Innovation in methodology : Longitudinal analysis of progression in teacher preparation

The implementation of the Graduate Teacher Performance Assessment (GTPA) in participating Australian universities has provided data on preservice teachers’ profession readiness to teach, benchmarked against the established standard. The GTPA is a summative competence assessment in a series of assessment events over the preparation program that can be considered as constituting the performance trajectories of preservice teachers. These trajectories can be formed from program entry to exit by linking preservice teachers’ assessment data at sequential time points throughout the program. Analysis of the trajectories will identify the principal patterns in performance progression that lead to either success, or under-performance. These patterns give insight into the process by which preservice teachers achieve profession readiness on program completion and the characteristics of individuals associated with these outcomes. The methodology for constructing and analysing multivariate performance trajectories is novel in education research. The statistical methodology to analyse the trajectories of performance that consist of irregular assessment events and duration requires purposeful development. In this chapter, we outline the processes for: accessing the data required to create the preservice teacher performance trajectories; building the data infrastructure that will support linking the data in a time sequence; and developing the innovative analytic approach that is suitable for profiling complex longitudinal sequence trajectories and visualising the findings.