El Programa de Transferencia Tecnológica

Successful course completion is the main basis for providing certification across most systems. However, in keeping with the broader trends in professional learning and development, there is a trend for school leadership preparation programs in the five systems (and other countries) we reviewed to contain elements of performance in-situ and authentic tasks (see Chapter Six). These authentic tasks, undertaken by teachers, principals and other school leaders, can act as a vehicle for professional learning and provide evidence of attaining the standards. There are practical benefits as well to learning through these types of authentic tasks.

Candidates, for example, doing Scotland’s SQH program reported their school benefited greatly from them doing a project aligned to an area within the school’s Improvement Plan. Headteachers also felt the approach had a positive impact on the teaching and learning culture of the school because of the enthusiastic and coordinated manner in which the task was completed. Conversely, however, some candidates found the SQH overly academic, with many of the judgements by assessors still too paper-based (McEntyre, 2005).

Various types of school-based activities or projects are being used as part of preparation programs to link theory to practice. Portfolios can contain documented accounts of these activities with commentary and reflection building as a means of building a record of learning and achievement in school leadership. Some type of supervision or mentoring was provided across the systems to support candidates as they undertook and wrote up their practice and achievements.

Records of practice and achievement, under some kind of supervision or mentoring, are the most common forms of evidence for advanced certification used by specialist colleges in medicine. The core idea of a portfolio is that it is an organised selection of entries presenting evidence of what one can do in relation to a set of standards. It contains a range of ‘entries’, providing multiple forms of evidence related to the standards. Entries may also take a variety of forms. These may be paper-based, or, as in the case of the DPA, part of a digital portfolio. The DPA’s portfolio content is determined by the prospective principal, who may continue to add to it over time as a serving principal. Entries reflect performance of the standards, which is accompanied by some form of verification process by two DPA registered principals, who act as external assessors.

The only system that provides candidates with structured guidelines for preparing evidence of performance to enter into a portfolio is the NBPTS (the ABLE proposal based on the NBPTS10_{). The NBPTS has found that structured guidelines increase}

the quality of the entries - and the reliability and fairness of the assessment. An

10 _{For a description of the NBPTS approach to certification, see Ingvarson and Kleinhenz} (2006) “Advanced Standards for Teaching” A literature review and critical analysis of literature.

example of a portfolio task, Leading and Managing Change, developed by ACER for the Catholic Education Commission of Victoria, was presented earlier (see Chapter Four). This structured portfolio task is designed so that teachers and school leaders can select an area of need in their school and tell the story of how they led and managed a change effort to meet that need. Completion of the portfolio task provides performance evidence of how they met one of the core elements of the CECV standards.

Another approach to gathering evidence for certification in each system was to develop assessment centre/scenario type exercises. In four of the five systems these tasks were conducted outside of the workplace (at a centre), and conducted as the final piece of assessment for certification.

Assessment centre exercises are usually used to gather evidence related to standards that cannot gathered by other means. For example, standards for teaching often call for evidence that teachers know the subject matter they are expected to teach. Assessment Centre exercises would tap into this knowledge. Standards for school leaders might include expectations of familiarity with recent research on leadership, and likewise, it is conceivable that Assessment Centre items could be designed to test this knowledge. Scenarios and simulations of various kinds have been used as methods for gathering evidence and making judgements, but their validity is unknown or uncertain. They are not “authentic” in the same sense as gathering evidence of performance for a portfolio entry, although they may be based on “authentic tasks/situations” a school leader may face at work. Generally, gathering the evidence for this type of assessment in each of the systems takes one day. During this day, candidates participate in a range of problem-solving tasks, such as an “in-tray” prioritising task. The broad category of assessment/diagnostic contains a wide range of examples. A few are presented below.

The Connecticut Administrator Test (CAT) must be undertaken by any candidate seeking their Intermediate Administrator certificate. It requires candidates to respond to situations as if they were a principal or a supervisor, but the CAT is applicable to other levels of responsibility within the school as well (e.g. assistant principal, department head). The CAT organises questions around four categories, such as Knowledge of Learners, Knowledge of Teaching and Learning. The categories are a synthesis of the twelve Connecticut Standards for School Leaders. Candidates write a response by interrogating a variety of materials, such as video; student work; school data and scenarios. The test is long (e.g. 6.5 hours) if completed in one sitting. While not the only form of evidence, the test forms a significant component of the evidence that needs to be submitted for licensure. The DPA’s version of an assessment task is their patented Competence Analysis® tool – developed in co-operation with ten organisations in the field of Human Resource Management. Prospective and established principals use the tool to assess their own performance against the DPA professional standards. The analysis guides further professional development selections by the individual. The tool is available online and is self-administered.

The WA Leadership Centre uses scenarios, amongst a range of assessment exercises, to assess the extent to which candidates for principal positions would display attributes such as tactfulness in their everyday work. (Wildy & Pepper, Forthcoming). In another type of assessment exercise, candidates are asked to listen to a talk by an “expert” and to describe what they would say to their staff or school council about the key messages from the talk.

As a summary statement, we found that the methods for gathering evidence of school leader performance against standards across the five systems were only at an early stage of development. In most cases there appeared to be limited awareness of the critical importance of ensuring that judgments about performance were reliable and valid. While considerable research has been conducted on the validity of new forms of performance assessment for teaching, such as portfolio entries and assessment centre tasks, we found little research to support the practices being used in the five systems to decide whether the standards had been met. The history of evaluation of teaching suggests that if these systems do not get this piece right, and develop credibility, the enterprise would lose respect and lose its capacity to add value to professional learning.

Professional involvement in certification processes: Who assesses?