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.     

Setting Standards in the Language Arts and Literature Classrooms and the Implications for Portfolio Assessment

Based on a series of working sessions with teachers who elaborated their implicit standards for student performance, this article makes a case for portfolio assessment in the English and language arts classroom. Portfolios, created by student and teacher, consist of exemplars, which are products that have been rated by a jury according to public criteria. These are arranged to illustrate the agreed-on dimensions of performance in the subject and the established standards or levels of performance within those dimensions. The portfolio can thus portray the student's performance across the domain. Such dimensions and standards can be generalized beyond the classroom for the purposes of large-scale assessment, but the portfolio's use is primarily, if not entirely, at the individual level. A sample set of dimensions and standards is elaborated and implications for reporting are discussed.     

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 Application of Student Portfolios in Primary-Intermediate and Self- Contained-Multiage Team Classroom Environments: Implications for Instruction,Learning, and Assessment

Portfolios have gained wide acceptance as a learning and assessment tool. Yet, little research has been reported on the practices of teachers who are actually using portfolios within their classrooms and how those practices are moderated by contextual variables. This research examined the instructional, learning, and assessment roles of student portfolios and explored, from the perspective of the classroom teacher, variations in portfolio applications associated with teaching level (primary vs. intermediate) and classroom environment (self-contained vs. multiage-teaming).

Kindergarten through Grade 5 teachers in 13 elementary schools completed a survey questionnaire regarding the instructional and assessment uses to which portfolios are put within their classrooms. To further examine for patterns of portfolio use, a subset of teachers was interviewed to explore the perceptions that teachers hold about the impact of student portfolios on themselves and on their students. The results suggest that Kindergarten through Grade 5 teachers make deliberate decisions regarding uses of their students' portfolios, decisions that appear heavily impacted by the maturity or skill level of the child, the purposes of the application, and the classroom environment within which the application occurs. They also depend on whether the portfolio product is in a formative state (working portfolio) or final state (performance portfolio).     

成长记录袋的创建与使用

成长记录袋有意识地收集学生的作品或有关证据,以反映学生在某一领域的努力、进步与成就。任课教师创建和使用成长记录袋一般要经过明确目的和用途、对内容选择提供指导、明确学生角色、确定评分程序和标准、交流和使用等几个主要步骤。在当前的评价实践中,学校和教师还要注意谨慎选择成长记录袋的应用领域、将成长记录袋的应用与教学有机结合、给教师和学生足够的自主权并加强教师培训。     

Personal theory and reflection in a professional practice portfolio

Portfolios are widely used in the assessment of professional learning. Although claims are made that portfolios promote reflection, the nature of such reflection and the mechanisms that promote it in the portfolio process are not well understood. A four‐year action research project investigated a professional practice portfolio for high stakes assessment in a post‐graduate programme for special education resource teachers (RTs) that was preparing them for a paradigmatically different role. This paper focuses on the requirement to submit a personal theory (PT) statement in the portfolio. Although tension between the summative and formative purposes of the portfolio was evident for some RTs, a more comprehensive understanding of reflection was evident and many RTs reported that articulating their PT (often for the first time in their career) impacted positively on their ability to reflect on practice.     

Two case studies of L2 writers’ experiences across learning-directed portfolio contexts

Portfolios have attracted considerable interest among ESL writing and assessment specialists since the 1980s. Whether they have fulfilled the promise their proponents envision is a question still under investigation. This paper describes two case studies which looked at student experiences with portfolios in two ESL writing courses where the portfolio pedagogies employed differed, so that each student was able to experience portfolios under meaningful conditions for comparison. The results showed that the participants liked the idea of portfolios but did not strongly endorse their use as employed in the courses which served as the research settings. The study's findings shed light on how students respond to different portfolio models and thus contribute to our understanding of the place portfolios can occupy in L2 writing instruction.     

Linking assessment to undergraduate student capabilities through portfolio examination

Portfolios are an established method of assessment, although concerns do exist around their validity for capabilities such as reflection and self‐direction. This article describes an e‐portfolio which closely aligns learning and reflection to graduate capabilities, incorporating features that address concerns about portfolios. Students are required to complete assessments linked to graduate capabilities. In Year 3, a portfolio review occurs (205–248 students per year), focusing on students' grades and feedback from assessments and a reflective essay is submitted. In the essay, students reflect on their progress, identify areas of weakness and detail plans for improvement. Progress in each capability is summatively graded against specific criteria and feedback is provided. Students progressively accumulate evidence of learning linked to the graduate capabilities. The provision of sufficient structure prevents evasion of areas of weakness. Importantly, the equal weighting given to all graduate capabilities emphasises that competence in all areas is required. The requirement for a degree of self‐direction and reflection in all assessments promotes regular review of progress. This e‐portfolio explicitly links graduate outcomes with assessment in order to drive learning. Further research is required to evaluate acceptability to students, as well as the efficacy of portfolios in developing reflective practice and self‐directed learning.     

The Faculty Development Portfolio: A Framework for Documenting the Professional Development of Faculty Developers

Portfolios are used for a variety of purposes in higher education. Two such purposes are the documentation of one's professional development for others and the improvement of one's own performance over time. This article discusses the concept of the faculty development portfolio and, in doing so, outlines the work of faculty development professionals. It also identifies characteristics of effective faculty development professionals and defines the steps involved in creating a faculty development portfolio. These steps include how to conceptualize, gather, and present evidence of items that can be used as a framework for faculty developers to consider when documenting their professional development for summative and formative purposes.     

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.     

Portfolio assessment: direct from the classroom

Portfolios have been regarded as a means of personal self‐expression. This study reports on student real‐life experiences with portfolio assessment. The focus group comprised 150 freshmen (100 females) from a small campus of a tertiary educational institution. For two semesters (approximately 30 weeks), students engaged in numerous activities selected to encourage deep learning and understanding of mathematical concepts. Because students were not involved in the experiment, ecological validity was maximised, and observations may be regarded as fairly authentic and worthy of analysis. Generally, students reported learning much from portfolio assessment and felt an integral part of the assessment process. Portfolio assessment appeared to empower students and provide them with the self‐respect they desired. Future research could compare results from everyday observations with those from experiments.     

Developing Portfolios to Evaluate Teacher Performance in Early Childhood Education

One goal of the teacher's professional portfolio is to describe the full range of abilities and document effective teaching over an extended period of time. In this article we discuss the procedure that teachers can use in developing their own portfolio assessment to help generate data for making decisions about teaching performance. The development of a teacher portfolio requires planning, time, organization and cooperation from students, colleagues, parents and supervisors. The format of the portfolio may vary from individual to individual and be based upon personal preference. Organizations and contents of the teacher portfolio are suggested. Questions and associated lists of teaching artifacts are discussed based on the authors' experiences as early childhood classroom teachers and university professors. The answers to these questions will guide the selection of activity-generated products to best represent the essence of the teacher performance.     

Stimulating independent learning: a quasi‐experimental study on portfolio

A portfolio model was developed which can serve as an alternative to the literature study with practical processing, the predominant dissertation model used in teacher education courses in Flanders. Using a pre‐ and post‐test quasi‐experimental design with 174 teacher students and 44 supervisors, we examined whether the use of portfolio as a dissertation model has a greater effect on the students’ capacity for independent learning than the literature study with practical processing, using three questionnaires. The research shows that portfolio results in students acquiring greater metacognitive knowledge. It also appears that students only get the chance to use their metacognitive skills when supervisors give them sufficient autonomy. However, supervisors experience loss of control and therefore tend to restrict students’ autonomy. This leads us to the paradox of independent learning: students will only learn independently when they are given the opportunity to learn independently. Supervisors need to transfer learner control.     

Portfolios: A tool for reflective thinking in teacher education?

Portfolios have often been promoted as a tool for reflective thinking, yet few studies have examined the use of portfolios in reflective teacher education programs. This exploratory study uses interviews, essays, and survey data to examine 212 teacher education students' efforts to think reflectively through the process of constructing portfolios based on their experiences in a community service-learning program. Findings revealed that the portfolio process prompted reflective thinking in many, but not all, students. Recommendations for using portfolios in teacher education programs include: focusing attention on students' initial understanding of the process and its purpose, encouraging student ownership and individual expression, providing some structured aspects to balance the open-ended nature of portfolios, and evaluating the portfolio process and students' responses.     

Changes in secondary teachers' perceptions of barriers to portfolio assessment

Portfolio assessment has become a popular medium for merging classroom assessment with large-scale testing, but adoption of portfolios in the classroom for external assessment purposes may be difficult because the use of such portfolios may require changes in the curriculum, instructions, and assessments used by teachers. As a result, there are numerous potential barriers to the adoption of portfolios that can be used for large-scale assessment purposes. This study investigates how secondary teachers' perceptions of portfolio implementation barriers changed when teachers participated in a 1-year portfolio implementation effort. Survey results are analyzed with a Rasch rating scale model. Results suggest that teachers' apprehension about portfolio barriers increased slightly, but that this increase can be attributable to teachers with little portfolio experience. Furthermore, teachers' concerns about the amount of time required to develop and score portfolios increased substantially while concerns about the availability of resources and resistance from parents decreased.     

Contradictions between the virtual and physical high school classroom: A third‐generation Activity Theory perspective

This paper uses a third‐generation Activity Theory perspective to gain insight into the contradictions between the activity systems of the physical and virtual high school classroom from the perspective of teachers who had transitioned from one system to the other. Data collection relied on semi‐structured interviews conducted with e‐teachers as well as management/support personnel of an organisation charged with delivering web‐based high school courses in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Contradictions related to time and workload, physical presence, interaction and rapport building, and use of direct messaging and email. The contradictions can be explained by a difference between the mediating tools in each activity system. The absence in the virtual classroom of body language and visual presence as mediators requires e‐teachers to find new ways of interacting and building rapport and necessitates a shift from a practice of controlling to engaging students’ attention.     

Portfolio use in educational leadership preparation programs: From theory to practice

Alternative assessment measures, particularly the use of portfolios, which capture authentic student learning are gaining wider acceptance in K-12 school settings. Portfolios have a rich history in higher education, and recently they are becoming a more popular assessment device in colleges of education. Using educational leadership preparation programs as an example, this article examines the use of portfolio assessment by focusing on the relationship between a folio and a portfolio, the possible artifacts and attestations to include in a folio, the structural components of portfolios, and the different uses of portfolios. The implications of incorporating portfolios in leadership preparation programs also are discussed, including how to alleviate the ambiguities and uncertainties faculty and students experience when this form of authentic assessment is utilized.Bruce G. Barnett is an Associate Professor and Director of the Division of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Northern Colorado. His interests include the preservice and inservice preparation of educational administrators, with particular emphasis in the areas of reflective practice, instructional leadership, and staff development. He has published articles dealing with professional preparation, peer coaching, reflective practice, mentoring, portfolio development, and the moral dilemmas facing educational leaders.     

Learning to teach: enhancing pre‐service teachers’ awareness of the complexity of teaching–learning processes

Abstract

Interest in story in teaching has been linked to teacher research (Carter, 1993; Elbaz, 1991), to teacher education (Connelly &; Clandinin, 1994), to curriculum (Britz‐man, 1989; Gudmundsdottir, 1991c), and to school change (Giltin, 1990). I wish to argue here for a link between story and one form of teacher reflection, for portfolio construction, unlike more conventional forms of teacher development, encourages teachers to tell the story of their classrooms and to frame that story in particular ways. I wish to argue here for a view that constructing a portfolio shifts the ownership of learning to the portfolio‐maker and that in this constructing, we can trace a teacher's developing understanding of pedagogy. Specifically, my aim is to illustrate the narrative dimensions of a self‐generated portfolio question — its interpretations, the reflections upon its meaning, and its transformations of pedagogical understanding — as this text becomes pedagogy and pedagogy becomes text. This interpretive process is illustrated through a case study of Ellen Nicol, a secondary English as a Second Language teacher, in her graduate teacher education year and her first 2 years of classroom teaching. Ellen's pedagogical text, her question, is reinterpreted with major changes each time she comes to understand more completely the richness and complexity of her classroom. Each new transformation and reinterpretation serve as guide for selection of materials, for selection of pedagogy, and for assessment of success. Each new collection of pedagogical information serves as impetus for possible reframing and transformation of the text.