Article In:
Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education: Online-First Articles

Using a rubric as a mediational tool to assess pre-service immersion teacher development

A case study

ORCID logo | University of Minnesota
ORCID logo | Western Washington University

Dual language and immersion (DLI) teaching requires knowledge and pedagogical skills focused on language and content integration (e.g., Cammarata & Tedick, 2012; Lyster, 2007; Tedick & Cammarata, 2023). Recent scholarship has begun to articulate how best to prepare DLI teachers with such knowledge and skills (e.g., Cammarata & Haley, 2017; Tedick et al., 2024; Tedick & Zilmer, 2018). This study adds to this work by exploring how a DLI-specific teacher assessment rubric mediates the learning process. Researchers created a DLI-specific rubric to aid pre-service teacher candidates (TCs) in developing skills related to content and language integration. The case study explores one TC and one supervisor’s experiences with the rubric. Data sources include audio “diaries” and video-recordings of post-observation conferences between the two participants. Qualitative inductive analysis led to sociocultural concepts (Vygotsky, 1978) as explanatory tools for understanding the role of the rubric in the TC’s learning and supervisor’s mentoring.

Keywords: teacher education, dual language and immersion education, teacher assessment rubric, sociocultural theory, mediation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Dual language and immersion education
    • 1.2Literature review
  • 2.Background to the study
    • 2.1Rubric design
    • 2.2Rubric development
  • 3.The study
    • 3.1Study context
    • 3.2Theoretical framework and research questions
    • 3.3Study participants
    • 3.4Data collection and analysis
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1The language of the rubric as a symbolic artifact
    • 4.2The rubric as a mediational tool
      • 4.2.1Affordances
      • 4.2.2Constraints
    • 4.3Collaborative dialogue mediates teacher candidate learning
  • 5.Discussion, implications, and conclusion
    • 5.1Discussion
    • 5.2Implications
    • 5.3Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Author queries
  • References
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