Portfolio Assessment in Education

Definition and Purpose of a Portfolio

• A portfolio is a purposeful collection of student work that exhibits efforts, progress, and achievements in one or more areas.
• It requires student participation in selecting contents, criteria for selection, and criteria for judging merit, as well as evidence of student self-reflection.

Characteristics of a Portfolio

• A portfolio is a systematic and organized collection of evidence used to monitor growth of a student's knowledge, skills, and attitudes in a specific subject area.
• It is a record of learning that focuses on the student's work and reflection on that work.
• Material is collected through a collaborative effort between the student and staff members and is indicative of progress toward essential outcomes.

Benefits of Portfolios

• Can provide both formative and summative opportunities for monitoring progress.
• Communicates concrete information about what is expected of students in terms of content and quality of performance.
• Allows students to document aspects of learning that do not show up well in traditional assessments.
• Useful to showcase periodic or end-of-year accomplishments of students.
• Facilitates communication between teachers and parents regarding their child's achievement and progress.
• Can be used to facilitate national competency testing and grant high school credit.

Advantages of Portfolios

• Serves as a cross-section lens, providing a basis for future analysis and planning.
• Serves as a concrete vehicle for communication, providing on-going communication or exchanges of information.
• Offers the possibility of assessing the more complex and important aspects of a learning area or subject matter.
• Covers a broad scope of knowledge and information from many different people involved in the assessment of student's learning and achievement.

Disadvantages of Portfolios

• May be seen as less reliable or fair compared to quantitative evaluations such as test scores.
• Developing individualized criteria can be difficult or unfamiliar at first.
• If goals and criteria aren't clear, the portfolio can be just a miscellaneous collection of artifacts that do not show patterns of growth and achievement.
• Data from portfolio assessments can be difficult to analyze or aggregate to show change.

Principles of Portfolios

• Content principle: portfolios should reflect the subject matter that is important for students to learn.
• Learning principle: portfolios should enable students to become active and thoughtful learners.
• Equity principle: portfolios should allow students to demonstrate their learning styles and multiple intelligences.

Types of Portfolios

• Working portfolio (teacher-student portfolio): contains work in progress and finished samples of work to reflect on process by students and teachers.
• Showcase portfolio (best works portfolio or display portfolio): focuses on the student's best and most creative work, exhibiting the best performance of the student.
• Progress portfolio (teacher alternative assessment portfolio): contains examples of students' work with the same objectives and criteria as the teacher's assessment.