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. 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. 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 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. 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. So 'following kids around' as Latour might
suggest, is not even a partial solution - it is completely impractical. 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.
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."]