What Portfolios are for
An interesting post over at Helen Barrett’s blog. (If you’re interested in portfolios, you should be following Barrett. In my humble opinion, she’s a portfolio jedi.)
E-Portfolios for Learning: Linking ePortfolios and Student Achievement?
In Barrett’s post, a reader asks if there is a link between portfolio use and an overall improvement in student achievement. (Read: test scores.)
I think Barrett’s response shows what a portfolio is for - it’s not so much about assessing learning, it’s about engagement for learning.
That’s a big paradigm shift isn’t it?
Both items are important: We need to know what we’ve learned, but we also need to be engaged and "sucked into" the process of learning. According to Barrett, that’s one of the things portfolios are great at doing.
"However, there is substantial research that supports the use of formative, classroom assessment (assessment FOR learning as opposed to assessment OF learning) with increased student achievement. Look at the meta-analysis conducted by Black and Wiliam in the U.K.: http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/kbla9810.htm
Also, the Assessment Reform Group: http://www.qca.org.uk/7659.htmlThat type of formative assessment is well facilitated using a portfolio for that purpose…"(Linking ePortfolios and Student Achievement?, Barrett)
Classroom assessment typically delivers a grade. Portfolios seem to address something far more cooler: student engagement and motivation to learn.
But how can I really help my students make that level of connection with a portfolio? How can I move them beyond the erroneous idea that a portfolio is just another hoop to jump through to get the grade? (The teacher said I had to do this, so I’m doing it. Totally missed the point.)
This is becomming a very important issue for me as I begin to learn more about my role as an English teacher. I’m learning that I’ve utterly failed if my students continue seeing me as their solution to learning English. I’m learning that I need to be an equipper who actively prepares and pushes students to step out of the classroom nest. I’m learning that I must work hard to teach myself out of a job - which means it’s a good thing to have students who can say they are able to do this on their own, and therefore it’s a really bad thing to have students who never leave the nest.
I’m introducing portfolios to my students for this purpose: not like a tool to generate a grade, but like a baton in a relay race. My hope is that they pass me, and use their portfolio as a tool for continued engagement in English - outside the classroom, and long after we’ve stopped running together.
Thanks for this post…
I really appreciated the second half…I think you have given me some blogging ideas…and very helpful to see someone sorting through portfolios and their ‘application’ in the real world side of a classroom - struggling with grades and trying to get outside of the ‘another assignment’ syndrome….tough stuff, but i think stuff that every teacher pushing for portfolios struggles with. I think we engage the portfolio option in hopes of getting beyond all that- not in hopes of just creating another hoop….but it is a hard sell to get students on that side as well…
I am wondering right now about the idea of a pass or fail grade on a portfolio……remove the percentage or letter grade mark and a student either does it and does it well, or doesn’t get credit for it…not sure how this would work…I have taken university courses with such a grading system for the whole course…and it was a headshift to be sure. I think motivation changes, which can be tough….for me, there was a let down of sorts knowing that whatever effort I put into it would result in the same grade….but it also became (maybe, not sure if distance has sweetened this idea in the head of someone searching for an alt. in portfolios…) more driven by self interest….if I was interested in the project or course, then I would put more into it in terms of effort, etc.
Just a few thoughts, I will let you know if more hit the gray matter….
thanks
Comment by James Matthew — May 22, 2006 @ 9:51 am