service teachers. Three examples of integrated assessment practices are the use of teaching portfolios, learning rounds and combined assessment tasks.

In clinical teaching models, integrated assessment is evident both in formative and summative assessment tasks. Key to these approaches is the ways that formative assessment not only requires pre-service teachers to integrate theory and practice, but also supports pre-service teachers to undertake summative assessment.

Perhaps the most widespread example of this kind of assessment is the teaching portfolio of practice, which pre-service teachers collect throughout their professional preparation for the purpose of final assessment and, in the United States, for professional accreditation (see Darling-Hammond et al., 2010).

Another more context specific example is the Learning Rounds approach developed at the University of Glasgow drawing on the work of City et al. (2009). These Learning Rounds enable pre-service teachers at the site of practice to observe their peers teaching, and then, with the support of mentor teachers and University staff, pre-service teachers reflect on the implications of the example of teaching they have seen for their own practice. This then contributes to their summative performance assessment (see Conroy et al., 2013).

A promising practice is the “Clinical Praxis Exam” at the University of Melbourne, an inquiry which requires pre-service teachers to design a learning intervention for a school student within a classroom context and report on and explain the ways in which they utilised classroom data and research evidence to support learning for this student (see McLean Davies et al., 2013).

Evidence base and references

City, E. A., R. F. Elmore, S.E. Fiarman and L.Teitel. 2009. Instructional Rounds in Education: a network approach to improving teaching and learning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Educational Press.

 Conroy, J., M. Hulme and I. Menter. 2013. “Developing a ‘clinical’ model for teacher education.”  Journal of Education for Teaching: International research and pedagogy 39(5): 557-573. DOI: 10.1080/02607476.2013.836339

Darling-Hammond, L., Newton, X., and Chung Wei , R. (2010) Evaluating

teacher education outcomes: a study of the Stanford Teacher Education Programme, Journal of Education for Teaching: International research and pedagogy, 36:4, 369-388 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2010.513844