Preparing effective history teachers: The assessment gap

This case study examines a teaching candidate's completion of a major assessment project, including his approach to lesson planning and assessment design, the creation of rubrics, and the crafting of narratives to analyze his students' work. Qualitative data analysis suggests that this beginning teacher, who excelled in planning and teaching for historical thinking, needed additional support in honing his skills with respect to discipline-based assessment. In his analysis of students' work and his reflection on the assessments, the teaching candidate retreated to generalist stances that made no references to thinking historically. The teaching candidate demonstrated an ability to design discipline-based assessments and an inability to use a discipline-based framework to assess and describe his students' work.