ABSTRACT
In this chapter we focus on a set of dilemmas we confront as teacher educators as we strive to make assessment and evaluation equitable, inclusive, and useful to our students in ways that value their emergent and individual constructions of good teaching practice and at the same time are consistent with program performance expectations. To define dilemma, we draw on the work of Lampert (1985), Cuban (1992), and Katz and Raths (1992). We see a dilemma as a recurring need to choose between alternatives, none of which is perfect and all of which lead to trade-offs. Because dilemmas are unsolvable, making decisions around dilemmas requires principled deliberation, which often can be a messy process. Dilemmas around assessment and evaluation in teacher education emerge naturally from our efforts to shape our practice by a set of guiding principles. For us, the principles that shape our decisions about how to assess and evaluate students are:
evaluative standards and outcomes must be explicit and public
standards and outcomes must be applied equitably, i.e., fairly and consistently
assessment and evaluation practices must be directly linked to standards and outcomes
the voices of all those who participate in the process of assessment and evaluation must be heard
assessment must be intimately connected with instruction
assessment and evaluation practices must include a variety of teaching styles and unique approaches.
