Portfolio Assessment in Education: Methods and Best Practices

Technical Issues in Portfolio Assessment

Portfolio assessment is a technique that has become an established part of the teaching profession, helping students achieve a range of learning goals. These goals include problem solving, critical thinking, lifelong learning, and independent thinking. Further goals may encompass personal traits such as persistence, flexibility, motivation, and self-confidence. Portfolios are also useful for revealing students' work processes, enabling teachers to help students develop strategies for monitoring their own learning and recognizing when adjustments are needed.

Portfolio assessment is also valuable to the teacher as a means of communicating what matters in the classroom. Classroom values — those things the teacher considers important — should be adequately communicated to students. Through portfolio assessment, both teachers and students receive information from each other about the situation in class and about what can realistically be expected.

Assessment should be integrated with instruction to reflect current instructional theory and student goals. While portfolio assessment is a useful tool, it is also necessary to recognize the correct methods for using it if its effectiveness is to be demonstrated. In order to be effective, a portfolio should have a clearly defined purpose, which should be established before the portfolio process begins. Both teacher and student purposes should be carefully considered to ensure the assessment is a success. The validity of a student portfolio is thus determined by the clarity of purpose it embodies; a portfolio without a clear purpose is unlikely to be very useful.

One could argue that portfolio assessment is not highly reliable, since much of it depends on human factors such as teacher bias. This also impacts validity and reliability. However, if the clear purpose established at the outset is consistently kept in mind, this problem should be minimized.

A key advantage of portfolio assessment is its focus on collaborative learning. The teacher and student — and in some cases different teachers working with the same student — collaborate to collect material produced by the student. This collaborative process helps all parties make the best educational decisions for the student in question.

However, portfolios must be handled very carefully. A portfolio that is not judged correctly can have detrimental effects, potentially producing worse outcomes than fixed-choice tests. It is therefore very important to interpret portfolios accurately.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Portfolio systems must also be designed correctly in order to produce sound conclusions. As performance assessment tools, portfolios carry the risk that the work collected may not truly be representative of what the student knows and can do. As noted above, the evaluator may also be biased and unable to make a fully accurate assessment. Representativeness is a central concern: portfolios must cover all aspects of what is being measured. A variety of tasks and assessments is therefore advisable to ensure that all relevant areas are addressed in the information gathered about the student.

The primary advantage associated with portfolio assessment is that it helps students take responsibility for their own learning, with teachers and students working collaboratively in facing that responsibility. Disadvantages may include the considerable amount of careful planning needed to ensure portfolio validity. Nevertheless, when implemented correctly, portfolio assessment is a highly useful device.

The first important role a student plays in portfolio selection is self-reflection. The student is expected to align with the portfolio's established purpose by reflecting on which work is best suited for inclusion. The teacher can collaborate in this process. The degree of student participation will depend upon the student's maturity; if a student is not yet at a stage where self-reflection is viable, the teacher will play a larger role. Self-reflection can take the form of a written letter or an oral report.

The purpose of the portfolio, as discussed above, will also determine its nature. Teachers may establish guidelines for gathering material, ranging from highly structured requirements to more open-ended ones that allow for student interpretation. Some students respond better to a structured approach, while others find an open approach overwhelming. The maturity level and personality of students should be taken into account when making this determination.

Student Learning and Assessment Portfolios

When portfolios are assembled correctly, they can encourage skills that are useful not only for future study but also for the workplace and for life in general. Critical thinking, problem solving, and independent thinking are all fostered through this process.

Initially, it may be advisable for a teacher to begin the process of assembling a student's work into a portfolio, particularly when students are new to the process. However, as students become more familiar with it, they should be encouraged to take over this process on their own. This builds responsibility without requiring supervision for every action. It is at this point that portfolio assessment becomes truly valuable. Students need to be taught criteria and self-reflection as techniques for choosing what they wish to include in their portfolios, empowering them to make informed decisions about their own learning.

The assessment process connected to the portfolio can be complex. Because the portfolio is inherently flexible, the assessment process should be equally flexible. The portfolio can, for example, be thought of as a story — a narrative of a student's work and progress that gives the teacher a sense of the student's needs and areas for future attention. Self-reflection, self-selection, and criteria all play a role in the justification and rationale underlying the conclusions reached.

A composite portfolio may be useful when assessing the performance and development of a group of students. Rather than focusing on a single student, the work of several students is collected and assessed together. Information such as the general impact of a program or school on a group of students can be examined in this way. The storytelling principle applies here as well: in order to demonstrate a group's efforts, progress, and achievement, the information in a composite portfolio must still be subjected to selection criteria, criteria for judging merit, and evidence of self-reflection.

This approach to assessment is closely related to reporting. The "story" told by the portfolio serves as the report on each student's work. A record of such reports can be maintained, documenting findings and assessments to guide future action. The role of grading in portfolio assessment depends on what is entered into the portfolio. Work submitted during class can be assessed by grading and then incorporated into the storytelling process.