The development of a pre-service teacher evaluation database

Abstract

The purpose of this research and development study was to design and develop an affordable, computer-based, pre-service teacher assessment and reporting system to allow teacher education institutions and supervising teachers to efficiently enter evaluation criteria, record pre-service teacher evaluations, and generate evaluation reports. The system design supports pre-service teacher evaluators and the data collection, evaluation, and reporting needs of pre-service teacher training institutions. The researcher used a literature review and a needs assessment to determine the need for the system and to define the system prototype’s functional requirements. The researcher used a modified ten-phase development approach (Borg & Gall, 1989) to develop the system. Three separate evaluator groups reviewed the system during development. Teacher licensing officers from private colleges and the Regents Universities in Kansas participated in the needs assessment phase of the study. Past and present National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) evaluation team members served as expert evaluators who provided feedback regarding the validity and functionality of the system prototype. Supervising professors from Regents University colleges of education and from private universities represented the target users and provided feedback regarding the validity, user friendliness, and usefulness of the system. Prior to sending the system prototype to evaluator groups, the prototype was reviewed by a select group of educators and information technology professionals to make sure the prototype was functioning properly and that it could be easily installed by evaluators. The overall results of the needs assessment indicated that the computer-based, pre-service teacher evaluation system that was developed would add value to and improve the evaluation process for teacher training institutions that use spreadsheet and paper-based systems. Survey respondents determined that the system prototype could meet important data collection, analysis, and reporting needs and could increase reporting and data retrieval efficiency for teacher evaluators and teacher training institutions. Target user evaluations found the system to be useable, functionally adequate, and a useful assessment tool.