Preparing Teachers for the Age of Accountability: Toward a Framework for Assessment Education

Within the current accountability context of education in the United States and Canada, there is a clear need to educate teachers on effectively using assessments to support, measure, and communicate student learning. Despite this need, assessment has historically been a neglected area in teacher education programs with comparatively little research to support assessment education structures. Accordingly, the purpose of this article is to develop a preliminary assessment education framework as a foundation for future teacher education research and for designing theoretically informed assessment education that responds to multiple stakeholder perspectives. As a basis for this framework, three critical perspectives on assessment education are delineated (i.e., preservice policy perspective, teacher educator perspective, and teacher-candidate perspective) by reviewing current research, standards, and policies in fields of teacher education and assessment. The article concludes with recommendations for a research agenda aimed at further developing a scholarship for assessment education. (Contains 1 figure and 1 note.)