Teacher Benefits
Reflect Student and Students Knowledge
Students spend an entire semester working on a the writing they include in their portfolio and the development of the portfolio itself. This means that the portfolio visually represents the student , the student writing abilities, and what the student has learned throughout the semester about their own wiring. The portfolio provides an overall picture of the student to the instructor. In addition, portfolios showcase the growth of students throughout the course.
Fair Assessment
Portfolios provide a picture of student work for the entire semester. This means that they are being assessed on the semesters work as a whole and not just on writing done at one particular time period. Just as we have days when we do not do our best work, our students have similar days. Portfolios allow students to be successful and graded based on work over a longer time period. In her essay The Portfolios Shifting Self: Possibilities for Assessing Student Learning, Heidi Estrem States, “Writing, and all learning, is something that is best assessed by viewing documents produced over time, and portfolios are increasingly seen as a way to evaluate students’ work more authentically and effectively” (125). Portfolios allow for this fair assessment of student work because they chronicle an entire semesters worth of work.
Assessment of Multiple Areas
Portfolios are a great tool for creating collaboration between teachers and students. They allow for teachers to coach students on their writing and focus on content issues, as well as overall writing improvement. It allows the teacher to avoid giving summative grades before the writer has a chance to grow and learn. “Portfolios help teachers negotiate the conflict between the role of supportive, welcoming the helper and the role of critical, skeptical evaluator…portfolios help teachers stay longer and more productively in the supportive role, but then in turn, help them move more cleanly but less frequently into the critical role.,” states Pat Belanoff and Peter Elbow in their article Reflections on an Explosion: Portfolios in the 90’s and Beyond (29). Portfolios allow teachers to maneuver through multiple roles in the classroom that lead to student success.
Allow for Instructor to Negotiate Roles
Portfolios are a great tool for creating collaboration between teachers and students. They allow for teachers to coach students on their writing and focus on content issues, as well as overall writing improvement. It allows the teacher to avoid giving summative grades before the writer has a chance to grow and learn. “Portfolios help teachers negotiate the conflict between the role of supportive, welcoming the helper and the role of critical, skeptical evaluator…portfolios help teachers stay longer and more productively in the supportive role, but then in turn, help them move more cleanly but less frequently into the critical role.,” states Pat Belanoff and Peter Elbow in their article Reflections on an Explosion: Portfolios in the 90’s and Beyond (29). Portfolios allow teachers to maneuver through multiple roles in the classroom that lead to student success.
Benefits For New Instructors
Since portfolios allow for role negotiation, they can be very beneficial to new instructors. Research shows that one of the areas new teachers are most concerned about is assessment. In his essay Revising Our Practices: How Portfolios Help New Teachers Learn, Irvin Weiser explains, “It is my experience that portfolios allow new teachers of writing to develop both confidence and skill, not simply as evaluators, but as classroom teachers, by temporarily relieving their anxiety about grading and allowing them to focus on learning to teach” (294). When new instructors are able to leave summative grading to the end of the semester, after having a fair idea of each students writing abilities, they are more apt to not be so nervous about grading. Most importantly, as Wieser says, it allows them to focus on making students better writers.
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