NBPTS Professional Teaching Standards And Teacher Certification: Development, Operation And Impaction

With the further progress of worldwide education reform, the quality of teachers has become the focus of the world, which prompted the development of professional teaching standard. On the other hand, the educators have been making tireless efforts to make teaching a profession, which makes the birth of professional teaching standard to become a necessity. Under this background many countries come to take professional teaching standard as an important means to improve the quality of teachers and promote teaching as a profession. The system of professional teaching standards and certification by NBPTS is the first standards and certification system for accomplished teachers, which is also regarded as the most ambitious attempt by any country to establish a standard and certification system for teachers who reach high professional standards.In chapter 1 and 2 we first probed into the connotation and characters of professional teaching standards, and then the theory and practice basis of NBPTS standards and certification. NBPTS solved the fundamental problem of "what teachers should know and be able to do" by the development and its "five core propositions" which also set a vision for "accomplished teaching".Five core propositions acted as a rational for the development of the standards and certification in all the fields, which took the theory about teacher knowledge by Schulman as its theory basis. Schulman's theory oriented itself in answering "what knowledge is fundamental to teaching" or "what teacher should know and be able to do", which is regarded as question to support the nature of teaching knowledge. The practice basis of NBPTS standards and certification lie in the Standard-based Movement in America and the tireless efforts of educators in making teaching a profession.From chapter 3 to chapter 6 we studied the development, operation and effect of NBPTS standards and certification. NBPTS started its work by the setting of five core propositions, which is what the following standards and certifications in all fields based on. The development of standards and certifications in all fields followed a scientific process by NBPTS. The development of certification assessment is a vital step to evaluate whether teachers reach the standards, and also it is the practical interpretation of standards content and a bridge to transfer standards from theory into practice. Certification assessments set its tone by using portfolio assessment instead of traditional teacher assessment and take the problem of how to evaluate complicated teaching practice as its core problem. NBPTS set APPLE criteria to evaluate the work of assessment developers, which become the most high and rigorous criteria to evaluate assessment developers. Our study on the operation of NBPTS certification showed that its participation rate is low. However, the number of teachers who participate in and gain certification presented trend of escalation. In addition, the number of teachers who apply for and gain certification is quite different among different states and districts, and part of the reason lies in the different incentives. We conducted our study on the effects of standards and certification from three different levels:first we tried to catch the effect around the nation by reviewing some empirical studies; secondly we took Wyoming as a case study; and thirdly we probed into the effect on individual teachers by a narrative study on 3 national board certified teachers. Study on the three levels showed that standards and certification changed teachers' practice and career paths, and promoted the professional development of the teachers, making them better reflective practitioners; NBCTs changed their schools and districts in many different ways, which at last changed the culture of the whole state; Standards and certification promoted students learning through their effect on teachers and schools.In chapter 7 we summed up experience of NBPTS standards and certification from the following:What's the architecture of a teaching standards system? What standards we should develop? Who should be responsible for it? How to develop it? What evidence should we collect to evaluate teachers? How to assess teachers according to the evidence? These are the questions we must answer in the development of standards. We explored the enlightenment the NBPTS gave us in solving these series of problems.