just a little more portfolio assessment

Bill Barowy (wbarowy who-is-at lesley.edu)
Fri, 26 Feb 1999 00:26:01 -0500

At 2:59 PM -0500 2/25/99, Eugene Matusov wrote:
>
>So, you believe that in principle the portfolio assessment can be done "in
>the right way."

Ouch! Suppose we put on our activity theory hats for a moment - the
artifacts that the students produce in learning activity are material
traces of that activity - some measures of what a student did, alone and
possibly with others. In creating a graph, for example, if the object of
the activity is the subject learning, with the goal of understanding a
relationship between the two things that are graphed, then the graph is the
material means through which that action is accomplished. But that is not
enough - we are interested also in what the students' have internalized
through this process. So a portfolio that is only a simple collection of
artifacts is what I would call superficial - it is a measure of performance
but does not alone indicate competance. For a richer description, we need
more. Asking the student to provide some explanation of the artifacts, for
example, selecting and relating their artifact designs to the learning
goals is one way to take the process a level deeper.

Sorry to be so elementary, but this is the first time I have translated
portfolio assessment into activity theory language. I have to keep it
simple.

Unlike normed tests, however, the student is able to bring their creativity
to bear both in the original production of artifacts, in their selection
for inclusion to the portfolio, and then in explanation of them. First the
portfolio, being a selection that the student makes of his/her work,
engages the student in making a decision about what best meets their
understanding of the learning goals. If the selection is a graph, then the
graph might be constructed in several different ways, with some ways better
than others for helping to see a mathematical relationship between two
things. Artifacts like the graph emerge out of something the student is
doing while learning, as is its selection, so as Eugene notes, the
assessment is integral to the learning process. The reflective component,
in which the student demonstrates in some way how they see the graph as
re-presenting a relationship between the two things, is also up to the
students creativity. A student may choose to express their understanding
in words, in diagrams of various kinds, pictures, photos...

If the portfolio is to provide some indication of a zoped, then the
activity unfolds differently. Perhaps the teacher may constrain the
choices the students have to demonstrate their performance, by providing or
suggesting specific re-presentational forms. Either way, portfolio
assessment in this way is not completely divorced from practice, but grows
out of it. One purpose in the design of portfolios as an assessment is
its use to mediate parent conferences, which seems a nice way to link home
and school activity.

That is not to say that many of Eugenes concerns are addressed. Although
there seems to be some ways of staying in contact with the context of
practice, and maintaining high validity by linking the construction of
portfolio artifacts to the learning goals through the actions of the
learner, we still have not addressed the other bugaboo of assessments -
reliability. I have not demonstrated in any way that portfolio assessement
can be made as reliable as, say, normed tests. Said another way, it is
difficult to make a comparison in how two students would perform under
identical conditions based upon portfolio assessments from two different
schools. I am not prepared to address reliability issues, but I do see
reasons to think hard about them.

The points Eugene makes about divorced assessments are things that I agree
with in general 1) can inhibit learning 2) situated in power negotiation
3) require care in administration

>
>Which "the community" are you taking about. I see a communal plurality with
>fuzzy boundaries torn by power struggle for domination and resources.
>Assessment is money!

Eugene is absolutely right. I'm glad he picked up on my sloppy use of the
word 'community'. There are something like 90 different definitions of the
word. Arrghh.

And thanks Peg for the URLs to your Learning Record web pages - they came
in as I am about to finish for the night. I'll check them out. And if
having a cold in the middle of a nor'easter is a measure of the winter
season, is not enough, the darn sudafed's keeping me awake.

Bill Barowy, Associate Professor
Technology in Education
Lesley College, 31 Everett Street, Cambridge, MA 02138-2790
Phone: 617-349-8168 / Fax: 617-349-8169
http://www.lesley.edu/faculty/wbarowy/Barowy.html
_______________________
"One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself
and watch yourself softly become the author of something beautiful."
[Norman Maclean in "A river runs through it."]