Students Perceptions of the Implementation of Portfolio Assessment in the Language Classroom

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Students Perceptions of the Implementation of
Portfolio Assessment in the Language Classroom

• Mr. Ricky Lam, Rosaryhill School / City
  University of Hong Kong

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What is portfolio?

• According to Prof Liz Hamp-Lyons,
• What portfolios do best is to create a way to
  keep a record of what students are doing, what
  their learning is, how well their learning is
  She went on and further elaborated, portfolio
  is a way to gather more information, therefore,
  richer information
• (Adapted from http//web.hku.hk/s
  bapro/forum.html)

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Whose records? Whose information?

• Portfolio is a running record of students
  writing performance over time.
• It belongs to students, so they have ownership.
• It is also the living proof to show students
  themselves how much they have done or they
  havent done.
• Who would benefit from this richer information?

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Is portfolio a test?

• If it were a test,
• how would teachers grade it?
• how many pieces of writing would students put
  into it?
• how much and to what extent students would get
  teachers feedback?
• how would the assessment criteria be constructed?
• how much time would students spend on doing it?
• how would the issues of fairness be addressed?

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Portfolio as an alternative assessment

• Portfolio is NOT a test, but a collection of
  students work. It becomes an authentic
  assessment tool in classroom level only when
  educators measured its content against prescribed
  criteria to make judgments on how well students
  perform over a period of time.
• Portfolio assessment could be used formatively to
  enhance assessment for learning in the classroom.
  
• (Herman, J., Gearhart, M. Aschbacher, P, 1996)

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1. Purpose of this classroom-based study

• To understand how learning process can be
  integrated into alternative assessment
• To develop in-depth perspectives into the
  correspondence between the implementation of
  portfolio assessment in the classroom level and
  its impact on students perceptions of the
  development of their writing performance

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2. Theoretical Framework

• Learning theories (Qualitative views of learning)
• Constructivism is the mainstay of the whole
  notion of portfolio assessment.
• Vygotsky thinks knowledge is constructed based
  on social interactions and experience (Chu,
  20026).
• Assessment model
• There is a shift from de-contextualized
  psychometrics high-stake tests to highly
  contextualized authentic / performance assessment
  which emphasizes its developmental nature so that
  teachers can help students to improve their
  learning over time.

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3. Traditional writing assessment

• The traditional writing assessment aims at
  judging students performance at one shot and the
  holistic scores given to the students writing
  samples are mainly for ranking and placements
  purposes, so it is called summative assessment
  (Webb, 2002).

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4. Alternative writing assessment

• According to Camp (1993), students performances
  should happen in flexible and prolonged time
  frames and learning opportunities such as
  collaboration with peers, teachers instructions
  and recurring peer feedback should be embedded in
  the performance environment in which assessment
  can also take place at the same time.

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5. Why portfolio assessment?

• The Curriculum Development Council encouraged the
  shift of assessment practices from Assessment of
  Learning to Assessment for Learning (CDC,
  2002).
• Portfolio assessment provides students with ample
  information for their self-evaluation as well as
  self-improvement because self-assessment is one
  of the most important components in portfolio
  (Hewitt, 1995, cited in Chu, 2002 21).
• Many teachers adopt portfolio as an assessment
  tool due to the fact that it is part of the
  instruction and they find it unobtrusive to use
  it in their own classroom (Herman, 1993).

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6. What are the constraints of portfolio
assessment?

• Comparing with psychometric standardized
  assessments such as multiple choice tests, they
  are more reliable than the writing samples
  collected in portfolios (Grabe, 1998 Epstein,
  2000).
• Parents can often be skeptical about measurements
  other than grades and test scores (Epstein, 2000
  2).
• Portfolio assessment is unable to integrate into
  local school cultures which focus on high stake
  tests to compare students ability only (Epstein,
  20002).

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7. Is there a way out?

• Based upon portfolios resistance to
  standardization (Huot Williamson, 1997 Moss,
  1994, cited in Song, 2002), they have the
  potential for greater construct validity for
  school-based writing assessment at all levels of
  education (Weigle, 2002 202).
• The validity of single writing tests is not as
  high as that of portfolio assessment because the
  traditional writing tests do not show how the
  student responds to different circumstances in
  real writing environment (Callahan, 1995).

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8. Complementary or Conflicting

• Portfolio scores were not sufficiently reliable
  to be used in a high stakes assessment (the
  independent report prepared for the Kentucky
  Institute for Educational Research, 1995)
• According to Hamp-Lyons and Condon (1993),
  portfolio assessment can benefit both individual
  educational institutions and students per se, it
  may not be a better assessment tool than a timed
  writing holistically scored in terms of
  reliability (p. 189, cited in Grabe, 1998).

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9. Enhancing reliability of portfolio assessment

• Markers or teachers should be intensively trained
  before actual reading and marking of the
  portfolios (Song, 2002). The training can be
  served as professional development in teachers
  life-long career.
• The number of writing samples in a portfolio
  should be reduced so that a relative higher
  reliability of portfolio assessment can be
  maintained, especially in the high stake tests
  (Weigle, 2002).

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10 Context of the study

• A local middle range CMI secondary school
• A S.4 class of 40 students
• Science stream students
• S.4A is an EMI class. Except P.E., R.S. and
  Chinese, all subjects are taught in English.
• The data was collected in the second term of the
  school year 2004 2005.

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11. Research design

• This study is a classroom-based action research.
  Intervention was introduced in the middle of the
  second term.
• Why action research?
• Enhancing professional development (Kemmis, 1997)
• Aligning everyday practice with scholastic
  theories (McTaggart, 1982)
• Facilitating pedagogy (McTaggart, 1982)
• Bringing change and improvement at the local
  level (Cohen and Manion, 2000)

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12. The writing workshops

• Before data collection, I ran two writing
  workshops to familiarize students with process
  approach to L2 writing.
• Various topics and genres of writing were
  introduced to students. They were free to choose
  their topics and genres to write about and kept
  it in their portfolios.
• Writing processes like writing multiple drafts,
  making notes (both structured and unstructured
  notes) and mind-mapping were taught.
• The other workshop aimed at teaching students how
  to write sentences and build up coherent
  paragraphs.

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13. Writing lessons

• Plenty of time was devoted to drafting the essays
  during the lessons.
• First draft ? self-evaluation ? peer feedback ?
  T-S conferencing ? editing ? T revising the first
  draft
• Second draft ? self-evaluation ? peer feedback ?
  editing
• Preparing the final draft

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14. Follow-up

• Students were asked to write the reflective
  essays to reflect upon their own learning such as
  what they have learned in the writing lessons.
• Then, Ss prepared the oral presentation.
• Submission of portfolio as usual written
  assignment.

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15. Data from the interviews and questionnaires

• After analyzing the data, there are several
  obvious changes of students perceptions after
  the implementation of portfolio assessment.
• 1. Confidence (20 ? 70) still not confident
  in doing peer assessment
• 2. Motivation (80)
• 3. English proficiency (Ss thought that portfolio
  can help them learn more English writing but
  not help them improve English proficiency
  greatly)

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16. Data from the interviews and questionnaires

• 4. Language awareness Ss were more conscious of
  their own mistakes because their classmates and
  teacher gave them continuous feedback in the
  writing process.
• 5. Process writing Ss thought they could learn
  better because of cooperative learning. They also
  regarded the writing workshops as scaffolding for
  their learning.

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17. Evidence

• 1. Confidence
• When I asked the students how much they thought
  portfolio assessment could enhance their
  confidence in using or writing English during the
  focused group interview, S1 and S7 said that the
  writing process and constant practice in
  portfolio assessment made them more confident .
  In the same vein, according to the data of
  teachers interview, there is no doubt that
  portfolio assessment can enhance students
  confidence and motivation in their learning.

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18. Evidence

• 2. Motivation
• When I asked the students how much they thought
  portfolio assessment could make them motivated in
  writing English during the focused group
  interview, they answered me that they had more
  motivation to write English because of abundant
  time and cooperative learning. It is clear that
  I have more motivation when I write for the
  portfolio because I have more time to work on my
  essays. She further said that I can also
  discuss my essays with my peers or teachers.

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19. Evidence

• 3. Language proficiency
• I asked the students if they believed portfolio
  assessment could help them enhance their language
  proficiency, they responded that their writing
  was better organized than before and they could
  learn how to write better with their peers and
  teachers feedback. S2 expressed that Im sure I
  can learn some new sentence structures and
  vocabulary from my classmates and S4 responded
  that we learnt note-taking and mind-mapping so
  that we can write our essays more structurally.
  However, Ms. White, one of our key informants,
  has a big question on whether portfolio
  assessment can enhance students language
  proficiency.

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20. Evidence

• 4. Language awareness
• S1 said that our language awareness will be
  increased as we repeat writing the drafts. In
  the same vein, S4 expressed that I think my
  language awareness can be sharpened because when
  I was given feedback and comments by my partner,
  I would look back at my own mistakes in my essay
  and remember them. The students also expressed
  that writing multiple drafts helps students to
  reduce their mistakes and both students and
  teachers feedback enhance students language
  awareness.

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21. Evidence

• 5. Integration of portfolio assessments as a
  part of high-stake tests
• On the whole, the students in the Class 4A are in
  favor of the implementation of portfolio
  assessment in the classroom level despite the
  fact that they are skeptical if they can show
  their real writing ability in this kind of
  formative assessment. Although the students
  wonder the fairness of their written work being
  assessed over time, they still have strong belief
  that they are able to learn more about English
  writing through portfolio assessment.

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22. Evidence

• 5. Integration of portfolio assessments as a part
  of high-stake tests
• When I asked the students if they thought
  portfolio assessment was accountable or reliable
  to be used in the high-stake tests such as HKCE,
  their reaction was mixed. Instead, their
  arguments were that the washback effect of
  portfolio assessment would make students work
  harder and more serious towards their written
  work. The idea of washback effect is in line with
  what the teachers think about. They agreed that
  its a good idea to integrate portfolio
  assessment into the high stake tests since the
  washback effect can motivate both teachers and
  students to deal with the writing components in
  the English curriculum more seriously.

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23. Implications

• Through implementing portfolio assessment in Hong
  Kong classrooms, students could be encouraged to
  take up more responsibility for their own
  learning whereas teachers should minimize their
  authoritarian role as a knowledge transmitter
  whose main duty is to pass knowledge from one end
  to another (Herter, 1991 McClelland, 1991, cited
  in Callahan, 1995).

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24. Implications

• In this regard, teachers feedback is served well
  as a platform in which both students and teachers
  are able to build up (1) rapport and (2)
  dialogism that facilitates the construction of
  knowledge. In addition, it (portfolio
  assessment) constructs the feeling of students
  ownership and helps students to become
  independent learners in the future (Camp 1993
  Johnson Rose, 1997, cited in Chu, 2002 21).

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Conclusion

• It is not always easy to implement innovations,
  especially the innovation of language assessment.
  However, time will tell and prove the
  school-based assessment is beneficial to
  students learning.
• Not only does SBA enhance our professionalism,
  but we also become the cutting edge of assessment
  evolution.

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• Thank you very much