Assessment Portfolios as Opportunities for Teacher Learning

Abstract

This article is an analysis of the role of assessment portfolios in teacher learning. Over 18 months, 23 science teachers developed, implemented, and evaluated assessments to track student learning, supported by portfolio tasks and resources, grade-level colleagues, and team facilitators. Evidence of teacher learning included (a) portfolios of a sample of 10 teachers and (b) the cohort's self-reports in surveys and focus groups. Teachers gained understanding of assessment planning, tasks and scoring guides, methods of analyzing patterns and trends, and use of evidence to guide instruction. Teachers made uneven progress with technical aspects of assessment and curriculum-specific assessment. Research is needed on ways to integrate the benefits of a generic portfolio with strategies to strengthen specific areas of assessment expertise.

Notes

¹Five districts sent K-12 district teams consisting of several teachers and one administrator, typically a district science or assessment specialist. Our research focused only on teachers. Gearhart et al. (2006) reported preliminary findings based on an analysis of three teachers in the 1st year.

²The ideas in the framework are simplified in relation to more comprehensive treatments of classroom assessment (e.g., Stiggins, 2005; Taylor & Nolen, 2004). Omitted or backgrounded are certain technical ideas, students' roles in assessment, and assessment systems that coordinate formative and summative assessments. On the other hand, the idea of “developmentally sound content” was more emphasized than in other assessment projects, because the Academy was invested in helping teachers interpret student progress along a developmental continuum of understanding (Herman, 2005). For example, during the planning phase when Academy teachers were evaluating the quality of potential assessments, teachers drafted a range of “expected student responses” to evaluate the capacity of the assessment to provide information on the developmental range of understanding, while, in other settings, teachers are often advised just to write out the correct answers when evaluating assessment items (Taylor & Nolen, 2004).

³The figures merge several versions of the framework shared with teachers over 18 months as the framework evolved in part through teacher input. Herman (2005) provides a detailed exposition of one version of the framework, and DiRanna et al. (2008) introduce a modified version.

⁴The Academy assessment portfolio differed from the preservice model developed by Taylor and Nolen in two ways (Taylor, 1997; Taylor & Nolen, 1996a). First, it was not a context for feedback by the professional development team; the Academy goal was to promote professional reflection and collaboration, and the team wanted to minimize concerns about evaluation. Second, it was a more ambitious undertaking than Taylor and Nolen could accomplish within a 10-week academic term: The Academy portfolio documented the design of unit assessments, implementation of assessments, and evaluation/refinement of assessments, while Taylor and Nolen's preservice portfolio contained just a unit plan (although the plan was in some ways more comprehensive than the Academy's).

⁵The portfolio forms and tasks were modified twice over the 18 month Academy program. Information on the evolution of the portfolio is available from the authors. DiRanna et al. (2008) introduced a further evolution of the portfolio.

⁶In addition, some teachers were visited once by a member of the PD team for on-site coaching of interpretation of student work, and one institute meeting provided time for discussion of student work.

⁷Organizational shifts toward a clearer focus on big ideas were more evident when teachers revised an assessment plan they had constructed for an earlier portfolio.

⁸In the first portfolio, teachers were asked to list all possible assessments before making selections for their assessment plan; in later portfolios, that task was revised to focus teachers more directly on selection of targeted assessments. Thus this pattern of change from comprehensive lists to targeted selection mirrors revision of the portfolio tasks, but that revision was prompted by teachers' requests for a more strategic approach to assessment planning guided by the conceptual flow of learning goals.

*p ≤ .05.

⁹Unfortunately we could not trace teachers' growth with scoring techniques such as benchmarking or double-scoring, because the portfolio did not ask teachers to document the scoring process.

¹⁰We cannot determine whether the hybrid records reflected limitations in teachers' capacities to construct scoring guides or their growing insight that mixed methods can be efficient and targeted. Shepard (2001), for example, argued that qualitative analysis of the responses scored at medium and lower levels is a flexible and feasible strategy for classroom assessment.

**p < .07.

*p ≤ .05.