Re-visiting teaching practice assessment in teacher education: towards quality education for sustainable development

Abstract

To attain quality education, teacher education has to undergo transformational teacher practices commensurate with the new trends in education. This paper seeks to assess whether the current teaching practice models and assessment instruments achieved desired skills that are in line with global and national priorities of Competency Based Education, Education for Sustainable Development and 21st century skills for Quality Education. The research design employs a qualitative case study, focusing on two university institutions in Zimbabwe that were purposively sampled. The total sample was 20 with 5 chairpersons coming from applied teaching departments of the two from universities, 3 teaching practice programme co-coordinators and 12 lecturers randomly selected from applied education departments which assess students on teaching practice. The instruments utilized were interview schedules for teaching practice programme coordinators and chairpersons, a questionnaire for lecturers and an analysis of teaching practice policy documents along with teaching practice assessment instruments. The results revealed that teaching practice policy documents and assessment instruments remained misaligned with global and national priorities of competence based education, education for sustainable development and 21st century competences. The respondents confirmed that the current teaching practice assessments failed to provide the aspiring teacher and their learners with lifelong skills and context-specific heritage-based abilities. TP has remained traditional confining student teachers and their learners to the classroom. The TP assessment instruments tested classroom instruction prowess. The study recommends a re-visit to traditional models of teaching practice assessment in-order to transform them to address the 21st century challenges by equipping teacher educators, student teachers and learners with sustainable life skills for present and future use.