Development of a performance assessment task and rubric to measure prospective secondary school mathematics teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge and skills

Source: Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education (2008) 11:127–138

The purpose of this paper is to share a performance assessment task and rubric designed to assess secondary school mathematics preservice teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge and skills. The assessment task and rubric were developed in collaboration with five education faculty, four arts and sciences faculty, and four high school teachers over a period of one year.

Over this period, the group met more than 15 times and designed an assessment task and rubric to measure secondary school preservice teachers’ pedagogicalcontent knowledge and skills. The assessment task and rubric were piloted at the end of the year and extensively revised using the pilot data. The redesigned task and rubric were successfully carried out in the second and subsequent years. Other teacher education programs can benefit from this assessment of teacher candidates’ pedagogical content knowledge and skills.