Teaching Performance Assessment: Secondary World Language

The Secondary World Language Teaching Performance Assessment (TPA) is a standardized assessment of world language student teachers' progress. It is assessed by the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity. The assessment is judged on five dimensions of teaching: planning, instruction, assessment, reflection, and academic language. In the assessment, student teachers describe, analyze, and evaluate the teaching of a 3-5 lesson unit of world language instruction. The assessment is built around the proposition that successful teaching is based on a knowledge of subject matter and subject-specific pedagogy, developing knowledge of one's students, reflecting and acting on evidence of the effects on student language acquisition, and considering research/theory about how students learn. The TPA assessment is clearly focused on student language acquisition. To complete the assessment, student teachers describe their plans to achieve student language acquisition, provide a rationale for those plans and an analysis of the effects of their teaching on the students' language acquisition, and analyze and reflect on the resulting student language acquisition to plan next steps in instruction or improvements in their teaching practice. Student teachers completing the TPA must submit artifacts (evidence of teaching practice, including lesson plans, copies of instructional and assessment materials, one or two video clips of your teaching, and student work samples) and commentaries describing their plans and practice, explaining the rationale behind them, and analyzing and reflecting on what was learned about teaching practice and the students' language acquisition.