LESSON 7

Lesson Title Nature of Portfolio Assessment

Let’s Hit These

 At the end of this lesson, students be able to plan portfolio assessment tools
of a given subject or course.

Let’s Read

The practice of developing portfolio has been widely used in a number of fields
for many years such as in architecture, advertising, art, and photography. This
includes the person's best work. In the field of education, portfolio has become widely
used in the basic and tertiary level, which is utilized as one of the many
procedures for formally assessing the students. It has become very useful in
developing creativity and talents of the students, allowing them to support the
claim that have achieved learning outcomes.
In the previous chapters, we have presented and described a variety of
assessment techniques and shown you how these are being used in the classroom
setting. A key foundational consideration for this chapter is how portfolio helps the
learners to analyze and reflect about their growth as an educated individual.
Moreover, this chapter helps you achieve skills related to the planning and
development of student portfolio

Lesson 7.1 PURPOSE OF PORTFOLIO

Portfolio is a systematic process and purposeful collection of student work to

document the student learning progress, efforts, and achievement towards the
attainment of learning outcomes. It is a systematic process that follows a well-
organized collection of products of student work. There are guidelines which are given
to be satisfied by the students for the purpose of continuous evaluation and reflection on
their work. Moreover, portfolio has a clear reason why students' work must be
presented and serves its purpose as well.
It is a purposeful, organized, collection of evidence that demonstrates a
person's knowledge, skills, abilities, or disposition. The term portfolio implies that from
a larger set of evidence or artifact, a portable subset of these artifacts is collected
and displayed to another because they tell a specific story.
Moreover, Borich and Kubiszyn (2003) defined portfolio as a planned
collection of learner achievement that documents what a student has accomplished
and the steps takes to get there. The collection represents a collaborative effort
among teacher and learner, to decide on portfolio purpose, content, and
evaluation criteria.
 This has become a turning point of using portfolio as an alternative
assessment tool other than traditional testing. Presented on the next page are the
differences in Assessment Outcomes between portfolios and standard testing
practices.

Differences in Assessment Outcomes Between Portfolios

And Standardized Testing Practices

Portfolio Testing
Represents the range of reading and Assesses students across a limited
writing students are engaged in range of reading and writing
assignments which may not match
what students do
Engages students in assessing their Mechanically scored or scored by
progress and/or accomplishments and teachers who have little input
establishing ongoing learning goals
Measures each student's achievement Assesses all students on the same
while allowing for individual differences dimension
between students Represents a
collaborative approach Assessment process is not
to assessment collaborative
Has a goal of student self-assessment Student assessment is not a goal
Addresses improvement, effort, and Addresses achievement only
achievement
Links assessment and teaching to Separates learning, testing, and
learning teaching

Portfolios contain relevant items from many different sources such as

composition of students in the form of essay, reports, stories; presentation such as
observations research investigation, and projects; narrative and anecdotal
records; rating scales, rubrics, self-reflection and checklists; visual arts such as
portfolio, drawings, paintings; performances as product, group work; and
processes such as show-your work problems, stages of writing a poem or a song.
As utilized in the classroom setting, portfolios have the same basic purpose and
principle to collect pieces of students' performances or products that show
accomplishment or improvement overtime. These may be used depending on the
purposes and foci of the assessment to be measured. Thus, teachers should be
guided with the specific purposes in the process of collection.

 Why Use Portfolio

Portfolios can be used for many purposes. The utilization of portfolio
should be identified before the collection of the work.

1. Portfolios give students the opportunity to direct their own

learning. Students can:
a. Document their efforts, achievements, development, and
growth in knowledge, skills, expressions, and attitudes.
 b. Use a variety of learning styles, modalities, and
intelligences.
c. Assess their own learning and decide which items best
represent their achievement and growth.
d. Set their future learning goals.
e. With these, portfolios make the students as part of the
assessment process by requiring them to reflect and
analyze their own work.

2. Portfolios can be used to determine students' level of

achievement. Portfolios allow students to present a holistic view of
their academic achievements, skills, and outcomes. Portfolios allow
students to present their work over a period of time and show
their progress in achieving learning outcomes.

3. Portfolios can be used to understand how students think,

reason, organize, investigate, and communicate. Portfolios can
provide insight into students' reasoning and intellectual
competencies by documenting students' progression of thought and
work in achieving their learning goals.

4. Portfolios can be used to communicate student efforts,

progress toward accomplishing learning goals, and
accomplishments. Portfolios allow students to present their work as
a whole in relation to standards and criteria to peers, teachers,
parents, college admission officers, and so forth.

5. Portfolios can be used to evaluate and improve curriculum

and instruction. Portfolios provide a broad view on the
effectiveness of the curriculum and instruction thereby allowing
teachers to improve and enhance their instructional methods and
curriculum materials.

Basically, one big contribution of portfolio is to give the students the

chance to reflect and revisit on their performances overtime. Life in school is an
on-going process of submitting paper works, productions, and
performances. Each day, students experience a variety of school tasks which
measure the different learners' cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains.
Thus, collecting the students' works retain all these experiences for
subsequent reflection and analysis.

 Characteristics
Learning outcomes define what to include and how to utilize portfolio.
There should be a clear reason of what to include and how portfolio is to be
utilized. Purposes and targets must be constructively aligned to the teaching
and learning activities and assessment as well. Below illustrates an example of
portfolio that reflects student achievement in a particular subject area.
 Math Portfolio: Points of Focus
Knowing Basic Computation
Computations
Procedure
Developing and executing
Problem Solving strategies
Reading and writing in
Mathematical Communication
mathematics
Having healthy attitudes toward
Mathematical Dispositions mathematics
Using computers and graphing
Technology calculators
Relating mathematics to other
Connections subjects
Working cooperatively with others to
Teamwork learn math
Growth over time Learning from mistakes

There should be a systematic and organized collection of the students'

work. Gathering of pieces of work should make a sample of the student
works and not as exhaustive collection. In basic education, portfolio is being
collected at the end of the quarter for teacher's assessment and evaluation.
Portfolios typically identify students' strengths. These provide
students with opportunity to show what they can do. Students are
encouraged to submit examples of their best work. A student's deficiencies are
addressed in terms of new goals for the students rather than
inadequacies in current performance. These also encourage students to
become reflective learners and to develop skills in evaluating the strengths and
weaknesses of their work.
Portfolio assessment actively involves students in evaluation process.
Student-reflection and self-evaluation develop students' awareness in their own
progress and performance in the classroom. With this, there should be pre-
established guidelines for what to be included and appropriate criteria for
evaluating students' product.
Lastly, portfolio assessment facilitates communication of student's
achievement to others. This provides an opportunity to have a dialogue from
their teacher and with classmates and develop as well the social skills of the
students. The students can also utilize portfolio to show others what has been
achieved. It is encouraged to conduct portfolio conferences between the
students and teachers. With this, portfolio can provide teachers and students
with opportunities to collaborate and reflect on student progress.
Lesson 7.2 TYPES OF PORFOLIO

There are different types of portfolios you will encounter on assessing the
performance approach in your classroom. This is depending on the purpose and context
of the portfolio which are aligned to the learning competencies of the course of
study. The following are the emerging types of portfolio used in the teaching and
learning assessment.

 Showcase Portfolio. This shows the best of the students' best work. This
type of portfolio is based on the students' personal criteria rather than the
criteria of their teacher. Students select their best work and reflect
thoughtfully on its quality. This also shows the uniqueness of students' work that
individual profiles emerge. Stiggins (2007) described this portfolio as celebration
portfolios and contends that this type of portfolio is especially appropriate for
early ages. Mcmillan (2007) pointed out that this portfolio encourages self-
reflection and self-evaluation, but makes scoring more difficult and time
consuming because of the unique structure and content of each portfolio.

 Documentation Portfolio. This portfolio displays changes and

accomplishments related to academic performance over time. The
assembled work sample is to provide evidence about the student growth
which also provides meaningful opportunities for self-evaluation of the
students. As a scrapbook of information, this may include observations,
checklist and rating scales and selections by both the teachers and students.
Interactive assessment between the teacher and students provides an
opportunity to communicate the strengths and needed improvements which also
clarifies the accomplishment of students through student and teacher
conference.

 Process Portfolio. This shows the steps and/or the results of a completed
project or task as the primary goal of this portfolio. This is very useful
because the final product does not always show the skills and knowledge
that the student used in an effort to complete the project. By asking students to
provide evidence of their work along the way, teachers can see both
strengths and weaknesses in the thinking process and the skills students
used.

 Product Portfolio. The product portfolio is similar to the process portfolio except
that its focus is on the end product rather than on the process in which the
product was developed. In this type of portfolio, there is a little or no
information about the steps that was used in crafting the product. On the
other hand, this type of portfolio contains the final product as well as detailed
explanations of each part of the final product.
 Standard-Based Portfolio. This collects evidence that links student
achievement to particular learning standards. It focuses on specific
standards that are predetermined by the teacher and discussed to the
students at the start of the school year. Students will gather evidence of
accomplishments for each of the standards and present these output clusters that
relate to the standards given.
Lesson 7.3 ELEMENTS OF PORTFOLIO

The contents of portfolio may be determined by the students who decide

what to include in their portfolio; the cooperative learning group, their classmates who
can recommend what to include in the portfolio; and the teacher, school or the division
who can specify work samples and components to be included in the portfolio, it
could be an essay or photographs and other documents which strengthen the
students' learning outcomes. Illustrated below is an example of the best works portfolio
in the different field of studies.

The Best Works Portfolio

Subject Area Individual Student Cooperative Group
Science The best solution to a scientific The best scientific
problem posed by the experiment conducted,
instructor, review of a scientific project completed
article, work conducted, laboratory.
original hypothesis formulated,
position paper on a scientific
issue, log or journal entry from a
long-term experiment.
Mathematics The best solution to a problem The best project
posed by the instructor, completed, small
description of how to solve business planned and
mathematical problem, review of initiated.
a mathematics article,
biography of mathematician,
original mathematics theory
developed, photo/ diagram/
concept map of mathematical
idea investigated.
Language Arts The best compositions in a variety The best dramatic
of styles-expository production, video project,
humor/satire, creative (poetry, TV broadcast, newspaper,
drama, short story), journalistic advertising display.
(reporting, editorial columnist,
reviewer) and advertising
copy. The best community
Social Studies The best historical research survey, paper resulting
paper, opinion essay on from academic
historical issue, commentary on controversy, oral history
current event, original compilation,
historical theory, review of a multidimensional analysis
historical biography, account of of historical event, press
academic controversy corps interview with
participated in. historical figure
The best creative
products such as
Fine Arts The best creative products
such as drawings, paintings
 sculptures, pottery, poems murals, plays written and
dramatic performance performed, inventions
thought of and built

But generally, portfolio has its distinct elements which are expected and
included from the outputs of the students, viz:

1. Cover Sheet. This creatively includes the nature of the student's (or
group's) work and could be in a form of a letter. It also reflects the
progress of the learners as it summarizes the evidence of student's
learning and progress. The table below shows a sample portfolio cover sheet.

FINAL PORFOLIO
Name/Group: Date:
Grade/Year Level: Section:
Subject/Course:
Purpose:
Type of Portfolio:

Entries Scores Comments/Suggestions

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Total Grade

Recommendations:

Suggested Future Goals:

Final Portfolio Grade: Evaluator:

2. Table of contents. This includes the title of each work sample and its
page number.
3. Work samples. These are entries which are to be included in the
portfolio which can be categorized as core (samples which are needed to
include) and optional (students preference on what to include). The core
are the basic elements required for each students and serves as basis for
decision in assessing the student's work. On the other hand, the optional
entries allow the folder to represent creativity and uniqueness
 of each student. In the introduction of the work samples, it is a must to
include the rationale, explaining what work samples are included, why each
one is significant, and how they all fit together in a holistic view of the
student's (or group's work).
4. Dates of all sample works to facilitate evidence of growth overtime.
5. Drafts of the written products, or even the seminal attempts in writing
the write ups for the portfolio and the revised version based on the
corrected versions.
6. Self-assessment. This is written by the student or the group members
which could be in terms of self- reflection and analysis or a form of
insights. Teacher may include questions which can facilitate the
assessment of the students.
7. Future goals. This is based on the student's (or group's) current
achievements, interests, and progress.
8. Other's comments and assessments. This may came from the teacher,
cooperative learning groups, and other interested parties such as the
parents.
Activity No. 7

A. Discuss the concepts of the nature of portfolio assessment in the following

situations.

1. After graduation, you plan to apply for a teaching position in a reputable

school and one of the requirements is for you to construct a teaching
portfolio that will show your qualifications for the position being applied for.
What evidence (performance or product) will you include in your
portfolio? Explain you answer.

2. During the PTA meeting, Mrs. Geronimo, mother of your student John,
happens to see and examine the portfolio of her son and daughter, Wena,
from another class. After spending almost 40 minutes going through the
portfolio of her son and skimming the portfolio of her daughter, Mrs.
Geronimo approached you and said, "My daughter's portfolio is very
impressive and outstanding. To be honest, Jonh's portfolio is less
polished but I think he included everything in your class, the products and
performances. Why is there a difference in final rating?" How would you
respond to Mrs. Geronimo's inquiry?

3. You are asked to evaluate the last portfolio you have submitted, how will you
process it? Do you think your portfolio satisfies its purpose, use, and
characteristics? Discuss your answer.