As all levels of education are moving to thoughts about portfolios the following quotes from others may be helpful:
"A collection of artifacts accompanied by reflective narrative
that not only help the learner to understand and extend learning, but invites
the reader of the portfolio to gain insight about learning and the learner."
- Carol Porter & Janell Cleland -
"The power of the portfolio comes from enhancement of performance
through evaluation, feedback, and self-reflection."
- Kathleen Yancy -
"All we can say for certain is that our definition of portfolios
ought to move, grow, and change as we see what portfolios can do as we
continue to apply them in practice for ourselves and for our students."
- D. Graves and B. Sunstein -
"The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating.
The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them
changes both the maker and the destination."
-J. Schaar -
"As educators we are more infants in the case of portfolios. .
. .Only in the last five years have educators latched on to the portfolio--
as an alternative to evaluating the literate work of students."
- Donald Graves -
"We are still asking questions about portfolios and experimenting
with our answers."
- Bonnie Sunstein -
Graves, Donald H. and Sunstein, Bonnie S. (1992) Portfolio Portraits, Portsmouth, N. H.: Heinemann
"We still have much to learn about the method, both as a tool for
appraising teachers; performance and as a way to encourage faculty development,
collaboration and professionalism."
- Chris Anson -
"Teaching portfolios invite teachers to tell the story of their
work and in doing so become reflective of their own practice."
- Chris Anson -
" A teaching portfolio is a professional autobiography of a teachers'
classroom life."
- Chris Anson -
Anson, Chris. (1994). Portfolios for teachers: Writing our way to reflective practice. In Black, Laurel, Daiker, Donald A. , Sommers, Jeffrey, & Stygall, Gail, (Eds.), New directions in portfolio assessments: Reflective practice, Critical theory, and large-scale scoring (pp. 185-200). Portsmouth, N.H.: Boynton/Cook Publishers, Inc.
" "A [teaching] portfolio can be defined as a container for
storing and displaying evidence of a teacher's knowledge and skills. However,
this definition is incomplete. A portfolio is more than a container --
a portfolio also represents an attitude that assessment is dynamic, and
that the richest portrayals of teaching (and student) performance are based
upon multiple sources of evidence collected over time in authentic settings.
"
- Wolf: Phi Delta Kappan -
"A portfolio is a means to "legitimize classroom experience and wed teaching and instructional inquiry."
"Teacher portfolios not only display teacher's best work but invite readers into the teacher's studio, where strategies for principled instruction are conceived and created. Portfolios provide glimpses -- and sometimes longer studied gazes of teachers at work as professionals. In a sense, the portfolio encourages teachers to think of themselves as experts whose decisions are reflected in the professional artifacts of their instruction."
"Portfolios provide rich descriptions and actual materials from teachers' instruction. Shulman suggests excellent teacher possess special expertise - pedagogy that moved specific discipline material to learnable concepts and methods. Portfolios may be a means to measure this expertise and the attempt to achieve it at a time when there is a demand for accountability in education."
"Portfolios provide rich descriptions and actual materials from teachers' instruction. Shulman suggests excellent teacher possess special expertise - pedagogy that moved specific discipline material to learnable concepts and methods. Portfolios may be a means to measure this expertise and the attempt to achieve it at a time when there is a demand for accountability in education."
"All students who complete, write about, and admire their portfolios can feel good about themselves."
White, Edward M. (1994) Portfolios as an assessment concept. In Black, Laurel, Daiker, Donald A. , Sommers, Jeffrey, & Stygall, Gail, (Eds.), New directions in portfolio assessments: Reflective practice, Critical theory, and large-scale scoring (pp. 25-39). Portsmouth, N.H.: Boynton/Cook Publishers, Inc.
"Ideally, a teaching portfolio should contain both primary and secondary documents. Primary documents are actual materials from classroom instruction, including, but by no means limited to, the following:
Secondary documents are materials that demonstrate active, critical thinking about instructional issues and materials. They might include the following:
Anson, Chris. (1994). Portfolios for teachers: Writing our way to reflective practice. In Black, Laurel, Daiker, Donald A. , Sommers, Jeffrey, & Stygall, Gail, (Eds.), New directions in portfolio assessments: Reflective practice, Critical theory, and large-scale scoring (pp. 185-200). Portsmouth, N.H.: Boynton/Cook Publishers, Inc.
"If they (portfolios) are used solely for assessment, teachers may soon look at them with feelings of fear and doubt rather than a sense of personal ownership in their work." p. 191
"Once we acknowledge. . . multiple perspectives coming from widely different disciplinary, departmental, or institutional settings, the problem of establishing universal criteria for "good teaching" takes on considerable complexity." p 189
Yancey, Kathleen Blake. (1994) Make haste slowly: Graduate teaching assistants and portfolio. In Black, Laurel, Daiker, Donald A. , Sommers, Jeffrey, & Stygall, Gail, (Eds.), New directions in portfolio assessments: Reflective practice, Critical theory, and large-scale scoring (pp. 210-218). Portsmouth, N.H.: Boynton/Cook Publishers, Inc.
"The more narrowly defined the parameters for portfolio contents, of course, the less real the selection will be." p 35
"Portfolio assessment is not a brand-name or a one-size-fits-all product. When someone says, 'I do portfolios.' the logical response is Shakespeare's old question, 'What in a name?' or maybe, 'What's in a portfolio?' The word 'portfolio; by itself, means little. It's the individual decisions that define the portfolio assessment. " p 83
Murphy, Sandra & Smith, Mary Ann. (1991) Writing portfolios: A bridge to from teaching to assessment. Marken, Ontario: Pippin Publishing Limited.
"When a portfolio increases validity by giving us a better picture of what we are trying to measure (the student's actual ability), it tends by that very act to muddy reliability -- to diminish the likelihood of agreement among reader or graders" xii
"Given the tension between validity and reliability -- the tradeoff between getting good pictures of what we are trying to test and good agreement among interpreters of those pictures -- it makes most sense to put out chips on validity and allow reliability to suffer." xiii
Belanoff, Pat & Dickson, Marcia. (1991) Portfolio: Process and Product. Portsmouth, N. H. : Boyton/Cook Publishers
"Evaluation is a tar baby. To kick at it to become stuck fast." p 161
"'Evaluation' refers to two very different activities: measurement (or grading and ranking) and commentary (or feedback) . The effect of the ambiguity in the term is to invite confusion between measurement and commentary. The first two methods I've described in this chapter for increasing trustworthiness in evaluation (breaking the performance to be evaluated down into features and using more than one observer are most helpful with measurement -- thought they can help commentary too. Movie in the mind is nothing but commentary (though . . . . it may also help accuracy in measurement. )" p231
Elbow Peter. (1986) Embracing contraries: Explorations in learning and teaching, New York: Oxford University Press.
"Portfolio assessment . . . is ideal for inviting students and teachers to be allies in the assessment process. Portfolio assessment takes a stance of an invitation : Can you show us your best work, so we can see what you know and what you can do -- not just what you do not know and cannot do?" And also an invitation to teachers: "Can you show us your students' best work -- what they can do, not just what they cannot?"
Belanoff, Pat & Dickson, Marcia. (1991) Portfolio: Process and Product. Portsmouth, N. H. : Boyton/Cook Publishers
1.) Skills such as critical thinking and problem solving surface in portfolios. 2.) Awareness of other cultures and the ability to see things from points of view different from that of mainstream culture reveal themselves in portfolios. 3. ) "The ability to question, to wonder, to invite perplexity, the ability to have dialogue with others and to connect one's discourse with that of others; the ability to reflect on one's performance or have dialogue with oneself -- all of these abilities can emerge in portfolio writing and assist instructors in general education programs." p 42
Elbow, Peter. (1994) Will the virtues of portfolios blind us to their potential dangers? In Black, Laurel, Daiker, Donald A. , Sommers, Jeffrey, & Stygall, Gail, (Eds.), New directions in portfolio assessment: Reflective practice, Critical theory, and large-scale scoring (pp. 40-55). Portsmouth, N.H.: Boynton/Cook Publishers, Inc.
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