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Preservice teacher performance assessments, such as the edTPA, are one of the accountability policies from states and local authorities designed to ensure the quality of beginning teachers and standardize teacher education. We studied experiences of 65 preservice teachers regarding the effect of the edTPA on their learning in field-placement classrooms. These cases revealed that the edTPA created “protected teaching spaces” for participants to experiment with student-centered instructional practices supported in university courses and codified in edTPA rubrics. This was especially impactful for novices who previously had limited opportunities to try out equitable reform-oriented instruction in their placements. In these cases, the edTPA also helped mitigate inequities in learning to teach, an unintended outcome that is important for policymakers to consider when deciding on credentialing requirements. 

Agency has been used as a lens to focus on how educators learn through pedagogical risk-taking, advocacy for curricular reform, and resisting policies that are not focused on the needs of students. We explored the role of agency as 65 preservice science teachers created learning opportunities for themselves during their clinical placements. Specifically, we investigated whether the types of agentive episodes varied by the level of congruence novices perceived between the vision of science teaching supported in their university coursework and the prevailing practices and culture of their host classrooms. Interview and survey data of participants from three preparation programs indicate that those in highly congruent placements experienced earlier and more mentor-scaffolded opportunities to take on active roles in teaching, and exercised agency to extend research-informed practices or tools they observed their mentors using. This resulted in participants seeing the richness of students' thinking and how capable they were of challenging work, given strategic supports. Those in low congruence placements had fewer chances to play active roles in teaching, were more likely to draw upon agency to make minor adjustments as they emulated their mentors' instructionally conservative lessons, and expressed concern they were “getting better” at aspects of teaching they viewed as inequitable or less responsive to students. Regardless of congruence, however, even simple acts of agency such as asking mentors to explain their instructional decisions were remarkably rare.