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.     

Task-Specific Self-Evaluation as a Measure of Achievement Motivation

The validity of an internalized self-reinforcement paradigm as a model of achievement motivation was investigated with a sample of 230 ninth grade black pupils of an inner-city public school located in a midwestern metropolitan area. If achievement behavior is controlled and sustained by covert internal evaluations of performance, then students who more frequently report positive self-evaluations during some specific school-like task may be predicted to: a.) have higher grade point averages than students who less frequently report self-evaluations of task performance; b.) have lower rates of absence from school than students who less frequently report positive self-evaluations of task performance; c.) have greater levels of expected task performance than students who less frequently report positive self-evaluations of performance; d.) have greater expectations that they will be able to positively evaluate themselves for task performance than students who less frequently report positive self-evaluations; e.) have greater congruence between self-established standards and actual performance. Analyzed by 2-way analysis of variance (self-evaluation x sex), the data supported each of the predictions. The results were interpreted to support the conception of self-evaluations of task performance as a model of achievement motivation. In the absence of external rewards, the student sustains his academic behavior by the quality of the covert self-evaluations of his own performance. The positive or negative value of these evaluations depends on self-established standards. Students who tend to evaluate themselves negatively may do so as a function of arbitrarily high standards. Their performance on academic tasks will be less well sustained and their functioning at consequently lowered levels of achievement. The paper-and-pencil self-reports used in the study yielded results comparable to the elaborate laboratory instrumentation of previous studies.     

PEER GROUP COUNSELING FOR OLDER PEOPLE

>For a variety of reasons, psychological services are largely unavailable for older people who want help in coping with their interpersonal problems. Group counseling, when it is used, proves to be an effective and efficient method for meeting their needs. It also addresses the reality of the limited numbers of gerontologically trained professionals currently available in the field. A readily attainable, and largely untapped, resource for working with this population is older people themselves. The Continuum Center of Oakland University selects, trains, and supervises older men and women, who serve as paraprofessional group leaders in a self‐exploration program offered in a variety of community centers in the Detroit metropolitan area. The service and training programs, and some of the outcomes for clients and group leaders, are briefly described.     

Prevention rather than cure

Storysack projects (in which sacks including books and artefacts to help children learn through play are made and distributed), are proliferating in the UK and beyond, often involving work with parents. However, little of this work has been reported. One way to find out about new storysack project ideas is to talk with those directly involved. This article documents a conversation between a university researcher and a practitioner. The focus is on the use of a grid to discuss the educational content of storyacks with parents. The work is located within a Sure Start programme in the north of England.     

When writers visit schools: A symposium

Betty Miles, a member of the U.S. Editorial Board ofCle, asked eight other writers to reflect along with her on what it is like to talk with their readers in schools.The brief essays below are as varied as their authors' styles, but one theme runs through all of them: the importance of face-to-face encounters to writers, as well as to their young readers. These first-hand reports suggest, both explicitly and implicitly, ways of enriching author visits so that children's interaction with a real live author can enhance their interest in reading, and in writing.Betty Miles has written many picture books for young children and six novels for older readers, most recentlyMaudie and Me and The Dirty Book andThe Trouble with Thirteen. She and her husband live in Tappan, New York, where her three grown children went to school.