Let me go through your message and reply to your thoughtful points.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bill Barowy [mailto:wbarowy@lesley.edu]
> Sent: Thursday, February 25, 1999 9:40 AM
> To: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: RE: portfolio assessment
>
>
> Eugene,
>
> I respectfully disagree about the usefulness of portfolio
> assessment. I do
> have concerns with portfolio assessment being used superficially, but that
> it another topic for discussion.
So, you believe that in principle the portfolio assessment can be done "in
the right way." I doubt about that. Saying that, I would like to add that
so far portfolio assessment is the best that I know out of types of
assessment divorced from the practice. Moreover, I agree with Bill that it
can be improved. However, it can't avoid completely pitfalls inherently
embedded in assessment divorced from the practice and immediacy of the
educational contexts. Taking into consideration institutionally distributed
nature of formal education, I also do not think that we can avoid the use of
learning assessments divorced from the practice.
My "modest" proposal is to acknowledge that:
1) these types of assessment do not have any inherent link to
learning-guiding processes and have actual and potential damage inhibiting
and injuring learning (see recent work of Hugh Mehan and Ray McDermott for
more discussion of the injuries).
2) these types of assessments are situated in the (power) negotiation among
communities-stakeholders that are not involved in working with students in
the formal educational settings. As such, divorced assessments have dynamic
properties embedded in the processes of the stakeholders' communication and
power struggle.
3) we need to develop protective institutional actions to shield learning
and guidance within the formal educational setting from harmful influence of
the divorced assessments.
>I think the development of children is
> something more than just the teacher and parents are concerned with -
> recognizing that education, as a means of cultural transmission, is highly
> political in our society with the result that everybody in the
> community is
> a stakeholder in what a child learns.
I agree and I would include the child/student him/herself and the main
stakeholder. However, is it interesting that informal education often does
not have its stakeholders expect immediate participants?!
>Unfortunately, partially because
> education is highly political, and partially because there is such great
> heterogeneity in opinion about what it is to learn and to
> develop, we don't
> have anything near consensus, even among individuals informed by research,
> about what it is a student is or should be learning.
I'm, on the contrary, happy that there is no a consensus. I think that one
of the problems that we have too much "consensus" (or monopoly?). That is
why, I think, traditional educational institutions are so stable. I even
don't think that consensus should be a goal. I don't trust neither in
"their" consensus nor in "my" consensus (i.e., when everyone would agree
with my vision of education). I'm sure that if my vision gets unchallenged
power it will lead to another disaster. I don't believe in "visions" as
simple blueprints for actions but rather in a dialogue of them.
>
> I agree in principle that "authentic" assessment of learning is that which
> is embedded
> in the practice itself, but in a manner of speaking, assessment
> also cannot
> be separated from the values of the community in which learning takes
> place.
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!
>Unfortunately, not every stakeholder in a childs
> development can be
> there to see it happening, and even if they were, they probably would not
> agree about what they observed.
I can't agree more.
>So 'following kids around' as
> Latour might
> suggest, is not even a partial solution - it is completely impractical.
I agree.
> I
> would modify your statement 2.2 slightly "To have any meaningful
> portfolio,
> it should become a means of communication among educational stakeholders
> [as well as ] a tool of "authentic" learning assessment.",
> recognizing that
> each tool has weaknesses as well as strengths.
To say that every measurement has its own limitation was not my point at
all. I hope I have clarified it by now.
What do you think?
Take care,
Eugene
>
> Mediation to the rescue? My opinion is that there must be a great deal of
> negotiation in a community about these matters, with some measures that
> people can share and discuss. What are our options? Well, standardized
> testing does give some measure of how a child is doing, in some limited
> context, with respect to a greater population. In Massachusetts we are
> presently dealing with our new state testing and there is great debate
> about the validity of the tests as well as the results. What portfolio
> assessement does afford is a better measure of the richness of childrens'
> performance, from which follows (although i have yet to see evidence)
> greater validity, but validity is something that there needs to be some
> agreement on in a community.
>
> One tradeoff is ecological, in the sense of the 'economy of instruction'.
> The production of assessment artifacts takes time, as does its evaluation.
> Portfolio assessement, being richer, and especially without the efforts of
> the psychometric Morlocks, takes quite a bit more time and effort to
> accomplish. It is always asked "Who is going to do it?". But it also
> means that assessment has to be done more locally, that assessment
> expertise has to be distributed more widely than just in the testing
> warrens, and the necessary communication between the stakeholders opens up
> zopeds everywhere. Just writing about it gives me a thrill! OK, well,
> backing off from Utopian schemes, there are some advantages that portfolio
> assessment offers over normed tests, and over immediate/direct performance
> assessement. I'm especially interested in it as it is an other form of
> mediated activity.
>
> That's what I think. What is your response?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 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."]
>