Teaching Performance Assessment

All accredited Initial Teacher Education programs in Australia are required to administer a final-year Teaching Performance Assessment (TPA) to students, which must be passed to be eligible for graduation as a teacher. The TPA must be a separate assessment to the practical professional experience. The TPA is administered and assessed by the university in which a student is completing their course.

The Australian Institute for Teaching & School Leadership (AITSL) provides the guidelines for TPAs and their website contains some valuable information about the development and purpose of TPAs:

https://www.aitsl.edu.au/deliver-ite-programs/teaching-performance-assessment

Assessment for Graduate Teaching (AfGT)

Curtin University is a member of a consortium of universities which developed and uses the TPA known as the The Assessment for Graduate Teaching (AfGT). This is one of the two TPAs which have been approved for use by AITSL and one of the two examples shown on the AITSL website. Curtin University is proud to provide this TPA to our students and confident that Curtin graduates will be able to demonstrate they have met all Australian Professional Standards for Teachers at Graduate level or above.

The AfGT is a culminating assessment designed to be undertaken in the classroom environment during the final professional experience placement. Its purpose is to evaluate each pre-service teacher’s teaching, professional decision-making, and impact on student learning in a real-life context.

The AfGT is a robust, comprehensive, and authentic series of tasks that provides opportunity for pre-service teachers to reflect on and demonstrate the impact of their teaching on student learning across the elements of planning, teaching, assessing, and making situational judgements.

The AfGT comprises 4 elements. These are:

Element 1: Planning for learning and teaching
Element 2: Analysing teaching practice
Element 3: Assessing for impact on student learning
Element 4: Expanding practice