Portfolio Implementation: What About R for Realistic?

Abstract

This study describes seven primary grade teachers' use of portfolios to illustrate students' literacy learning and these teachers' perceptions of the challenges and benefits of their portfolio use. Aggregation of the data collected from monthly support group minutes, teachers' written evaluative comments, and analysis of the contents of each teachers' students' portfolios revealed the power of the broader cultural context in constraining and challenging their portfolio use. Because of their districts' expectations, the teachers felt required to use a double system of record-keeping. The districts' discrete skills expectations undermined the portfolio's broader goals expectations, and the teachers perceived that they were not meeting the competing expectations well. A result was that the portfolios evidenced a sameness across all children in each classroom. Yet, these teachers believed the portfolio process strengthened their understanding of their children. Clearly, while portfolio assessment occurs at the classroom level, for the practice to be ideal, the wider environments must endorse the philosophical underpinnings that make portfolio assessment necessary.