Prospective Physics Teachers' Perceptions of an Objective Structured Teaching Examination (OSTE)

In higher education, assessment/examination procedures should be designed to form a coherent learning process that is aligned with the intended learning objectives and planned learning activities. However, in academic teacher education programmes often use assessment formats that are not well aligned with the demands of teachers' actual professional practice. Performance-based assessments can offer an alternative, for example in the form of role-play-based simulations with trained actors representing typical professional activities in environments of reduced complexity. We have developed such a performance-based assessment format for physics teacher education, analogous to the Objective Structured Teaching Examinations (OSTE) approach used in medical education. The OSTE prototype consists of seven short simulative assessments, reflecting four areas of competence (Instruction, Assessment, Pedagogy and Innovation) that form a 90-minute examination course. In order to investigate prospective physics teachers' perceptions of such an assessment format in terms of its suitability as a summative examination procedure, we piloted the OSTE prototype with N = 34 physics student teachers from three German universities using short questionnaires. The results show that participants perceived the OSTE prototype as authentic and relevant, but they also highlight the need for adequate new learning opportunities to prepare for such simulative examinations to be integrated into teacher education programmes.