Two portfolio systems: EFL students’ perceptions of writing ability,text improvement,and feedback

Research into portfolio assessment (‘PA’) typically describes teachers’ development and implementation of different portfolio models in their respective teaching contexts, however, not much attention is paid to student perceptions of the portfolio approach or its impact on the learning of writing. To this end, this study aims to investigate how two groups of Hong Kong EFL pre-university students (Groups A and B) perceived and responded to two portfolio systems (with each group experiencing one portfolio system either working portfolio or showcase portfolio) in one academic writing course. The case study approach was adopted and data sources included semi-structured interviews, student reflective journals, classroom observations, and analysis of text revisions. Findings indicated that students from the showcase portfolio group (Group B) were less enthusiastic about the effectiveness of PA, and queried whether it could promote autonomy in writing, while the working portfolio group (Group A) was more receptive to the experience, and considered that a feedback-rich environment in the working portfolio system could facilitate writing improvement. The paper concludes with a discussion of how PA can be used to promote self-regulation in the learning of writing.     

How to capture growth? – Video narratives as an instrument for assessment in teacher education

Portfolios are widely used as instruments for assessment in initial teacher education courses. They are claimed to present a comprehensive picture of student teachers' knowledge and performance. But what type of evidence is needed to safely say that an aspiring teacher has not only grasped essential notions and concepts from the teacher education course, but is also able to implement them in real world classroom situations? This paper reports on the design process of one portfolio assignment that has been developed specifically to capture students' classroom performance and development in their portfolio. Data from the portfolio entries of one student from a small-scale pilot conducted with the assignment are analyzed in detail followed by a discussion of the implications of the case study.     

The Development and Use of Literacy Portfolios for Students,Classes, and Teachers

Portfolio assessment is one of the most interesting and widely discussed of the new alternative assessments. In this paper we explore the portfolio metaphor as it is applied to literacy portfolios. We suggest that portfolios provide a powerful tool for the enhancement of instruction and assessment, addressing educators' concerns about authentic assessment, documentation of academic progress, and teacher and student involvement. However, we caution that there are many important and unresolved issues that must be confronted if portfolio assessment is to succeed. Fundamental issues of validity and reliability must be addressed as well as practical issues of implementation, standard setting, sufficient resources, and teacher expertise. We argue that the ultimate success of portfolios will rest on our ability to communicate portfolio-based assessment information to others. We offer the teacher's class portfolio as a promising strategy for aggregating and reporting information, while preserving the integrity of individual student portfolios and teacher judgment. Whether the emphasis is on individual student portfolios or classroom portfolios, educators must be committed to the staff development and additional research that portfolio assessment demands.     

Response groups as learning resources when working with portfolios

This article, based on the guidance of 17 teacher education students during their final term, presents the theoretical framework, procedures and results of an extensive experiment with portfolio assessment combined with peer tutoring. A recent reform programme in higher education in Norway has as one of its aims to improve the quality of teaching and better facilitate learning in universities and university colleges. One important aspect of the reform programme is to encourage greater diversity in student assessment, and to establish a closer link between the learning process and the methods of examination. Following up on those intentions, the students are encouraged to work more systematically on written texts as a strategy for learning, accompanied by responses to their drafts offered by the course tutors. The idea of portfolio assessment is central in the reform programme, as also is the concept of reflection. During a term 17 student teachers worked regularly in peer groups giving responses to each other's drafts, which also included separate reflection papers related to their work in the response groups. This way of working seems to have had a positive impact on their learning both as students and as a basis for their further development as professional teachers.     

Knowledge management for multi-assessment portfolios

This paper presents the results of a project conducted under the Greenfield Coalition concerning the development of an e-portfolio (a digital version of portfolios) assessment system. The goal of the system is to support student, course, instructor and curriculum assessment to enable continuous improvement of the educational process through the development of portfolios for each of them. In designing this system two areas of concern were identified: the development of an architecture for an easily maintainable system for structuring assessment portfolios and whether the system would be easy enough for first-year students to use. Two experiments were conducted to resolve these issues and verify that the architecture under development is proceeding appropriately. Toassure that the resulting system can properly structure and display the portfolios, a set of student and course data was entered into the system. Pages demonstrating the students' progress toward a course objective were automatically generated. To affirm that the mechanism identified for collecting the data is appropriate, a year-long digital portfolio collection was undertaken. Students submitted their coursework and supporting documents to a web server and used it to create their portfolio. Student reaction to the system was favourable. This project leads us to believe that the suggested architecture holds promise and merits continued development.     

Portfolio appraisal: In search of criteria

Two inherently contradictory forces are pushing for reform in portfolio assessment. On the one hand there is a felt need for creating more rigid standards that operate to promote uniformity of ratings in appraisal practice to certify achievement. However, on the other hand, critical questions are being raised about separating acclaimed portfolio goals aimed both at appraising achievement while also improving quality of student learning and development. The position of portfolio assessment, which is widely used nowadays in teaching and teacher education, comes into debate. In our study, we look for actual practices in portfolio appraisal in search of criteria used for rating the quality of portfolio materials. It is our interest to find out how appraisal criteria are selected and used to evaluate achievement or to improve the quality of development and learning. In the context of teacher education, we have examined both the espoused criteria of both assessors and collectors of portfolios as well as the actual appraisal practices by looking at the judgmental orientations and supervision styles used by portfolio assessors. In addition, we offered an authentic portfolio document to be rated by different assessors to gauge and compare their quality of rating and criteria use. The actual processes we detected point to a most common practice of employing judgmental, usually normative evaluations based on assessor dependent, more or less pre-decided criteria which permit a “checkbox” approach to appraisal.     

Validity Evidence of an Electronic Portfolio for Preservice Teachers

This study applied Messick's unified, multifaceted concept of construct validity to an electronic portfolio system used in a teacher education program. The subjects included 128 preservice teachers who recently completed their final portfolio reviews and student teaching experiences. Four of Messick's six facets of validity were investigated for the portfolio in this study, along with a discussion of the remaining facets examined in two previous studies. The evidence provided support for the substantive and generalizability aspects of validity, and limited support for the content, structural, external, and consequential aspects of validity. It was suggested that the electronic portfolio may be used as one requirement for certification purposes, but may not be valid for the purpose of assessing teacher competencies .     

Digital Portfolios

Abstract

Educators are faced with developing performance indicators for reporting to state and national agencies on pre-service teacher candidates' ability to teach using innovative pedagogy as well as content-specific standards. Portfolio assessment has gained momentum as a standard in assessing student-learning outcomes. This paper is a discussion of digital portfolio development as a stimulus to the intellectual involvement of the learner (a Type II application). Digital portfolio development is an activity that naturally involves intellectual involvement as the learner identifies the problem (developing the digital portfolio) and then problem solves as he or she creates the digital portfolio. Each student is in control of portfolio development and manipulates the Web-based software to create the professional portfolio.     

Weblog-based electronic portfolios for student teachers in Taiwan

This paper explored how the use of weblogs within the portfolio framework affected portfolio production and development for student teachers, and how the weblog-based electronic portfolio (WBEP) shaped student teachers’ reflective practice during the student teaching practicum. The individuals participating in this study consisted of 31 elementary school student teachers from a national university’s teacher education program in Taiwan. Qualitative data analysis revealed that about half the participants’ WBEP maturation level were at Level 2, the Curriculum Vitae WBEP. The two most prominent features of the WBEP platform on participants’ reflective practice were personal editorship and dialogues with others. Additionally, blog publicity promoted mandated dossier-like portfolios with which to evaluate performance with respect to external evaluation requirements. Thus, the reflective themes of most WBEP contents were rather uniform in the study.     

Student teacher portfolios: A portrait of the beginning teacher

Abstract

This article describes a student teacher portfolio for use as an interviewing tool. A review of the research on hiring practices indicated that prospective employers reviewed the following competencies of teacher candidates: planning skills, classroom management philosophy, reflective abilities, knowledge of appropriate assessment methods, and the initiative to do more than is expected. Therefore, the recommended sections of the student teacher portfolio are Self‐Assessment; Philosophy of Classroom Management; Planning, Implementation, and Assessment Skills; and Special Projects and Activities. Because prospective employers indicated that they would devote limited time to reading a portfolio, student teachers are instructed to make all sections only six to eight pages long. Professionally arranged appendixes can then be used to provide the employer with specific evidence for claims made in the main body of the portfolio.     

Teaching portfolios: A strategy for developing learning and teaching in preservice education

Teaching portfolios have been used in the preservice teacher education program at Monash University to help student teachers to reflect on their learning about learning and teaching and to help them to convey this to others. The portfolio is an open-ended and un-graded task designed to explore teaching from many different vantage points. It is organised as a dynamic assessment task, not simply a static end product. This is done by considering teaching portfolios as comprising two important aspects, one is the process the other is the product. The process involves learning from the variety of experiences offered in the preservice education program and encouraging student teachers to reflect on these. The product is the development of the individual portfolio items that are used to demonstrate this learning to others. The portfolio comprises a number of individual items which act as a prompt to “tap” the creator's understanding of what it means to be a (science) teacher. This paper reports on the effectiveness and value of portfolios from the student-teachers' perspective by exploring how their understanding of the task evolved as they completed their preservice teacher education program.     

Assessment in Statistics Courses: More than a tool for evaluation

The current assessment reform movement in statistics encourages instructors to think more broadly about cognitive measures which assess student learning. In response, statistics instructors have begun incorporating innovative methods of assessment into their courses, the most common of these procedures being authentic assessment, performance assessment, and portfolio assessment. This paper will discuss areas to consider for assessment, problems with typical assessments, and statistical authenticity for understanding student learning.     

Portfolios as a tool for AfL and student motivation: are they related?

ABSTRACT

The power of portfolios in enhancing student motivation is frequently emphasised. Portfolios are conceptualised as a tool to implement Assessment for Learning (AfL) in classroom practice. However, the relation between portfolios and AfL on the one hand, and student motivation on the other hand, is complex and subject to many assumptions. This study investigates whether portfolio use actually supports the integration of AfL in classroom practice and the relation with students’ motivation. Questionnaires were administered to a total of 419 grade 4 to 6 students from seven Dutch elementary schools. The results of structural equation modelling did not confirm a direct relation between portfolio use and students’ motivational orientation. The findings indicate that the relation between portfolios and motivational orientation is fully mediated by students’ perceptions of AfL. The findings indicate that the tool portfolio is not related to students’ motivation, however, AfL practices do affect motivation.     

“I am not simply learning and regurgitating information,I am also learning about myself”: learning portfolio practice and online distance students

This case study explored the experience of learning portfolio practice and whether learning portfolio practice facilitated the development of critical thinking skills among online distance students. Data were generated using the participant learning portfolio entries and two-time semi-structured interviews. Five themes were constructed in the data-led thematic analysis: being an online distance student, the experience of learning with a learning portfolio, my approach to learning, thinking critically in my learning portfolio, the sociology discipline context. Findings indicate that learning portfolio practice can enhance the nature of the learning experience by providing students with a personal space to evaluate their own learning, to process their thoughts and experience and to document their lives and learning in an authentic and meaningful way. The findings suggest that learning portfolio practice can facilitate the development of critical thinking skills within a disciplinary context.     

Exploring the role of assessment criteria during teachers’ collaborative judgement processes of students’ portfolios

Student portfolios are increasingly used for assessing student competences in higher education, but results about the construct validity of portfolio assessment are mixed. A prerequisite for construct validity is that the portfolio assessment is based on relevant portfolio content. Assessment criteria, are often used to enhance this condition. This study aims to identify whether assessment criteria can improve content, argumentation and communication during teacher moderation while judging student portfolios. Six teachers scored 32 student portfolios in dyads with and without assessment criteria. Their judgement processes were qualitatively analysed. Results indicated that the quality of their judgement processes was low, since teachers based their judgements mainly on their own personal opinion and less on evidence found in the portfolio. Teachers barely paid attention to quality checks and easily agreed with each other. When teachers used assessment criteria, the quality of their judgements slightly improved. They based their judgements more on relevant evidence, used less personal experiences and more often checked the quality of their judgement processes. It is concluded that the quality of teacher portfolio judgement is low, and that the use of assessment criteria can enhance its quality.     

Dissonant themes in preservice portfolio development

This study examined the use of portfolio assessment to determine the extent to which student teachers are able to demonstrate INTASC principles in their teaching. More specifically, it looked at the role of perception and assumption by identifying inconsistency between university faculty and student teacher expectations and use of the portfolio. The study found that dissonance was prominent in four main areas: purpose, value, perception, and context. Among the factors contributing to the dissonance were lack of clarity of stated purpose for the portfolio, the student teaching environment, and uncertainty between formative and summative nature of the assessment.     

The effect of portfolios on students' learning: student teachers' views

This study reports on student teachers' views of portfolios as a learning tool when they are combined with a weekly test conducted at the end of each lesson to help student teachers self‐evaluate. Student teachers' written reflections during the process provided data for the study. Analysis of the data showed that a majority of student teachers initially felt that compiling a portfolio would be time‐consuming and an extra burden added to their already busy schedule. However, later on they all found that the process was a useful learning experience. Moreover, the portfolio process – especially combining self‐reflection with weekly tests – encouraged students to study regularly, increased retention and made learning more enjoyable. Suggestions for the successful portfolio implementation include the following: guiding students both at the beginning of and during the process, providing continuous and prompt feedback during the process and making self‐reflection – especially guided by reflection prompts – an essential part of the process.     

发挥电子档案袋在高校英语教育中的作用

电子档案袋在学生的学习过程中扮演重要角色,可以显示学生的学习目的、活动、能力、学习成果及其最终发展水平,由高校英语教师牵头,师生,家长和社会配合,尝试创造性地建立：[消息部]、[方法部]、[分享部]、[开放评价]、[学生档案]等不同专项的电子档案袋,积极发挥电子档案袋在英语教育中的作用,促进英语教育改革,使高校英语教育迈出新的步伐。     

A Student Portfolio Approach to Conducting Doctoral Social Work Comprehensive Examinations

ABSTRACT

This report describes using a student portfolio approach to the structure and conduct of doctoral-level comprehensive examinations in the field of social work. Portfolios have been used as the primary method (one exception in over 40 students) to conducting social work comprehensive examinations at the author's former university, and this doctoral program appears to be unique in this regard among North American social work programs. The approach to organizing the written and oral components of comprehensive examinations using a portfolio is described, along with some of the advantages and disadvantages of this technique. Other doctoral programs are encouraged to include this method as one option in evaluating student readiness to conduct dissertation research and attainment of pedagogical objectives.     

Electronic portfolios: Perspectives of students, teachers and parents

This study explores the perspectives of students, teachers and parents to evaluate the use of digital portfolios as an additional way to capture and enhance the learning of elementary students in a public school setting and as an opportunity to communicate this learning to parents. The research questions address four problems: complex assessment of learning, parental participation, and student and teacher satisfaction and the impact of the portfolio on teaching methods. Particularly, we are interested in the subjective satisfaction of students, teachers and parents in the portfolio development process. We are also interested in whether students learn to reflect constructively on their work, whether teachers have changed their teaching methods and whether parents believe the portfolio was used or could be used for enhanced communications.