DEVELOPMENTALLY APPROPRIATE PRACTICES IN TEACHER EDUCATION: LESSONS FROM ONE SEMESTER

Abstract

A major challenge for teacher preparation programs and future teachers is learning to work skillfully with the diversity of children in American classrooms. This paper describes a tool developed to address this challenge: the Learning and Teaching Assessment System (LTAS). The LTAS is a performance‐based, curriculum‐embedded assessment tool designed to uncover young children's strengths in different curricular areas as well as their approaches to learning. Developed for use with children 3–8 years of age, the LTAS helps teachers understand what children know in relation to key concepts in the different disciplines as well as how they learn in order to further their learning in subsequent days and weeks of teaching. The development of the LTAS is based primarily on two theoretical frameworks: Leont'ev's activity theory and Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences. To examine the efficacy of the LTAS in its proposed objectives, a pilot study was conducted; results point to the potential of the LTAS for helping student teachers uncover new information about children to guide future instruction.