0.1 1. performance is the new standard in the preparation of school  (Page 3/9)

Performance assessment can be defined in several ways—as actual demonstrations that show learning has occurred, as results-based assessment, as task performances that reflect real-life situations, as the production of a product or performance that reflects program objectives, and so on. It is most useful when focusing on broad professional tasks rather than on a single sub-skill. Performance assessment may include aggregated evaluations or random samplings of candidate and/or professor portfolios, rubrics of projects and investigations, candidate program evaluations, interviews, documented observations of simulations or clinical experiences, peer assessments, job performance of graduates, and so on.

Another characteristic of performance assessment is the use of higher-order thinking skills (e.g., analysis, synthesis, evaluation) by candidates. Integration of performance assessment with the instructional process allows assessors and candidates to interact to strengthen learning.

Performance assessments are:

• Essential, not arbitrary or contrived to shake out a grade.
• Enabling, constructed to point the candidate toward more sophisticated use of skills or knowledge.
• Contextualized complex intellectual challenges, not atomized tasks corresponding to isolated actions.
• Representative challenges designed to emphasize depth more than breadth.
• Engaging and educational.
• Involved with broad tasks or problems that may be somewhat ambiguous. (NPBEA Standards, 2002, p. 12)

The shift in preparation of educational leaders reflects earlier debate about the focus on such preparation. The field of educational leadership has always been grounded in the applied nature of leadership. Today, however, there is growing emphasis on learning the applied skills and behaviors of school administration—as it was during the early formative stage of development of educational administration in the twentieth century—for constructing knowledge about educational leadership.

Knowledge and performance

In the early 1950s educational administration moved away from the applied nature of the field and embraced the university-based academic, scientific, rational, and theoretical approach to training school administrators. Griffiths (1959), especially, believed that the field of educational administration should be elevated to the status of other academic fields within the university. The way to do this was to turn the curriculum into a more academic oriented approach to training school administrators. Perhaps the best example of the field’s desire to achieve a higher status within the academy was the founding of the University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA) as a professional organization for those preparation programs emphasizing the academic, scholarly, and research orientation of the field. Prior to the founding of UCEA in 1956 the field of educational administration was represented by the National Council for Professors of Educational Administration (NCPEA). The very nature of UCEA’s existence was based upon a belief by select universities that the field must establish a more scholarly, research, and academic curriculum to prepare school administrators.