Chapter 10

Portfolio Assessment
EA 7750
Presented by:
Dena Fisher
Emily Xu
What is Portfolio Assessment?
● More like a video than a one-time picture

● Purpose: tell a story of a learner’s growth in proficiency

over time, long-term achievement, and significant
accomplishments in a given academic area

● Based on the idea that a collection of a learner’s work

throughout the year show both final achievement and
the effort put into getting there.

● Classroom portfolios compile the learner’s best work and

include the works in progress.

● A portfolio is their way of showing what students can

really do.
Rationale For the Portfolio
● It gives a teacher the information about a
learner’s growth over time that no other
assessment tool can provide.
● Portfolio are means to communicate to parents
and other teachers the level of achievement
that a learner has reached.
● It’s a tool to assess both achievement and
growth in an authentic context.
● Portfolios are a way to motivate learners to
higher levels of efforts.
 Representativeness
Ensuring Validity of
●

To be clear at the outset about the cognitive

the Portfolio
learning skills and disposition that you want to
assess and to require a variety of products that
reflect these.

● Rubrics
There are some of the pitfalls that can
Design clear criteria for assessing both individual
undermine the validity of the portfolio. entries and the portfolio as a whole.

In general, you need to address three ● Relevance

challenges to validity:
Assembling the portfolio shouldn’t demand
representativeness, rubrics, and abilities of the learner extraneous to the ones you
want to assess.
relevance.
Developing Portfolio Assessment

Step 1: Deciding on the Purposes for a Portfolio

Classroom-level purposes that portfolio can achieve include the
following:

● Monitoring student progress or growth over time.

● Communicating what has been learned to parents.
● Passing on information to subsequent teachers.
● Evaluating how well something was taught.
● Showing off what has been accomplished.
● Assigning a course grade.
Developing Portfolio Assessment

Step 2: Identifying Cognitive Skills and Dispositions

● knowledge construction(e.g. knowledge organization)
● cognitive strategies: analysis, interpretation, planning, organizing, and revising
● procedural skills: clear communication, editing, drawing, speaking and building
● Metacognition: self-monitoring, self-reflection
● certain dispositions- or habits of mind: flexibility, adaptability, acceptance of
criticism, persistence, collaboration, and desire for mastery

Step 3: Deciding Who Will Plan the Portfolio

You, your learners and their parents!!
Step 4 Deciding Which Products to Put in the Portfolio and
How Many Samples of Each Product

Two key decisions need to be considered: An example

ownership and portfolio’s link with
The categories of the writing portfolio at a
instruction.
high school:
The best way to satisfy the needs is to
● Persuasive editorial, persuasive essay,
require certain categories of products that
narrative story, autobiography, and
match your instructional purposes and
dialogue
cognitive outcomes and to allow learners
● A cover letter
and their parents to choose the samples
within each category. Decide how many samples of each content
category to include in the portfolio
 Developing Portfolio Assessment

Step 5: Building the Portfolio Rubrics

First, list the primary traits or characteristics that you think are important for each
cognitive learning outcome.

Next, construct a rating scale that describes the range of student performance that can
occur for each trait.

Finally, design scoring criteria for the portfolio as a whole product. Some traits to
consider:

thoroughness; variety; growth or progress; overall quality; self-reflection; flexibility;

organization; appearance
Rating Form
Pg. 179-183 (Examples)
Stage 6: Developing a Procedure to Aggregate all Portfolio
Ratings

● Score for draft and final product

● Decide how to aggregate the scores
● To weight or not
 Time lines
Determining the
●
● How products are turned in
and returned (Protocols)
Logistics ●
●
Where final products are kept
Who has access to the
A few more details left portfolio
(Pages 186-188 provides a ● Plan a final conference
portfolio development checklist)