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

1. Students’ Perceptions of the Implementation of Portfolio Assessment in the Language Classroom Mr. Ricky Lam, Rosaryhill School / City University of Hong Kong

2. 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/~sbapro/forum.html)

3. 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 haven’t done. • Who would benefit from this “richer information”?

4. 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?

5. 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)

6. 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

7. 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, 2002:6). • 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.

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

9. 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.

10. 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).

11. 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, 2000:2).

12. 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).

13. 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).

14. 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).

15. 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.

16. 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)

17. 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.

18. 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

19. 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.

20. 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)

21. 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.

22. 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 processand 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”.

23. 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”.

24. 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 teacher’s feedback. S2 expressed that “I’m 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.

25. 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 “bothstudents’ and teacher’s feedback enhance students’ language awareness”.

26. 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.

27. 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 “it’s 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”.

28. 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).

29. 24. Implications • In this regard, teacher’s 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).

30. 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.

31. Thank you very much