I have been thinking about the use of multi-media representations of teaching for about two decades serving in a director(s) capacity for the following teacher assessment projects: (1) the first assessment development lab for the NBPTS in English language arts (2) implemented the first statewide induction program that included both mentorship for new teachers as well as the use of subject specific portfolios in Connecticut to grant a professional license to teach and (3) initiated the design and development of the Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT) which is an alternative performance assessment to initially license prospective teachers in California- 31 California universities are currently  members of PACT.

To serve as an exemplar of this body of work I will briefly identify the data sources (records of practice) we use to assess teaching in the PACT program.  The PACT portfolio assessments (“Teaching Events”) use multiple sources of data (teacher plans, teacher assignments, student work samples, video clips of teaching and personal reflections and commentaries) that are organized around five categories of teaching (planning, instruction, assessment, academic language and reflection). The PACT assessments build on efforts by the National Board and the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC), which developed performance assessments for use with expert and beginning teachers.  Like these earlier assessments, the focus of the PACT assessments is on candidates’ application of subject-specific pedagogical knowledge which has been found by research to be associated with successful teaching (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999; Darling-Hammond, 1998; Fennema et al., 1996; Grossman, 1990; Porter, 1988; Shulman, 1987).  What distinguishes the PACT assessments from the NBPTS assessments is that the Teaching Event tasks are more integrated (focusing on a unified learning segment-one week of instruction), is designed to measure teacher performance at the pre-service level, and has no “assessment center” components.  However, one distinguishing feature of the PACT assessment system is the use of customized course-embedded signature assessments (ESA) to support judgments of teacher competence. These embedded assessments could include case studies of individual students, curriculum analyses or unit plans, analyses of student work, and observations of student teaching.  The purpose of the ESAs is to provide formative feedback to the prospective teacher and teacher educators as well as to provide multiple sources of data to better inform the licensure decision.

In over two decades of work I have come to believe in the importance (centrality) of these authentic representations of teaching as the power source needed to build and capture new knowledge around teaching, learning and cognition. Through the evaluation of these portfolio submissions we have seen multi-layered representations of teaching that are situated in practice as evidenced by a range of data sources: video representations, teacher assignments, student work samples as well as teacher thinking about their practice (commentaries/reflection). These representations of teaching clearly evoke multiple perspectives of teaching but what is most illuminating is the use of these multiple data sources to arrive at defensible decisions about teacher competence.  These records of practice are complex and nuanced and are by no means straightforward or easy to analyze but they have one persistent feature which is they privilege the use of multiple sources of information to evaluate teaching. From my perspective this is the generative stuff (‘right stuff”) needed to study teaching and learning.

What these experience suggests to me is that we need technologies that will enable collaborative dialogue and inquiry into teaching that is nimble enough to allow for the interrogation of multiple representations of authentic teaching (i.e., video, student and teacher work samples, reflections/commentaries) in real time including ready access to a library of “practice” to support judgments about teaching and learning. In this regard I have become excited by the potential of two web based technology platforms that have been developed.  First,  Roy Pea has developed a process called  “Diver” which provides the users the capability to precisely select, manage and integrate video records (“dives”) to foster rich discussions of teaching. Second, Anne Lieberman work with teachers to capture their practice as part of the “Carnegie Academy of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTLE)” project is rooted in the mission to “go public with teaching” through the development of electronic teacher “cases” of practice (presented in their own words).  What excites me regarding this work is the possibility to marry (integrate) these technologies to enable easy manipulation of multiple records of practice beyond “video technologies” and empower users to individually construct and co-construct understandings of teaching based on using authentic and varied “sources of evidence.” Finally we need research on the use of media to study how these examinations of teaching supports teacher development and learning as well as builds new knowledge and understandings around teaching.