In order to better understand how the edTPA has become accepted by music teacher education programs over the past decade, the purpose of this study was to investigate how one music teacher education program implemented the edTPA. Using a critical policy analysis framework, I examined the following research questions: (a) How did stakeholders understand the policy framing of edTPA? (b) How did stakeholders interact with, implement, describe, and make sense of their experiences with edTPA? (c) How did stakeholders frame their own sense of power and agency with respect to the development and implementation of edTPA?Research took place at Northeastern United States University (NUSU), a music teacher preparation program that has used edTPA since the initial pilot and has expressed support for the edTPA. The 15 participants included administrators, full-time faculty, part-time supervisors, and student teachers, as well as documents from each of these groups. Participants described edTPA as a high-stakes, standardized measurement that was used to define "good" members of NUSU. While acknowledged as stressful, the faculty rationalized edTPA as compatible with NUSU's values and used it to pervade the curriculum. Tenured faculty and administration benefitted the most from edTPA while student teachers were the most negatively impacted. Recommendations include cutting costs for student teachers, localizing the rubrics, including narrative feedback, balancing the workload for student teachers, restoring decision-making to local stakeholders, encouraging critical and collaborative discussions, and ending the high-stakes mandate.
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