> -----Original Message-----
> From: Charles Nelson [mailto:c.nelson@mail.utexas.edu]
> Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 1999 6:32 PM
> To: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: portfolio assessment
>
>
> Eugene,
>
> Can you tell us more about why you're against portfolio assessment?
>
> Charles Nelson
> c.nelson who-is-at mail.utexas.edu
>
There are several reasons that I don't like any form of predefined
assessment in general and portfolio in specific. First, my general reasons:
1) I think the only "authentic" assessment of learning is that is embedded
in the practice itself and can't be separated from the participants, events,
and contexts. When people learn how to speak, to ride a bicycle, to become
lovers, to tease others, to report on neighbors to the authorities (you name
it :-) they do not need any "assessment" of their learning. When a child
learns to read at home, parents know the progress by simply perceiving how
the child participates in the reading activities: whether s/he asks to read,
enjoys reading, tries to read him/herself, ask to go to the library, talks
about the books, tells stories, and so on.
2) Any form of inscribing so-called "learning progress" can be (potentially?
no, actually!) very harmful for the learners by focusing (i.e., constructing
the focus) on learner's mistakes, monopolizing the definition of learning
(and non-learning), imposing learning agendas, creating disabilities.
3) The need for assessment separated from the activities themselves is not
inherent in learning (as we saw) but in a specific form of negations of
communities involved in formal education. I have a strong claim that any
assessment divorced from the activity itself (from its flow) is harmful for
the learners (newcomers) on way or another (or at least, so far I couldn't
find any counter example or argument). I can relax my claim a bit if we
stop searching for "the authentic assessment" (see below).
4) Current formal education represents a rather unique situation of learning
when many people- and communities- stakeholders are not directly
present/involved in the learning/guiding processes with the students.
People who provide kids (i.e., parents), people who control resources (state
and federal government, districts, boards, taxpayers, business, politicians,
colleges) are not in the classroom themselves.
5) Assessments divorced from the activities are nothing more than "boundary
objects" of power struggle between education stakeholder communities. I my
view, there are mainly two players known: government and businesses.
Parents, college professors, taxpayers are small fish. Currently government
has much-much more power of control (like a diffuse monopoly) than anybody
else but businesses in US are getting more and more now (there is a momentum
building). The issue of assessment is the issue of getting resources (cf.
current discourses on accountability and quality). The teacher is viewed as
a conductor (i.e., slave) of the most powerful stakeholders. It is
difficult for a slave to teach kids to be free (but, of course, not
impossible).
6) It will be much better for learners if all educational stakeholders will
realize that their thrust for assessment divorced from the practice and
learning processes is a power and negotiation tool that is NOT inherently
rooted in the learning processes.
7) If this realization happens, people may start thinking how to protect
learners and learning processes from the assessment so needed by the
stakeholder communities of practices for their own negotiations. Also they
may start expecting that the divorced assessment is a very dynamic object
reflecting a current distribution of power and a state of negotiation among
them (rather than the "authentic assessment" -- if you want real
authenticity, engage with real people, i.e., students).
As to why I don't like portfolio assessment is specific:
1) It seems to be another way of exploitation of teachers by colonization of
their time. It also another way to make teachers guilty.
2) To have any meaningful portfolio, it should become a means of
communication among educational stakeholders rather than a tool of
"authentic" learning assessment.
3) I believe that it is communication creates its tools rather than tools
create communication. I was really impressed by Yrjo Engstrom's work on
medical records (i.e., "portfolio assessment of patents' disease") in
Finland. He showed very convincingly that without institutional support of
communication among doctors, medical records are not very useful (if not
harmful).
What do you think?
Eugene