ABSTRACT
Written for teacher educators, this chapter outlines two scholarly frameworks for thinking about students’ experiences with licensure exams and how teacher educators can support them toward success. These two frameworks are self-efficacy and sociocultural theory. Although these theories have progressed over decades, they have seldom been applied to the topic of teacher licensure exams. This chapter unpacks the theoretical concepts at work in these frameworks and applies them to teacher licensure exams, students’ experiences with them, and key ideas associated with these exams. This chapter also covers the screening and signaling function that licensure exams have within teacher education programs and the characteristics of programs that either screen out prospective teachers or build them up into admission.
