The conceptualizing, designing and testing of an assessment instrument for the supervision of teacher education interns

The purpose of this study was to conceptualize, design, and test an appropriate instrument for mentor teachers and university supervisors to consistently and accurately evaluate teacher education interns' performance based on the INTASC (Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium) standards and the Idaho Core Standards. The new assessment instrument, IPAT (Intern Performance Assessment Tool), was developed in several steps.; First, a steering committee of 12 people was established to design the first two drafts of the instrument. The first draft of the instrument was developed in the first steering committee meeting, and 422 people (287 teachers, 81 faculty members, 54 students) were then surveyed regarding their perceptions of the instrument. The second draft of the instrument, the IPAT (consisted of two parts: the FIE for final evaluation purposes and the GAI for formative assessment purposes), was developed in the second steering committee meeting based on the survey results. Finally, the IPAT was tested by nine interns and their mentor teachers (n = 9) and university supervisors (n = 9) during the fall 2000. At the end of the pilot study, the participants were surveyed regarding their perceptions of the use of the IPAT.; The qualitative data collected revealed that the IPAT was not very practical because of how much time conducting the assessments took, because the instrument was too long, and because the assessment conferences occurred too early in the semester. The use of the GAI helped mentor teachers to accurately assess teacher education interns' performance on INTASC dimensions because of the more focused observation method the tool provided for mentor teachers. Mentor teachers thought, however, that repetitive questions on the form disturbed the assessment process. The GAI did not help university supervisors to assess teacher education interns' performance on INTASC dimensions because of the limited observation time that negatively affected the evaluation process. The data also revealed that university supervisors strongly promote training for the use of the IPAT. The use of the GAI was an effective method for teacher education interns in meeting INTASC standards because the tool guided interns by giving clear expectations and because it helped interns in building portfolios. The redundancy of the questions on the GAI hindered the formative assessment process.