What Is Praxis? The Teacher Certification Test and the Educational Theory Explained

What Is Praxis?

Praxis means two different things in education. The Praxis tests are a series of exams from ETS that United States states use to license new teachers, covering basic academic skills, subject knowledge and teaching practice. Separately, praxis is a long-standing term for putting theory into practice, used widely in educational theory.

Key takeaways

• Capital-P Praxis almost always means the ETS teacher certification tests used in the United States.
• Lower-case praxis means action informed by theory, and it turns up in teacher training reading lists rather than in job adverts.
• ETS groups the tests into three types: Core, Subject Tests and Elementary Education: Content Knowledge for Teaching.
• There are over 120 Praxis Subject Tests, from Agriculture to World Languages.
• No single list of required tests exists, because each state or licensing agency sets its own requirements and passing scores.
• The Praxis is a United States school licensure test. It is not a requirement for teaching English abroad or online, and a TEFL qualification is not a substitute for it either.

The Two Meanings of Praxis, Side by Side

Most of the confusion on this word comes from two completely separate things sharing five letters. It is worth separating them before going any further, because almost nothing said about one is true of the other.

If you arrived here from a job advert or a licensure checklist, the left-hand column is the one you want. If you arrived from a reading list, it is the right-hand one.

What the Praxis Tests Actually Are

The Praxis tests are assessments taken by people entering the teaching profession in the United States. ETS, the organisation that publishes them, describes the programme on its own site as “Three types of Praxis tests: one bright future”, and puts it more plainly elsewhere on the same page: “Praxis is your doorway into the classroom.”

Two things follow from that framing and both matter.

The first is that the Praxis is a gateway, not a qualification in its own right. You do not come out of it holding a credential you can show an employer in the way you would a degree or a diploma. You come out of it having satisfied a condition that a state, or a teacher preparation programme, has set.

The second is that it is plural. People talk about “the Praxis” as though it were one exam sat on one afternoon. It is a programme containing well over a hundred separate tests, and which of them you sit depends entirely on what you intend to teach and where.

The Three Types of Praxis Test

This is the structure ETS itself publishes, and it is the fastest way to orient yourself.

ETS also publishes a separate Elementary Education: Multiple Subjects test, whose stated purpose is “to assess whether the entry-level elementary teacher has the content knowledge” needed to teach reading, mathematics, social studies and science at elementary level. Some states accept one and some the other, which is a good early illustration of the point made further down this page: the state decides, not ETS.

How to cite this data. Attribute these descriptions to ETS, “About the Praxis Tests”, at praxis.ets.org, and give the date you checked the page, because ETS revises test names, codes and counts between testing years. If you are quoting from this page rather than from ETS directly, cite The TEFL Institute Group with the check date of 9 October 2026.

Praxis Core: The Entry Point to Teacher Training

Praxis Core is the earliest of the three in a typical career, and the one most often misunderstood as a teaching test. It is not. It measures reading, writing and mathematics, which is to say it measures the candidate’s own academic skills rather than their ability to teach anything.

ETS describes the Core tests as being used by institutions “to evaluate candidates seeking to enter teacher preparation programs”, and notes that “many states also require Praxis Core scores as part of their teacher licensing processes”. Both uses are live, which is why the same three tests appear at two different points in different people’s stories: once as an admissions hurdle, once as a licensure one.

The practical consequence is that a person who has already completed a degree may still be asked for Core scores, and a person admitted to a programme without them may meet them later. Neither situation is unusual and neither indicates that something has gone wrong.

Praxis Subject Tests: Over 120 of Them

The Subject Tests are the bulk of the programme. ETS states that there are “over 120 different tests, ranging from Agriculture to World Languages”, each measuring subject knowledge in a defined area.

For anyone whose interest is English language teaching, the relevant ones sit in the English and world languages families, and they are not interchangeable. A test aimed at English Language Arts in a mainstream school classroom is a different assessment from one aimed at teaching English to speakers of other languages, and a state that requires one will not usually accept the other in its place.

This is the single most common and most expensive mistake made with the Praxis: sitting a plausible-sounding test that the licensing authority has not asked for. The test code, not the test name, is what the authority actually specifies.

Elementary Education: Content Knowledge for Teaching

CKT is the newest of the three types and the most interesting pedagogically, because it tries to assess something the other two do not.

ETS says the four subtests “measure subject content knowledge as well as specialized content knowledge”: the second phrase being the point. Specialised content knowledge is the knowledge a teacher needs that a well-informed non-teacher would not: knowing why a child makes a particular arithmetic error, or which of four correct explanations will land with a seven-year-old. It is aimed at “teacher candidates seeking a generalist elementary school license”, who have to teach every subject rather than one.

It is worth noting as an idea even if you will never sit it, because it is the closest the Praxis programme comes to assessing praxis in the other sense of the word.

Which States Require the Praxis?

There is no short answer, and any page that gives you one is simplifying something that cannot safely be simplified.

ETS is explicit on this: “Your state or licensing agency’s requirements determine which test(s) you’ll need to take,” and “Each state or agency sets its own test requirements and passing scores.” Its state requirements page states that “each state and licensing organization determines its own certification and Praxis qualifying score requirements”, and lets you select a jurisdiction to “discover the test(s) and qualifying scores you’ll need for the places where you’ll want to teach”.

The same page lists not only states, territories and districts but also several professional licensing organisations outside the school system, including the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, the National Association of School Psychologists and the Department of Defense Education Activity. The Praxis programme is wider than classroom teaching alone.

Three consequences follow, and they are the ones worth carrying away:

• Requirements are per jurisdiction, not national. Two neighbouring states can ask for different tests for the same subject.
• Passing scores differ too. The same score can pass in one state and fail in another, which is why ETS publishes scores by state separately.
• Moving state can mean sitting more tests. Reciprocity between states exists but is partial, and it is set by the receiving state.

Check the jurisdiction you actually intend to work in, on the ETS site, before you book anything.

What This Page Does Not Tell You: Fees, Scores and Dates

We are being deliberate here rather than incomplete.

Praxis fees, passing scores and test dates all change, they vary by test and by state, and ETS does not publish a single stable figure for any of them that would still be accurate in six months. Rather than print a number that would quietly go out of date on this page, we have left them out and pointed you at the source instead. Fees and waivers, score requirements by state, and test dates are all published on praxis.ets.org and are the version you should rely on.

If you see a specific Praxis fee quoted confidently on a third-party page with no date attached to it, treat the whole page with a little more caution.

Praxis the Concept: Theory Put Into Practice

The other praxis is older than the tests by roughly two and a half thousand years.

Merriam-Webster gives it as “action, practice”, including the “exercise or practice of an art, science, or skill” and “customary practice or conduct”, and then the sense that does most of the work in education: “practical application of a theory”. The etymology it gives is “Medieval Latin, from Greek, doing, action, from prassein to do, practice”.

In teacher education specifically, the word carries a stronger meaning than “practice” alone. It describes the loop in which what you do in the classroom reshapes what you believe about teaching, and what you believe reshapes what you do next. The association is strongest with Paulo Freire, whose Pedagogy of the Oppressed treats praxis as reflection and action together rather than either on its own, and the word reached most teacher training reading lists through that line of work.

This is why the two meanings sit so awkwardly together. A multiple-choice licensure exam is close to the opposite of what the word means in the tradition that gave it to education, and anyone who has sat one while reading the other will have noticed.

Do You Need the Praxis to Teach English Abroad?

No. The Praxis is a United States school licensure instrument, and it is not what employers outside that system check.

Language centres, international language schools, online platforms and government placement schemes ask for a degree where the visa requires one, and then for a recognised English language teaching qualification. A Praxis score is not the credential being examined, and holding one does not remove the need for a TEFL qualification if the employer has asked for one.

The reverse is equally true and we will say it plainly on our own site: a TEFL qualification, at any level or number of hours, is not a Praxis score and will not satisfy a United States state that has asked for one. These are two different systems answering two different questions, and neither substitutes for the other.

Where a Praxis score genuinely helps is if your longer plan runs through a United States classroom: teaching abroad for a few years, then licensing at home. In that case the sequence matters more than the order, and it is worth knowing which tests your intended state wants before you leave rather than after you come back.

Praxis, QTS, PGCE and TEFL Certification Compared

Four names that people line up as though they were rungs on one ladder. They are not on the same ladder at all.

The England comparison is the clarifying one. GOV.UK states that “Qualified teacher status (QTS) is a legal requirement to teach in many English schools”, and it is conferred through training assessed against the Teachers’ Standards rather than through an examination you can book. The United States reaches a comparable end point through a different mechanism: a programme plus, in most jurisdictions, one or more tests. Our guide to what QTS is and where it is legally required sets out that side in full.

Support roles sit outside all four rows. If what you are looking at is an instructional support post in a United States school rather than a teaching post, the relevant entry requirements are usually those for a paraprofessional, and they are set under federal and district rules rather than by the Praxis programme. And if the work involves English learners specifically, the assessments that govern those pupils are a separate system again: WIDA and its ACCESS test measure the students’ English, not the teacher’s readiness.

How to Tell Which Praxis Someone Means

Four quick checks, which between them resolve almost every case:

• Is it capitalised? Capital P with a number beside it is the test. Lower case in the middle of a sentence is the concept.
• Is there a test code? Praxis tests are specified by four-digit codes. A code means licensure, every time.
• What kind of document is it? A state checklist or job advert means the test. A reading list, a module handbook or an essay prompt means the concept.
• Is a country named? The test is a United States instrument. If the context is any other country’s school system, it is almost certainly the concept.

The fuller set of teaching acronyms and credentials, with each one linked to a longer guide, is laid out on our TEFL qualifications and terminology page.

Your Next Step

If your goal is a licensed teaching post in a United States school, the Praxis is likely to be part of the route, and the only reliable next step is to select your jurisdiction on the ETS state requirements page and read what it asks for. Nothing on this site replaces that, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise.

If your goal is to teach English abroad, online or in a language centre, the Praxis is not the credential anyone will ask you for. The qualification employers name is a TEFL qualification with a level you can verify. Our 180-hour Ofqual-regulated Level 5 TEFL Diploma is listed on the Ofqual register as 610/1571/4, awarded by Highfield Qualifications, organisation number RN5219. You can check that number before you enrol, which is the entire point of a regulated qualification.

Related: Praxis is not the only assessment a US licensure route can ask for. Several states also require a classroom-based performance assessment built from your own teaching placement: see What Is edTPA? for how that works and how it differs from Praxis.

Last reviewed: 13 October 2026