Now institutions and practices of schooling may rearrange portfolio
practices and the settings in which they appear so as to be less
engaging, motivated, meaningful, voluntary, etc. And schooling may also
set up forms of domination and compulsion and distrust that make people go
through motions or resist or otherwise not engage in the tasks. And many
other transformations, shallow choices, inappropriacies, and other stuff
may occur so as to make any use of portfolios (or any other practice),
silly, alienating, cruel, fraudulent. But that is a matter
of understanding particular circumstances and dynamics--not a matter for
across the board judgments.
However, I would say in line with your comments and the comments of
several other people in this thread, that there is a tendency in many
school situations for many people outside the immediate learning situation
(parents, administrators, politicians, taxpayers)
to perceive themselves as having major stakes in what goes on within the
learning situations and of having uncertainty or even distrust of what is
happening within the learning circumstance, and therefore seeking some
way for them to hold the participants in those learning circumstances
accountable. Since these out-of-the-circumstance stakeholders often have
little knowledge/experience of the learning dynamics of the situation and
seek indicators of success that can transport into circumstances far from
the learning situation, they may demand forms of accountability that are
irrelevant and may even interfere with the dynamics of the learning
situation. However, because there are large patterns of ham-handedness
and inappropriate distrust, this does not mean that all forms of
educational accountability, situations requiring self-representation to
participate in activities distant from one's immediate circumstances,
evaluations and/or assessments, etc. are non-productive and harmful.
And that is what I think.
Chuck