Children of Reform: The Impact of High-Stakes Education Reform on Preservice Teachers

Journal of Teacher Education61(5) 477 –491© 2010 by the American Association of College for Teacher EducationReprints and permission: http://www. sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navDOI: 10.1177/0022487109352905http://jte.sagepub.com

Children of Reform: The Impact of High-Stakes Education Reform on Preservice Teachers

Christopher Pierce Brown1

Abstract

High-stakes standards-based accountability reforms are changing teacher education. A key set of participants in this process who have been affected by these reforms are the teacher candidates. Many were educated almost entirely in high-stakes education systems. Yet, little is known about how their experiences as students affect their conceptions of teaching and learning or how their teacher education programs alter these perceptions. This article presents findings from a case study that explored these critical issues. It reveals that these candidates entered their teacher education program with a complex understanding of the impact of these reforms on teaching and learning. These findings also illuminate how these prospective teachers’ coursework and field experiences affected their conceptions of these constructs. This article ends by offering suggestions to teacher educators on how to incorporate these candidates’ skills and knowledge into their programs so that they can assist their candidates in becoming effective teachers.

Keywords

case study research, educational reform, teacher education/development

High-stakes, standards-based accountability reforms, such as the federal government’s No Child Left Behind Act, have altered the context of public education across the United States (Linn, Baker, & Betebenner, 2002), redefined teach-ers’ work (Cochran-Smith, 2006), and transformed the field of teacher education (Wepner, 2006). To date, those inter-ested in teacher education have centered their investigations on the political (Bales, 2006), practical (Selwyn, 2007), and programmatic (Zientek, 2007) impact of these policies on the field. A variable in the teacher education equation affected by these reforms but not fully examined is the teacher educa-tion candidate, in particular candidates who were educated almost entirely in high-stakes education systems. Their per-sonal histories as students (Anderson, 2001) and experiences as teachers-in-training (Bruner & O’Donnell-Allen, 2001) in high-stakes classrooms shape their pedagogical development. As a consequence, investigating the impact of these experi-ences illuminates their levels of understanding about the challenges they will confront as future teachers and highlights the issues that teacher educators face in preparing them for these high-stakes learning environments.

To this end, this article presents findings from an instru-mental case study (Stake, 1995, 2005) that investigated the impact of participating in high-stakes standards-based edu-cation systems as students and as teachers-in-training on a sample of preservice teachers. It brings to light the level of com-plexity that these teacher candidates possess in understanding

how their profession and their field of work are changing due to this reform process. It also offers suggestions to teacher educators on how to incorporate into their programs the skills and knowledge that these candidates bring with them to their training program.

The Impact of High-Stakes Reforms on Teaching and Teacher EducationImpact on Students and Teachers

The high-stakes, standards-based accountability school environments that many preservice teachers were educated in evolved out of a series of governmental responses to the publication of documents by a range of organizations and commissions that questioned the effectiveness of the United States education system (National Commission on Exc-ellence in Education, 1984). The aim of these policies is to ensure that all students attain high levels of academic achievement.

1University of Texas at Austin, USA

Corresponding Author:Christopher Pierce Brown, University of Texas at Austin—Curriculum and Instruction, 1 University Station, Mail Stop D 5700, Austin, TX 78712-0379, USAEmail: [email protected]

at TEXAS SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY on December 16, 2014jte.sagepub.comDownloaded from

http://jte.sagepub.com/

478 Journal of Teacher Education 61(5)

Practically speaking, whether these reforms improve stu-dent performance is an unresolved debate (Amrein-Beardsley & Berliner, 2003; Carnoy & Loeb, 2002; Nichols, Glass, & Berliner, 2006; Rosenshine, 2003). Still, empirical research shows that these policies affect students’ experiences within schools. In some instances, researchers reported that these policies led to students experiencing a narrowed curriculum that emphasizes the mastery of basic skills to prepare them for multiple-choice standardized tests (Firestone, Camilli, Yurecko, Monfils, & Mayrowetz, 2000). Others found that high-stakes education policies created classroom environ-ments where students were excluded from (Haney, 2000) or ignored during (Anagnostopoulos, 2006) classroom instruc-tion. Last, studies show that having such stakes in place can decrease students’ motivation to learn (Amrein & Berliner, 2003; Madaus & Clarke, 2001).

Empirical studies that examine whether these reforms improve teaching and learning in schools have mixed results as well (Anagnostopoulos, 2003; Au, 2007; Braun, 2004). Nonetheless, through their analysis of the impact of these high-stakes reforms on teachers over a 4-year period, Valli and Buese (2007) found that these policies have “increased, intensified, and expanded” (p. 520) teachers’ work. Diamond and Spillane (2004) also reported that no matter how well a school’s students are performing under a set of high-stakes policies, teachers “paid attention to tests results and sought to improve students’ outcomes on them” (p. 1156). Collectively, this growing body of research (Watanabe, 2007) indicates that the content on these exams plays a significant role in dictating teachers’ daily instruction.

Impact on Teacher EducationCochran-Smith (2006) argues that the changes in teaching and learning that have resulted from policy makers’ high-stakes reforms solidify “teaching and teacher education” as “fundamentally and inevitably political” (p. xxxiii) endeav-ors. Critical scholars such as Apple (2007), Weiner (2007), and Sleeter (2008) contend that by implementing these reforms, policy makers and others are reframing public schooling and teacher education through a neoliberal lens. Neoliberalism defines the role of government and its agencies through market-based principles, and in turn, the public goods of schooling and teacher education are defined as market-based commodities. This neoliberal framing of the education pro-cess positions individuals as “economically rational actor[s] who [are] constructed by and construct a reality in which democracy is no longer a political concept but is reduced to an economic one” (Apple, 2007, p. 114). Such a conceptual-ization of governing diverts “attention from the need for a greater investment in public education by the society and for the establishment of the social preconditions for educational reform” (Zeichner, 2006, p. 330). Weiner (2007) argues that this reconceptualization of government through market-based

principles is a “lethal threat” (p. 283) to the continued need for public education and teacher education. Thus, Sleeter (2008) makes the case that it is essential for teacher educators to “become much more aware of what neoliberalism is and how it is imp-acting” (p. 1955) the field.

At the practical level, this shift by policy makers toward high-stakes reforms creates a dilemma for teacher education. Teacher educators do recognize that to prepare teacher can-didates for the classroom, they must be explicit about the reality of teaching in this era of reform (Massey, 2006). They are also aware that an “essential part” of the knowledge that their candidates need to attain includes being able to teach what is on the test (Wepner, 2006, p. 142). Still, members of the field of teacher education point out that for teacher can-didates to be effective in their instruction requires that they possess more than the skill of being able to prepare their future students for these high-stakes tests. Hammerness, Darling-Hammond, and Bransford (2005) state that preser-vice teachers need to learn how to be adaptive experts who can adjust and respond to high-stakes external demands that they and their future students will face. Doing so requires teacher educators to help their candidates see the act of teaching as a form of practice that “require[s] diagnosis, intensive assessment and planning to adapt to learners’ needs, and a complex repertoire of practices judiciously applied” (Dar-ling-Hammond, 2006, p. 307). Teacher educators contend that if preservice teachers learn to become adaptive experts, they will then know how to make “strategic compromise[s]” in their instruction that will allow them “to balance competing influ-ences on their emerging instructional practices” (Lloyd, 2007, p. 344). Being able to make such decisions will assist them in using “standards productively and strategically” so that all of their future students can succeed in school (Darling-Ham-mond et al., 2005, p. 194).

Impact on Preservice TeachersTo assist teacher educators in the process of redesigning their programs so they can prepare teacher candidates for high-stakes standards-based accountability education systems, it is necessary to examine the increasing number of candidates who spent the majority of their time as kindergarten through Grade 12 (K-12) students in high-stakes classrooms. Nationally, 22 state governments require students to pass an exit exam before they can receive a high school diploma, and by 2012, this number will increase to 25 (Kober et al., 2006). The sig-nificance of these candidates’ experiences in “spend[ing] thousands of hours in elementary and secondary school[s] watching what teachers do and developing images about and dispositions toward teaching, learning, and subject matter” (Feiman-Nemser & Remillard, 1996, p. 65) is that they shape their pedagogical development (Hollingsworth, 1989; Pajares, 1992), their understanding of teaching (Holt-Reynolds, 1992; Kagan, 1992), and their future learning (National Research



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Council, 2000). Essentially, their experiences act “as filters for processing program content and making sense of class-room contexts” (Hollingsworth, 1989, p. 168). As such, it is highly likely that candidates who were educated in high-stakes learning environments bring with them to their teacher education programs the experience of being taught by teach-ers who engaged in “multiple-choice teaching” practices that equate learning with a test score (Smith, 1991, p. 10).

Complicating matters even further is that once they are in their teacher education programs, these candidates will more than likely participate in field experiences in which their classroom teachers’ daily instruction centers on teaching the content found on the high-stakes tests (White, Sturtevant, & Dunlap, 2003). Engaging in such field experiences can put these candidates in a position where “they are caught in a bind of being expected to implement methods advocated in university coursework while also being expected to fit into the classroom to which they are assigned” (Ferguson & Brink, 2004, p. 55). This has created a sense of worry among teacher educators (Gerwin, 2004) over whether their preservice tea-chers will simply teach to the test rather than engage in acts of “powerful teaching” (Hammerness, 2004, p. 41) once they enter their own classrooms.

Thus, there is a need within teacher education for empiri-cal studies that examine how the combined impact of being educated in a high-stakes K-12 school system and being trained to be a teacher in a similar environment affects the preparation of teacher candidates. The findings presented in this article begin to provide insight into this dilemma so that teacher educators can consider how preservice teachers are analyzing the act of teaching within these high-stakes learn-ing environments and what this means for teacher education in this current era of high-stakes education reform.

MethodStudy Design

The purpose of the instrumental qualitative case study that generated the findings presented in this article was to exam-ine the impact of high-stakes standards-based accountability reform on preservice teachers and what this means for teacher education. To investigate these issues, this study was conducted at an urban teacher education program located in Texas. Texas is a distinctive state. It pioneered many of the high-stakes accountability reforms that led to the federal government’s No Child Left Behind Act (Rudalevige, 2003). For example, in 1993, Texas became the first state to put in place an accountability system that had “consequences for children, schools, and districts” (McNeil, Coppola, Radigan, & Vasquez Heilig, 2008, p. 3). The state’s policy makers held students, teachers, and schools responsible for students’ academic achievement on state-based standardized tests to ensure that all students who graduated from Texas’s public schools had mastered a spe-cific set of knowledge and skills.

To examine the impact of these reforms on preservice teachers and what this means for teacher education, two questions guided this work. The first examined how a sample of preservice teachers’ prior schooling experiences in Texas’s K-12 high-stakes classrooms affected their con-ceptions of teaching and learning. As students in Texas’s public schools, the teacher candidates examined in the study were required to take the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) in Grades 3 through 10. The TAAS, which was in place from 1990 through 2002, measured their high-order thinking skills and problem solving in math, reading, and writing as outlined in the state-mandated curriculum known as the Essential Elements. The TAAS tests’ impact on the practices of students, teachers, and schools is well documented (Darling-Hammond, 2004; Haney, 2000; McNeil, 2000; Valenzuela, 1999).

The second question examined how these prospective tea-chers’ experiences in their teacher education program and their field experiences, both of which took place in Texas, affected their conceptions of teaching and learning. Currently, Texas’s public school teachers must implement policy makers’ man-dated K-12 curriculum, known as the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). Texas’s policy makers also require public school students to take the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) in Grades 3 through 11. From 2003 through 2009, students in Grades 3, 5, 8, and 11, had to pass the TAKS tests to be promoted to the next grade level and gradufrom high school. Beginning in 2009, the grade 3 TAKS test is no longer the sole indicator used to determine grade pro-motion. Again, researchers (Booher-Jennings, 2005; McNeil et al., 2008; Valenzuela, 2005) found that the high-stakes nature of the TAKS tests directly affects what takes place in Texas’s public schools.

Together, the findings from these two research questions presented in this piece facilitate our understanding into how teacher education programs are preparing teacher candidates for the very same high-stakes standards-based accountability classrooms in which they themselves were educated as stu-dents (Stake, 2005).

The Teacher Education ProgramParticipants for this study attended a large urban teacher educa-tion program in Texas that offers a three-semester trai ning sequence designed to lead them to receiving either an early childhood through fourth grade teacher certification (EC-4) or an EC-4 teacher certification with a bilingual endorsement. (All names, including the names of degrees, courses, schools, and participants, are pseudonyms.) Their first semester of training included coursework on applied learning, teaching young children, teaching reading, and teaching social studies. They also spent 12 hours per week in a pre-kindergarten (pre-k) or kindergarten field placement. In their second semester, their coursework included classes about classroom management, teaching science, teaching mathematics, and addressing read-ing difficulties. They also spent 16 hours per week in a Grade 1,




2, 3, or 4 field placement. In their last semester of training, they took a language arts class and spent 13 weeks in a 40-hour-per-week internship in either a pre-k or Grade 1, 2, 3, or 4 classroom. These students’ field experiences took place in Texas’s public school classrooms.

Data SourcesIn fall 2005, participants were recruited for this study from four of the six first-semester cohorts of EC-4 students in this program. From the 23 students who volunteered to partici-pate in the study, 10 names were randomly selected. These 10 students were then contacted on an individual basis, and after being told additional details about the study, 9 of the 10 agreed to participate. All participants were women whose ages ranged from 21 to 26 years old. They were interviewed five different times as they progressed through their three-semester training sequence using a series of detailed semistructured interviews (Glesne, 1999). These 9 participants were inter-viewed at the beginning and at the end of the first semester in fall 2005, during their second semester in spring 2006, prior to their final semester in fall 2006, and at the end of their program in December 2006.

Of these nine prospective teachers, eight had participated in Texas’s public education system, and because this article centers on the impact of high-stakes accountability reforms on preservice teachers and what this means for teacher edu-cation, only the experiences of these eight candidates are examined. As students in Texas’s public schools, they had to pass the 10th-grade TAAS tests to receive a high school diploma, and in Grades 3 through 8, they were tested in read-ing and mathematics, in writing in Grades 4 and 8, and in science and social studies in Grade 8.

Data GenerationTo examine the impact of these teacher candidates’ experi-ences in Texas’s high-stakes education system on their conceptions of the education process, these participants were asked in their first interview to describe their educational expe-riences in Texas’s public schools, including their experiences in taking the TAAS tests. They were then asked to discuss other issues such as whether they felt these tests were adequate mea-sures of what they learned in school. In terms of teaching, the candidates were asked to describe the role of the teacher, stu-dent, and school, to explain what they think it means for a student to be educated, and to detail their understanding of the state’s current accountability system. Last, they were asked to talk about what they hoped to gain from their teacher education classes as well as their field experiences.

To investigate how these candidates’ experiences in their classes and their field experiences affected their conceptions of these same constructs, they revisited the topics outlined

above in their subsequent interviews. They were also asked to detail how their experiences in their courses and in the field were affecting their conceptions of themselves as future classroom teachers and instructional decision makers. In addition to interviews, syllabi from the classes they took were collected to document the texts and articles they were reading as well as their assignments.

Data AnalysisAnalysis of the data followed traditional qualitative inquiry (Erikson, 1986; Strauss, 1996). After transcribing the inter-views, QSR’s NVIVO 7 qualitative data analysis software was used “to code and categorize” these documents (Yin, 2003, p. 110). Interviews were first coded using external codes, which “come out of the theoretical and conceptual per-spectives” that were brought to this study (Graue & Walsh, 1998, p. 163). Because this article examines how the com-bined impact of being educated as a student and trained to be a teacher in high-stakes school systems affects teacher candi-dates’ preparation, some of these external codes were as follows: K-12 school experience, experience taking the TAAS, role of the teacher, role of the student, role of mandated curriculum, role of the TAKS, and TAKS and grade promotion. For exa-mple, Penelope’s statement about taking the TAAS test, which was, “Taking the TAAS was fine. I would always score above average on it” (first interview), was coded experience taking the TAAS.

After coding the data using these external codes, a set of internal codes was developed representing issues that arose from reading the data (Graue & Walsh, 1998). For instance, the internal code “negative impact of the TAKS” emerged due to some of the teacher candidates discussing how the TAKS tests negatively affected what took place in their field placements. The following statement by Celeste in her final interview was marked with this code: “At the school I was at the last two semesters, they kind of expect the bare minimum, and that is to pass the TAKS. They don’t encourage kids to do higher level thinking at all. They just get them to do what they need to get done to pass the test.”

Once these internal codes were added to the data, it was read through several more times, and themes were devel-oped, such as “the TAAS test was easy.” These themes were read against the data set in search of contradictory evidence (Strauss, 1996; Wolcott, 1994). Using these themes, an inter-pretive document was then created that addressed the two research questions examined in this article (Graue & Walsh, 1998). That text included references to quotes and notes that supported and challenged the initial understandings of this case (Denzin & Lincoln, 2003). After rereading that text against the data set to confirm these findings, it was trans-formed into this article.



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Validity

A key methodological concern in qualitative research is the issue of validity (Yin, 2003). The findings presented in this piece center on the experiences of teacher candidates trained to be educators who worked with children from birth through Grade 4. Their training and field experiences focused on learning to teach in classrooms that are interdisciplinary in nature, and thus, their relationships with their students, Tex-as’s mandated curriculum, and the state’s assessment system are different from that of teacher candidates who train to work in specific content areas with students in middle and high school (Grant, 2006). To confirm the findings presented in this article, several strategies that qualitative researchers employ to improve the accuracy of their work were used throughout this study (Denzin & Lincoln, 2003; Glesne, 1999; Yin, 2003). Member checking occurred along vari-ous points of the data collection process (Glesne, 1999; Yin, 2003). For instance, beginning with the second set of interviews in December 2005, each candidate was first asked a series of questions that confirmed as well as clarified state-ments they made in previous interviews. Triangulation across data sources was achieved through comparing candidates’ statements from one interview to the next as well as across the entire data set (Denzin & Lincoln, 2003; Stake, 1995). Last, earlier drafts of this article were shared with a commu-nity of scholars so that they could help strengthen the accuracy of this piece through challenging and questioning initial inter-pretations of the data (Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Mertens, 1998). This community included doctoral students, practic-ing teacher educators, and public pre-k and elementary school administrators.

FindingsThe Impact of Being Students in Texas’s High-Stakes Public School Systems

In their initial interviews, these preservice teachers were asked to describe their experiences as students in Texas’s elementary and high schools as well as their experiences in taking the TAAS tests. Although each of these eight preser-vice teachers had a range of experiences as students in their K-12 classrooms, none of them found the grade level TAAS exams or the high school exit exam to be very challenging. Mary noted, “The TAAS tests were extremely easy” (first interview), and Celeste commented, “I never thought of the TAAS as anything” (first interview). Not only do such statements highlight that these candidates were successful at taking high-stakes tests, which they would have to be at this point in their college careers, but their statements also reflect findings (Linblad & Prieto, 1992) in which teacher education candidates tend to overachieve in their school work.

Even though these students initially framed these tests as easy, more nuanced and complex understandings of this pro-cess emerged in their descriptions. For two of these teacher candidates, Delores and Penelope, they identified themselves as learners through their test scores. Delores noted,

I think the test was a pretty adequate representation of my knowledge because for me to be able to answer those questions, not only did I have to use test-taking strategies, like process of elimination or how to pick the right answer, I had to be able to evaluate what kind of material I knew. It might have been a lower level test, either that, or we were so used to it because our teachers taught to it, and so confident with it, because our school wanted us to have that kind of attitude with it. (first interview)

Research has demonstrated how high-stakes accountability policies have led teachers to relate to their students differently (Valli & Buese, 2007). For Delores and Penelope, who saw the test as a reflection of “doing my best to meet the requirements” (first interview), the opposite is true. They both viewed their test scores as reflections of their academic success as students. In Delores’s case, this is the image of herself and attitude toward learning that her school wanted her to possess.

Conversely, Sasha, Celeste, and Isabelle rejected this idea that the TAAS tests projected an image of their academic achievement. Isabelle stated that the TAAS reflected a “very narrow avenue of knowledge that cheats students out of an education because you’re cutting them short from a higher form of thinking” (first interview). Sasha added, “My high school teachers taught to the test, and I felt that that was a disservice to me as a student because I wasn’t being chal-lenged academically. They would pull out old TAAS books and give you the sample readings or math problems. It was just something we had to do” (first interview). Sasha and Isabelle’s comments reflect a sense of frustration with being taught only the tests. Their statements also challenge the notion that teacher candidates enter their teacher education programs with traditional (Anderson, 2001) conceptions of teaching and learning. Rather, they saw the tests as limiting the instruc-tion and knowledge they received as students.

Celeste, who also had a negative view of the TAAS exams, framed her concerns through a systemic rather than indi-vidualistic perspective. She questioned how Texas’s system of accountability identified schools as being successful. Celeste commented,

I knew taking the TAAS was a big deal, but at the same time, I didn’t really care because it didn’t show that much about the magnet school that I went to. There were only 60 kids in each magnet grade in this bigger high school. We were all practically making perfect scores on the test, but as a school, we were seen as




failing by the state because the rest of the students didn’t do well on it. (first interview)

Celeste’s statement illustrates her recognition that being held accountable as a student and having one’s school being held accountable by the state’s policy makers are two distinct issues that do not necessarily align with each other (Booher-Jennings, 2005).

Last, Mary, Diane, and Ashley entered their teacher educa-tion program with a more nuanced and tempered understanding of the impact of high-stakes testing on their learning experi-ences. Ashley, who was “not concerned” about the TAAS tests, stated that she still “knew that it was a pretty big deal” (first interview). Nevertheless, Mary began to think that the TAAS was not “tough because maybe it was just that every-thing I was doing was TAAS and I didn’t even realize it” (first interview). Still, Diane questioned the impact of the tests on her as a learner by questioning what exactly the tests measured. She noted, “I remember a lot of the questions being tricky, and if the test is going to really test our knowl-edge, then I don’t think that being tricky is the best way to measure learning” (first interview). Although none of these three teacher candidates struggled with the TAAS tests, they recognized its significance in relation to their role as stu-dents. Mary and Diane also understood that taking a high-stakes test required academic knowledge and test-taking knowledge (Rex & Nelson, 2004), which goes beyond the types of aca-demic learning that advocates who support Texas’s high-stakes education system typically discuss (Skrla & Scheurich, 2001).

The Influence of Others on Their Understanding of the Impact of High-Stakes TestingAdding to these preservice teachers’ narratives of the impact of these policies on teaching and learning at the individual and systems levels were narratives from family members and fri-ends who taught in Texas’s public schools. For instance, Mary, Diane, and Delores had family members who worked in Tex-as’s public schools. According to Diane, her mother, who taught third grade, was “not a big fan of the TAKS. She always feels that she has to teach towards the tests and not having a lot of time to do other things” (first interview).

Other students, such as Celeste and Sasha, had friends of the family who taught in Texas’s public schools. Their friends’ experiences were similar to the experiences of Diane’s mother. For example, Celeste commented,

This woman went from being a kindergarten teacher to a second-grade teacher, and she complained all the time about it, because she had to start working with the TAKS tests. She said that the emphasis that was put on the TAKS tests by her principal really took away from the other stuff that she wanted to do with her stu-dents. She had a hard time adjusting to that, and I don’t

want to have to deal with a TAKS grade because she didn’t like dealing with the pressure. (first interview)

Celeste’s comment about wanting to avoid teaching in a TAKS testing grade was made by each of the participants in their first interview. Their statements reflect Selwyn’s (2007) finding that “testing also affects the grades at which our tea cher can-didates choose to teach” (p. 133). Whereas such resi stance to teaching in the testing grades could be framed thr ough notions of inexperience, Rex and Nelson (2004) point out that a key component of the teachers who were successful in the high-stakes learning environments they studied was that those teachers “chose” where they wanted to teach (p. 1317).

Last, as part of a prerequisite course in language and lit-eracy that Ashley and Isabelle each took to enter their training program, they tutored elementary school students struggling in reading 1 hour per week. These tutoring experiences pro-vided them with firsthand knowledge about the impact of high-stakes testing on students’ and teachers’ experiences in Texas’s public schools. When discussing this experience, Isabelle stated,

I realized that the entire purpose of this tutoring pro-gram is for kids who are at risk for not passing the TAKS tests. Everybody in the school was always talk-ing to all the kids about the TAKS tests. Really pushing it on the kids so that they were very aware that the tests were coming up, and in seeing that, it really turned me off by how that made these kids feel. I asked them how they felt, because in one of my prerequisite classes, we talked about how important emotions are to learning, and how that can affect learning. And so before the TAKS, I asked the students how they felt about it, and all of them were just petrified. They’d say, “I am scared.” It was just sad. (first interview)

Isabelle’s statement reflects a powerful understanding of the message that test scores can convey about as well as to them (Barksdale-Ladd & Thomas, 2000). Ashley, who had experiences similar to Isabelle, noted, “It was made very clear to me that it is very important that students pass the TAKS” (first interview). For both of these preservice teachers, the TAKS tests became the curriculum they were to teach their students in their mentoring sessions, and even though both candidates were successful on such exams, they now recognized and were even disheartened by the emotional damage (Selwyn, 2007) that such tests can have on children.

Translating Experiences With High-Stakes Testing Into the Act of TeachingA key concern that emerges from analyzing these preservice teachers’ experiences as students in Texas’s high-stakes



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K-12 education systems is the potential for them to become classroom teachers who teach as they were taught, which for each of them was teaching to the tests (e.g., Gilles, Cramer, & Hwang, 2001; Green, 1992). However, when discussing their conceptions of teaching and learning, these preservice teachers entered their program with a complex understand-ing of the role of the teacher. Ashley, who saw firsthand how the pressure to perform affected the life of the student she tutored, framed the role of the teacher and the school to be

getting the student ready for society—socially, academ-ically, and emotionally. A big part of teaching is making sure that your classroom is an environment where it’s comfortable for students to learn and take risks and trying to create a culture where that’s acceptable so that they can learn. (first interview)

Ashley described teaching as a complex endeavor that enco-mpasses a range of learning experiences that touch on all of a student’s developmental domains (Copple & Bredekamp, 2009). Moreover, the construct of academic achievement that domin-ated her and many of the other students’ descriptions of their experiences with the state’s accountability system did not emerge as a priority in Ashley’s statement of what it meant to be a teacher.

Instead, each of these teacher candidates framed the role of the teacher in her first interview through such terms and statements as “role model” (Delores), “guide” (Penelope), “someone who will challenge you” (Celeste), “a person that shows the children love” (Mary), or “someone who likes to be with kids” (Diane). For these candidates, teachers not only taught their students “to achieve academically” (Sasha), but they also instructed them in how “to be good citizens” (Delores) and to see that “it’s a privilege to be able to learn all this stuff” (Isabelle). Thus, these preservice teachers began their program with conceptualizations of teaching that did not reflect what Rex and Nelson (2004) term the current “practical occupational reality for teachers” (p. 1319) in which they must come to view part of their occupation as teaching students how to perform well on standardized achievement tests. Rather, they framed their role to be teaching their stu-dents to become lifelong learners (Dewey, 1938).

Their Experiences in Their Teacher Education ProgramThese prospective teachers described their professional development in a manner similar to their varied descriptions of their experiences in Texas’s high-stakes public schools. Although they interpreted their coursework and field experi-ences in different ways, two patterns did emerge among these eight candidates’ conceptions of teaching and learning. The first was an evolving understanding that their role as class-room teachers was to implement the state’s mandated curriculum, the TEKS, which developed through their experiences in their

teacher education classes. The second was a discomfort with the impact of the state’s high-stakes tests, the TAKS, on the teacher and the students, which emerged through their field-work. This discomfort led them to question whether they could implement the state-mandated curriculum in the manner they were taught by their teacher educators.

The Impact of Coursework on Conceptions of Teaching the TEKSEach teacher candidate had a range of opinions about the quality and impact of her varied classes on her training across her three semesters in the program. Still, a trend emerged in their discussions of their experiences within these courses. Each candidate stated that she learned in her classes about the importance of her role as a teacher in Texas’s public schools to teach her students the mandated curriculum, the TEKS. Penelope commented that she “learned about the TEKS a lot in my classes, which I hadn’t known or thought much about before” (second interview). Ashley added, “The TEKS are huge. It’s the backbone of teaching. In my classes, it was always discussed. Every lesson plan we designed has to have two TEKS outlined in it” (second interview). Delores con-curred with Penelope and Ashley by stating that in her teacher education classes, “We learned to plan our lessons with TEKS. Because if you don’t, the students could not learn a skill that they need to know to pass their exams” (second interview). In these candidates’ classes, they were taught that it is “essen-tial” for them as teachers to ensure that they are teaching their policy makers’ mandated curriculum (Darling-Hammond et al., 2005, p. 194). This aligns with Stotsky’s (2006) argu-ment that “the first and most important component of what beginning teachers need to know” is “the academic content” that they are to teach (p. 257).

To engage their students with the mandated curriculum, these prospective teachers noted they were taught to teach the TEKS “in learner-centered ways” in their teacher educa-tion classes (Darling-Hammond, 2006, p. 307). For instance, Delores stated that she was taught to “observe young chil-dren to figure out what they need” and to “align the lessons with their individual differences” (second interview). Diane added, “In all my classes, I was taught you have to have differ-ent strategies to deal with different kids” (second interview). Thus, these candidates learned from their teacher educa-tors that to teach the mandated curriculum effectively required them to observe their students as learners so that they could establish a “foundation” of learning “on which to build bridges to new understandings” (National Research Council, 2000, p. 136).

Still, in their field experiences, these preservice teachers did not see their cooperating teachers (CT) use the man-dated curriculum in a manner that reflected the instruction they received in their coursework. Sasha, who noted that the kindergarten classroom she was in was “teacher-directed,”




stated that, “I never saw my teacher pull out the TEKS and actually use them in her planning” (second interview). Delo-res added, “I never saw how my CT applied the TEKS” (second interview). Last, Isabelle pointed out that in her field experience,

My CT wasn’t enthusiastic about them [the TEKS]. She acted like, “This is what they’re making me teach, so I’m just going to do it.” She didn’t get up there and get really excited about teaching them. I understand it’s hard, but I don’t understand why she wasn’t able to mix it up. (second interview)

Whereas contradictions between field placements and what is taught within teacher education programs are well documented in high-stakes learning environments (Gerwin, 2004), two important themes emerge from these preservice teachers’ learning that they needed to ensure that the state’s mandated curriculum guided their lessons.

First, for some of these candidates, in particular Isabelle and Sasha, basing their instruction on the mandated curricu-lum represents a dramatic shift in how they conceptualized their roles as teachers. In Isabelle’s case, she began her teacher education program with a sense of hostility toward the TEKS. Her statement, “I know enough about the TEKS not to like them” (first interview), exemplifies this point. Yet, through her coursework in which she “learned about the TEKS” (second interview), she came to see the TEKS as an essen-tial component of her pedagogical practice. She noted,

The TEKS are very logical. It’s stuff that you would already be doing on your own. Everybody thinks, “Oh, the TEKS! I don’t want to teach that,” or “I don’t want anybody to tell me what I should be teaching,” but it’s a good guide. I read them a lot, and they’re really good. I think that I’ll definitely be referring to it a lot to keep on an even keel and to make sure I’m where I should be. (third interview)

For Isabelle, as well as in the statements made by Delores, Ashley, and Penelope, her coursework was assisting her in developing what Darling-Hammond et al. (2005) term a “curricular vision” (p. 169) that addresses the objectives embedded in the mandated content standards through meaningful instruction.

Turning to Sasha, her acceptance of the role of the TEKS in her instruction was not a smooth transition. In her second interview, she stated that she did not appreciate the idea of the TEKS psychologically or practically constraining her as a future classroom teacher. She noted,

The TEKS, they’re vitally important. (pause) I really hate those things. I hate them so much. They’re so con-stricting of your lessons. They don’t let you focus outside

of your lesson. They’re minimal skills that these chil-dren need to know, and I think we need to take our children above and beyond. Just teaching the TEKS limits us from taking the children to a higher level of thinking. It makes me upset.

In this statement, Sasha revealed that teaching the TEKS would not allow her to achieve her instructional goals. However, like Isabelle, her irritation with the impact of the TEKS on her as a future teacher waned as she progressed through the program. During her second semester in the program, Sasha noted, “I’m not really as affected by the TEKS as I was before. I was so worried about having to teach through them that I was overwhelmed, but now I can tolerate anything because it all correlates back if you’re teaching the TEKS” (third interview). For Sasha, as well as Ashley and Isabelle, a newfound comfort in teaching the mandated curriculum emerged that came from her experiences in her teacher education classes where she stated that she was “required” to teach lessons “that linked the objective to the TEKS” (third interview).

Although each teacher candidate mentioned the importa-nce of teaching the TEKS to her future students, not all of these prospective teachers linked their understanding of the function of the mandated curriculum in their instruction to an outright acceptance of this being their primary role as teach-ers. In particular, Diane, Mary, and Celeste were uncomfortable with merely becoming what Zeichner (2006) terms “compli-ant implementers” (p. 330) in teaching the TEKS. Diane noted, “I don’t have to necessarily love the TEKS, but that’s the way it is” (second interview). Mary, who saw the TEKS as “necessary” and learned in her coursework “to really make sure that the TEKS match our lesson,” pointed out, “I wish we could change the rest of Texas’s view so that it doesn’t have to be only the TEKS that teachers teach” (second inter-view). Celeste added, “I’d like to say that I’ll follow the TEKS but do so in a way that’s a little more creative” (fourth interview). For these three candidates, they knew they had to teach the mandated curriculum, but similar to Massey’s (2006) finding in her work with preservice teachers, there is a “dis-sonance” (p. 83) between what it is that these preservice teachers are being taught to teach and what it is that they want to teach in their future classrooms.

Nonetheless, each of these teacher candidates came to see the act of teaching through implementing Texas’s man-dated curriculum. For those who were initially resistant to being told what to teach, such as Sasha and Penelope, their continued training in how to use the TEKS in their daily instruction with their students created a sense of normalcy with the idea that teachers are to transfer over to their stu-dents a specific set of knowledge and skills. Critical researchers, such as Apple (2007) and Weiner (2007), are concerned that for teachers to survive in classroom contexts such as those found in Texas’s schools, they will ultimately have to acc-ept the neoliberal framing of teaching as a service in which



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they are to provide their students with a specific set of commodities.

The Impact of Fieldwork on Being Able to Teach the TEKSOnce these eight preservice teachers stopped discussing how they learned to teach the TEKS and began to discuss the impact of the TAKS tests on their CTs, the sense of dis-comfort that lingered with Diane, Mary, and Celeste over having to teach the TEKS emerged among all of these can-didates. This discomfort led all of them to question whether they could implement the state-mandated curriculum in the manner their teacher educators taught them. Ashley’s state-ment illuminates this complexity in positioning these two components of high-stakes reform within their conceptions of teaching and learning. She stated,

When thinking about what happens in school, it’s about the kids learning the TEKS. I’m probably contradict-ing myself, because I do like the idea that there are certain things that the kids need to learn to go on in the world to make intelligent decisions. But at the same time, I don’t like the pressure of a huge test over that material. It’s just too much. It’s something that’s always talked about. The students know when it’s coming up. Everything is about developing strategy for the test. (third interview)

Ashley’s statement gets at the heart of the contradictions found among these preservice teachers’ comments about having to teach a state-mandated curriculum versus witnessing their CTs struggle to ensure that all of their students pass the TAKS tests.

Isabelle, who also framed the TEKS as a “good guide,” further unpacked these contradictions when she noted,

With the TAKS tests, we have this shadow over us. But, in our teacher education program, we’re told that to be a good teacher that I’ll have to incorporate things like critical thinking with teaching what’s on the test. But I don’t see that as being realistic for the teachers that I have worked with. All of them are so stressed out about the test, and understandably so, it’s real hard for them to move back and do other stuff because they are going to be judged on how their kids did on the TAKS tests, and it’s just too much. The whole high-stakes thing is too much. (third interview)

Isabelle’s statement demonstrates the tension that these stu-dents felt between “the shadow” of Texas’s high-stakes tests and achieving the good teacher image that their teacher edu-cation program advocated, which included teaching the TEKS in an effective manner.

For Mary, Penelope, Celeste, Diane, and Ashley, these contradictions between teaching the TEKS and watching their CTs teach their students to succeed on the TAKS tests emerged during their second semester of the program. Each of them was placed in a third-grade classroom 2 days a week during the time the TAKS was given to their CTs’ students. In those field placements, they saw how their CTs prepared their students for taking the TAKS tests. For Mary, she noticed,

The students hated doing all that TAKS preparation, and near the end, they were just drained. It was very boring for them, and I know that it was very boring for my CT, too. I watched her; she wasn’t as energetic when she taught it, and afterwards, she would talk to me about how sick she was of teaching it. (third interview)

Not only were these candidates uncomfortable with what they were witnessing in these third-grade classrooms, but, as Diane pointed out, they did not like being responsible for teaching the third-grade students “how to take the TAKS tests” as part of their internship. Diane went on to explain, “They take all these practice tests. I don’t like having to teach kids how to take a test. I don’t think that’s right” (third interview).

Even for those candidates who were not placed in third-grade classrooms during their second semester, such as Isabelle and Celeste who was in a second-grade classroom, they still witnessed their CTs giving their students “practice TAKS tests every week and something TAKS related every-day, so the test is a huge deal” (third interview). So whereas teacher candidates such as Delores didn’t “want to make [her] teaching career about the TAKS” (third interview), they struggled to see in their field placements how they could get beyond teaching to it in their roles as classroom teachers.

For Imig and Imig (2006), these preservice teachers’ field experiences represent what they term as the “unjust path” of teacher education. It is unjust because their field experi-ences taught them that they have to “give up great percentages of their instructional time to benchmark testing and testing preparation” so that they can “teach their students how to take those very exams” (p. 289). These internships did not provide these preservice teachers with learning experiences in which their CTs could demonstrate for them how to strike a practical as well as emotional “balance [between] compet-ing influences on their emerging instructional practices” (Lloyd, 2007, p. 344). Rather, they witnessed the act of “teach-ing” as an act of “test preparation” (Weiner, 2007, p. 281). Moreover, this focus by their CTs on preparing their stu-dents for the TAKS tests provides insight into why these candidates did not see how their CTs implemented the man-dated curriculum in a manner that reflected what they learned in their coursework.




Preparing for Their Transition Into the Field

As these prospective teachers finished their teacher educa-tion program, a fine line emerged between how they framed themselves as being prepared to be classroom teachers and being teachers in Texas’s high-stakes classrooms. Each teacher candidate expressed views similar to Mary, who noted, “I think that my field experiences and the classroom experiences successfully prepared me to be a very good teacher” (fifth interview). Yet, candidates, such as Delores, knew being prepared and being a classroom teacher in Tex-as’s high-stakes education system were not the same thing. Delores noted, “I think I’m prepared with the idea that I am going to be a teacher, but I doubt most of us are really pre-pared for the classroom. I know it’s going to be a struggle. It’s going to be really hard” (fifth interview). For Celeste, her doubts about being prepared for Texas’s high-stakes schools emerged from her field experiences. She stated that her fieldwork was

so different from when I was younger. I can’t get over it. They don’t learn things as a whole. They really do just focus on the test. Like making sure you can read this passage and answer this question. They don’t encourage reading for enjoyment. It’s just like read this and answer the question. It doesn’t teach them anything. Just to read and answer questions. (fifth interview)

Celeste did not see teachers in Texas’s high-stakes classrooms “challenging” (first interview) their students, but rather, she saw them falling prey to Herman, Brown, and Baker’s (2000) point, “What you test is what you get” (p. 113).

This pressure on teachers to ensure that their students were prepared to succeed on the TAKS tests led some of these pro-spective teachers to question what impact such stakes might have on them as classroom teachers. Isabelle noted,

I see teachers that are totally, I don’t want to use the word harried, but who are just losing it because they all got the stress of the TAKS tests to deal with all the time, and it burns them out. I don’t want to be burned out. I want to teach for the rest of my life. I don’t want to be like these teachers I see that are there for 3 years and leave, and I’m scared that I will get burned out and that freaks me out. (third interview)

This fear of burnout caused preservice teachers such as Sasha to reiterate in her final interview, “I don’t want to teach in a TAKS grade.” These experiences in Texas’s public school classrooms ensured that these teacher candidates did not enter their profession with any fantasies (Ryan, 1986) about their future role as teachers in these high-stakes classrooms.

In fact, these emotionally intense challenges (Liston, Whitcomb, & Borko, 2006) that these candidates saw their

CTs face in their classrooms not only led them to consider whether they would remain a part of the classroom as teach-ers but also caused some of them to question whether the state’s system of public education could sustain the impact of policy makers’ high-stakes reforms. Penelope saw the shift toward high-stakes accountability in Texas pushing the state’s education system to the brink of failure. She noted,

I definitely think it’s a battle over the direction of public education in Texas. With Texas’s public schools, I think that something is just going to give one day. I’d say in about 10 to 15 years, it’s either going to crumble or give. It’s not a matter of if; it’s a matter of when. And I don’t think that we are educating kids necessar-ily properly. But I think that we’re educating them the best that we can, and I think that the kids are doing the best that they can. (fifth interview)

Penelope’s statement is similar to Ravitch’s (2007) argument that “American education faces a crisis. It is not too extreme to say that public education hangs in the balance” (p. 269). Penelope framed the current configuration of Texas’s education system as being in a state of crisis that will lead to its eventual collapse. Critical researchers (Apple, 2007; Hursh, 2007) argue that the influx of neoliberal policies is in fact trying to eliminate the role of government in providing a system of public education, and what is troubling is that these students’ experiences in Texas’s public schools led them to question whether the state’s policy makers were doing just that.

What Can They Do?Each candidate was asked across her last four interviews, “If you could alter Texas’s high-stakes reforms, what would you change?” Each candidate, such as Ashley during her second interview, consistently stated, “I don’t know.” Still, Ashley, as well as many of the others, went on to state, “I don’t think the TAKS tests are the best way to ensure kids are learning.” By the end of her program, Ashley and other candidates contin-ued to state that the TAKS tests need to be replaced, but none of them could propose an alternate system of account-ability. Ashley noted, “With the TAKS, I don’t like the pressure on the teachers and the students. I think that there should be something that holds teachers and students account-able, but that’s not as stressful” (fifth interview). Ashley wanted to be held accountable as a teacher, but her field expe-riences caused her to conclude that the marker of her achievement as a teacher should not be the TAKS tests. This led her to restate, “I’m not interested in teaching in the TAKS grades.”

Diane also struggled with this conundrum. On one hand, she stated, “If you want to find a good school, you look at



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their third-grade TAKS scores. From what I have seen, a good TAKS score shows how hard the teachers work and how much they care for the students. It’s pretty amazing” (fourth inter-view). Yet, when discussing the impact of the TAKS tests on teachers and schools, Diane stated in her last interview,

I don’t think it’s an accurate measure of how the teach-ers and the kids are doing, but I don’t know what would be another solution. Someone’s going to have to come up with another really good solution, but I don’t know what the solution would be.

Diane’s conflicting statements reflect not only the complexity of finding a solution to creating a system of accountability for Texas’s public schools but also a sense of “dissonance” (Massey, 2006, p. 83) that these students experienced in coming to understand the complexity of the role they are being trai ned to do in Texas’s high-stakes education system.

Even though all of these preservice teachers, such as Mary, felt that there needs to be “something” in place “to hold people accountable” (fourth interview), they could not rec-oncile how they are to teach a mandated curriculum in a manner that does not allow the mandated high-stakes exam to overtake their teaching. Still, as they left their training pro-gram, they all felt prepared to teach, and according to the Texas Examination for Educator Standards licensure exam, each teacher candidate met the state’s requirements to obtain her teaching certificate.

Thus, the challenge for teacher educators becomes develop-ing programs of study that build off these preservice teachers’ experiences and complex understandings of the act of teaching in these high-stakes standards-based accountability education systems. Doing so will help prospective teachers enter the field with the skills and knowledge needed to be adaptive experts who can adjust and respond to external demands in an effective manner (Hammerness et al., 2005).

Discussion and Implications for Teacher EducationThe data from this case study reveal that these candidates entered their teacher education program with an understand-ing that Texas’s high-stakes testing system was driving public school teachers’ instruction and students’ learning. These findings also show that these candidates did learn in their teacher education program that they had to incorporate Tex-as’s mandated curriculum into their teaching. Yet, their field experiences taught them that knowing how to teach the man-dated curriculum and putting that knowledge into practice is a difficult task to undertake. This led them to question whether they could implement the TEKS in a manner that is more than preparing their future students for the TAKS tests, which mirrored their own experiences as students. In the end, these prospective teachers left their training program with serious

concerns about having to teach the TAKS tests. They also struggled to conceptualize how the state’s high-stakes acco-untability education system might be altered so that the TAKS tests were not driving their instruction.

Based on these findings, two central strategies are prese-nted that teacher educators might consider implementing in their programs to prepare their preservice teachers who have been educated in environments similar to Texas’s high-stakes system so that they can use these policies in a productive and strategic manner in their future classrooms (Darling-Hammond et al., 2005).

Building off Their Own Experiences as Students in High-Stakes ClassroomsTeacher education researchers, such as Lloyd (2007), Valli and Buese (2007), and White et al. (2003), contend that tea-cher educators should use students’ field experiences in high-stakes environments as teachable moments to pro-vide them with tactics in which they can make “strategic compromises” to address their students and the mandated curriculum (Lloyd, 2007, p. 344). Although these argu-ments provide an important step for teacher educators to consider in developing their programs, the findings from this study demonstrate that teacher educators also need to incorporate these preservice teachers’ experiences as stu-dents in high-stakes K-12 classrooms into their programs. Although no teacher candidates’ experiences in school are ever alike (Schmidt & Kennedy, 1990), these candidates’ experiences as students in high-stakes classrooms helped them recognize the complexity of the teaching and learning process within Texas’s education system. By asking preser-vice teachers questions about how they were taught the test, teacher educators can use their candidates’ experiences to help them develop an understanding of the distinctive char-acteristics of effective instruction that bridge the gap between teaching test-taking knowledge and academic knowledge.

For instance, in reflecting upon taking the TAAS test, Mary revealed, “I don’t really remember feeling the TAAS was tough; maybe it was just that everything I was doing was TAAS and I didn’t even realize it” (first interview). Building off this answer, teacher educators could work with Mary to unpack the psychological complexity of what it means to be a student in a school environment driven by the test. Teacher educators could also explore how these politically sophisti-cated systems of education define teaching and learning and what can be done to change these high-stakes education sys-tems. Her statement offers teacher educators the chance to discuss with her and other teacher candidates what types of teaching and learning took place in the schools Mary attended and what she or her fellow candidates might do differently as classroom teachers to go beyond teaching the test. Such dis-cussions offer teacher educators numerous opportunities to




assist their candidates in recognizing the dissonance that can emerge for them as they struggle to implement the skills they are learning in their teacher education programs with what is expected of them in their high-stakes field placements (Massey, 2006). Using this dissonance as a marker of con-flict, teacher educators can show their candidates how to search for “strategic compromises” (Lloyd, 2007, p. 344) within their instruction that will help them feel empowered as teachers.

Critically speaking, these preservice teachers’ experiences as students also create an important challenge for teacher educators who argue that the current neoliberal framing of public schooling must change (Apple, 2007; Weiner, 2007). Although prospective teachers may be cognizant of the impact of these reforms on their local high-stakes education sys-tems, teacher educators need to recognize that these are still the same schools that these preservice teachers attended. By raising doubts about their schools, critical teacher educators are also questioning these teacher candidates’ education and their conceptions of themselves as learners (Delores’s and Penelope’s statements about the TAAS tests). This in turn may limit their ability to believe that they can or even need to engage in the instructional strategies that help their stu-dents become what Apple (2007) and others (Sleeter, 2008) refer to as “critically” aware citizens.

Last, teacher educators should recognize that even though Ashley, Isabelle, Sasha, Celeste, and Diane viewed their per-sonal experiences with Texas’s high-stakes reforms in a negative manner, each was still “deeply committed” to becoming teach-ers who “prepar[e] young people for doing well in the world” (Rex & Nelson, 2004, p. 1318).

Limited Experience Instead of Limited KnowledgeThese teacher candidates’ experiences also demonstrate that the tendency for many within teacher education (Anderson, 2001) to argue that preservice teachers’ knowledge of teach-ing is limited because they “underestimate the complexity of teaching” misses the point (Fajet, Bello, Leftwich, Mesler, & Shaver, 2005, p. 724). In this study, these candidates’ beliefs about teaching are not naïve or limited, but rather, their per-sonal experiences with complex teaching in Texas’s high-stakes schools were limited. For example, Sasha noted that as a student in Texas’s public schools, her “high school teachers taught to the test” (first interview). So when advo-cates for teacher education (Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005) argue that teacher candidates need to become adaptive experts who are “flexible and more adaptable to [the] external demands” of teaching (National Research Council, 2000, p. 45), this is a much more difficult goal to achieve if these candidates were simply taught the tests by their teachers. Preservice teachers such as those found in this study have very little experience with or knowledge about the skills

needed “to act as much-needed change agents” so that all their future students can succeed in school and in society (Lloyd, 2007, p. 345).

As a consequence, for preservice teachers who attended high-stakes schools to become adaptive experts, it requires more than acknowledging their complex understanding of their profession and their field or having opportunities to reflect on experiences as a student and as a teacher-in-training. It also necessitates finding opportunities to witness and imp-lement instructional strategies that reflect what advocates for high-quality teaching want teacher education programs to instill in their students (Hammerness, 2004). Darling-Ham-mond (2006) points out that teacher education programs need to establish “much stronger relationships with schools that press for mutual transformations of teaching and learn-ing to teach” (p. 302). Although developing such relationships with high-quality teachers can be difficult to achieve for large teacher education programs in high-stakes contexts like Texas, teacher educators can work through this tension by bringing their students’ field experiences back into their teacher education classrooms. Doing so would create the opportunity to search for those moments where their CTs are or are not making “strategic compromises” (Lloyd, 2007, p. 344) in their instruction. By analyzing such instances as Mary’s, Diane’s, and Celeste’s experiences with their CTs regularly giving practice TAKS tests to their students, teacher educators and their candidates can develop instructional strategies that respond to high-stakes tests in a productive manner that fits within the instructional requirements of field placements. Such experiences can also help these candidates see how they can move beyond the transac-tional demands that these policies place on their teaching. Last, developing such strategies can help prospective teachers reframe their understanding of the teacher as an adaptive expert rather than as an expert who must adapt to the demands of high-stakes reforms.

In the end, these teacher candidates’ complex experiences with high-stakes standards-based accountability reforms as former students and as teachers-in-training demonstrate that there are multiple opportunities for teacher educators to channel candidates’ personal experiences into their coursework. Pro-viding such openings for discussions about effective teaching in high-stakes learning environments not only shows candi-dates how to adapt such policies to their students and their own professional needs, but it also offers the chance to con-sider how high-stakes education systems might be reformed so that all the variables in the teacher education equation can succeed.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the editors of this journal, the anon-ymous reviewers, and the Friendly Frogs Learning Community for their thoughtful suggestions in strengthening this piece.



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Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.

Financial Disclosure/Funding

The author would like to thank the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Texas at Austin for its financial support in developing the research proposal that led to this study.

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About the Author

Christopher Pierce Brown, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include early childhood/early elemen-tary education, teacher education, and high-stakes standards-based accountability reform.



Documents

Children of Reform: The Impact of High-Stakes Education Reform on Preservice Teachers