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| EDLT 485: Assessment Portfolios |
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Increasingly in schools, students are required to keep samples of their work in some sort of display folder, called their portfolio. This folder is then used by teachers as part of the assessment process and especially for reporting a studnet's progress. The work samples are used as evidence of a student's achievement and the portfolio provides a convenient record of learning. Portfolios are commonly used in primary schools and in some subjects (Key Learning Areas) in secondary schools. They are usually persued in parent-teacher interviews and given to the student in addition to their written report card. A brief summary of the different sorts of portfolio is provided in the following paragraphs.
A portfolio is simply a collection of pieces of work which can be used to display:
- devlopment over time
- standard of profiency reached
- the rangle of skills practised and learning experiences completed.
A working portfolio will include initial examples of ideas and work, however imperfect, and is useful for assessing a student's development and improvment over time. It is also useful for a teacher to assess the effectiveness of particular instructional strategies.
A show portfolio consists of a selection of those pieces of work which most clearly demonstrate achievment of competence. The best examples of particular finished products are chosen for a show portfolio.
A documentary portfolio is used for assessment. It resembles a show portfolio in being a collection of a student's best final products but in addition it contains evidence of the processes used to develop those products. In addiotion to the correct solution of a problem in maths, for example, a student might include a discussion of the problem-solving strategies considered, the reason for choosing a particular stategy, and difficulties encountered in using the strategy, and perhaps other things which proved useful in the problem-solving process, such as discussion with peers, research, or an incubation period.
The selection of both products and processes for inclusion in the portfolio depends on the particular competence a teacher is trying to assess. The above example would be relevent for the learning outcome 'displays awareness of the problem-solving process' but not for 'understands the value of problem-solving skills'. For the latter outcome, some sort of reflective writing would (also) need to be included.
(My brief discussion of portfolios was adapted from Margaret Forster and Geoff Masters, Portfolios; Assessment Resource Kit (1996), Australian Council for Educational Research, Melbourne.
I have chosen to label your assignment tasks as 'porfolio tasks' in order to reinforce the terminology but also to distinguish them from the more usual essay or written report. The most common format for presentation of a portfolio is some sort of display folder but folders are difficult to post, so I suggest you just send you stapled pages in for assessment and arrange them into a folder, if you wish, on thier return. Please do NOT send in folders with individual pages in plastic sleeves as the process of removing and replacing each page when marking is extremely time-consuming.
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