SPECIAL ISSUE - Navigating the Contested Terrain of Teacher Education Policy and Practice - Storying Teacher Education Policy

Oct 15, 2026

High-stakes, standardized teacher performance assessments (TPAs) reshape teacher education through regulation, policing, and externalized evaluation, often reinforcing a narrow and counter-critical framework. Four social-justice-oriented teacher educators analyze curricular, pedagogical, and political effects of TPAs in their local contexts, foregrounding how teacher and student voices are marginalized. Using a critical counternarrative approach, the study organizes lived stories to identify practice dilemmas and strategies for agency, including resistance through curricula, legislative participation, program policymaking, activist scholarship, and refusal.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages33

Reading Time1 h 23 min

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Special Issue: Navigating the Contested Terrain of Teacher Education Policy and Practice

Storying Teacher Education Policy: Critical Counternarratives of Curricular, Pedagogical, and Activist Responses to State-Mandated Teacher Performance Assessments

SPECIAL ISSUE Navigating the Contested Terrain of Teacher Education Policy and Practice education policy analysis archives A peer-reviewed, independent, open access, multilingual journal Arizona State University | Volume 26 Number 26 | March 5, 2018 | ISSN 1068-2341 | | --- | --- | --- | Storying Teacher Education Policy: Critical Counternarratives of Curricular, Pedagogical, and Activist Responses to State-Mandated Teacher Performance Assessments Nick Henning Alison Dover California State University, Fullerton Erica K. Dotson Clayton State University & Ruchi Agarwal-Rangath University of San Francisco United States Citation: Henning, N., Dover, A., Dotson, E. K., & Agarwal-Rangnath, R. (2018). Storying teacher education policy: Critical counternarratives of curricular, pedagogical, and activist responses to statemandated teacher performance assessments. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 26(26) . [http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/epaa.26.2790](http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/epaa.26.2790) This article is part of the Special Issue, Navigating the Contested Terrain of Teacher Education Policy and Practice, guest edited by Elena Aydarova and David Berliner. Abstract: The rise of high-stakes, standardized, teacher performance assessments (TPAs) is central to the industry being created out of the regulation, policing, and evaluation of university-based teacher education In addition to reinforcing a narrow and counter-critical framework, TPAs can shift responsibility for the evaluation of teacher candidates from university-based teacher educators with a comprehensive and nuanced fluency in candidates' preparedness to external scorers trained to standardize and depersonalize effective practice. In this article, four social justice-oriented teacher educators from three different states examine the practical and political effects of TPAs in their local contexts. By analyzing the curricular, pedagogical, and political implications of this high-stakes standardization of their field, they speak back to a policy landscape that too often marginalizes the voices of the teachers and students it purports to serve. Throughout, they examine the dilemmas of practice created by TPAs, as teachers and teacher educators seek to redefine what it means to enact justice-oriented professional agency in an increasingly regulated context. A critical counternarrative methodological approach was used to collect and process the authors’ lived stories and then to collaboratively reflect upon each other’s personal/professional experiences with TPAs. Several strategies are identified for enacting agency in response to TPAs, including curricular acts of resistance, resistance through participation in state legislative processes, policymaking within teacher education programs, the production of activist scholarship, and refusal to participate at all. Ways are suggested for teacher educators to minimize, mitigate , and resist unjust policy through curricular, political, and scholarly activism. Keywords: preservice teacher education; teacher performance assessments; teacher education; educational policy; activism; social justice; standardization; professional agency; critical counternarrative; resistance; activist scholarship Narraciones sobre normativas en la formación de maestros: Respondiendo de una modo dialéctico y activista a los aspectos curriculares y pedagógicos de las pruebasestatales de magisterio Resumen: Uno de los aspectos centrales de la industria que se ha creado alrededor de laregulación, normativa y evaluación de la formación de maestros es el incremento de herramientas estandarizadas y tasadas en un criterio unívoco tales. Un ejemplo de estasherramientas son las TPAs. Estas TPAs se basan en una visión cerrada y carente de pensamientocrítico. No solo eso, estas herramientas restan de algún modo validez a las evaluaciones que hace el profesorado que trabaja en los programas de formación de maestros. Este profesorado

FAQs

What role do high-stakes standardized teacher performance assessments (TPAs) play in teacher education policy and practice?

TPAs centralize regulation, policing, and evaluation of university-based teacher education. They can narrow critical frameworks and shift assessment responsibility to external scorers trained to standardize practice.

How do the authors explain the political and educational effects of TPAs in their local contexts?

They examine curricular, pedagogical, and political implications of TPAs and argue that such standardization can marginalize the voices of teachers and students. The analysis highlights dilemmas of practice created by TPAs for teachers and teacher educators.

What methodology is used to develop the article’s counternarratives?

A critical counternarrative methodological approach collects and processes the authors’ lived stories. The authors then collaboratively reflect on each other’s personal and professional experiences with TPAs.

Oct 15, 2026

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