edTPA and Accountability: Strategies for Mentoring Teacher Candidates

This article examines and discusses 7 years of data collection and personal experience implementing and navigating the teacher candidate assessment called edTPA (educational Teacher Performance Assessment). Visual arts education has its own discipline-specific assessment, whose development and implementation is not without controversy in our field. The challenges we face as art educators teaching in education prep programs need to be made transparent as data-driven accountability policies continue to grow, impacting curricular and programmatic values. Practical strategies for teacher prep programs in edTPA early adoption or piloting phases are shared and discussed.