Chapter-5: Towards a Research Agenda for Portfolio-Based Writing Assessment
In this chapter the authors introduce questions that still need to be researched in order to validate the general hypothesis that portfolios are "a better method for collecting data about teaching and learning" by synchronizing instruction and assessment (166). Because the portfolio is a context-rich pedagogical tool, to come up with a research plan is to recognize there are many "stakeholders" involved. For instance, according to Condon and Hamp-Lyons, contexts for portfolio assessment and therefore research intersects between the home/family, the workplace, and the institution, but also between the teacher, learner, and evaluator:
- Teacher : identity, teaching/writing experience, background knowledge, genre schemata, teaching style, sense of community, role in assessment, belief/knowledge about assessment, general logistics or workload
- Learner : identity, values, psychological distance, genre schemata, learning stages, cultural positioning, academic acculturation, role in assessment, imagined reader
- Evaluator : identity, philosophy, training/experience, accountability perspective, cultural attitudes, genre knowledge, (academic) cultural positioning, language attitudes, role in assessment, connection to students (167).
And these contexts are always already within the interests of specific audiences, like learners, teachers, WPAs, measurement communities, school administrators, governing policy makers, and the media and public (170).
Citing R.L. Linn, et al., the authors point out that portfolio research has several related "dimensions," including general consequences, fairness, meaningfulness, transfer and generalizability, cognitive complexity, content quality, content coverage, and cost and efficiency (175-76). One can map these dimensions onto the various context-rich qualities of the audiences. For instance, teachers’ questions often first concern consequences and then the learner’s perspective. Three particular questions Condon and Hamp-Lyons suggest include:
- Does having a portfolio as an end-of-course assessment lead students to put more work into their writing class?
- Do students prefer portfolio assessment to standard grading methods or timed essay test assessment (in a range of contexts)?
- Do students believe more in the results of an assessment if it is done using a portfolio base than in other, traditional forms of assessment? (179)
This chapter offers many more specific questions from teachers’, learners’, WPAs’, measurement experts’, and administrators’ perspectives. The trick and cautionary tale, according to Condon and Hamp-Lyons, is to be sure to root the questions with good instruction and valid assessment in mind. The end result of researching portfolios should be action research; that is, better our own teaching and learning through researching it.
