Modelling Professional Practice: A collaborative approach to developing criteria and standards-based assessment in pre-service teacher education courses

An important obligation of teacher educators is to provide a model of professional practice for our pre-service students, that is, to 'practise what we preach' in exemplary fashion. This paper describes how we have modelled key aspects of secondary school teaching practice for students in the University of Queensland's Bachelor of Education course, by working collaboratively to design and implement assessment programmes which are consistent both with school-based assessment systems and with newly adopted university policies. Our specific goals have been to develop coherent and specific sets of criteria and standards for pre-service teacher education subjects, and to offer students assessment tasks that have authentic purposes and practical outcomes. We discuss our approach to formulating criteria and standards drawn from professional education practice, and give examples of assessment strategies and tasks that illustrate this approach.