Chapter 3: Portfolios as Assessment Devices

Student Portfolios

The evaluation design called for teachers to identify six (6) case study students from each language level (or grade) for the purpose of tracking their progress throughout their participation in the program. Because we were specifically interested in formal instruction and learning of the LCTL by students who had no familiarity with the language prior to instruction, we asked each participating teacher to try to select case study students who did not belong to the same ethnic/language heritage background as the language they were learning in school. Beginning in the 1993-94 school year, all teachers worked with their six case study students to prepare portfolios. Since this was the first time that teachers had used portfolios in their language classes and because there were no available guidelines, this was a year of trial-and-error for all in learning how to implement portfolios. Portfolios were submitted by teachers to the Evaluation Team in Summer 1994. These portfolios were studied and comments prepared for teachers regarding: (a) the contents of the portfolios and (b) suggestions for improving the portfolios. Based on this trial year with portfolios, the Evaluation Team refined the guidelines for classroom use of portfolios and worked with teachers to improve how the overall quality of students' portfolios.

Thus in academic year 1994-95, teachers were again asked to work with case study students to develop portfolios that could be used to document language growth in the LCTL. The same request was made in 1995-96. Portfolios were received between mid-June and mid-July in both 1995 and 1996. Approximately 200 portfolios were submitted for our evaluation during 1995 and again in 1996.

After the 1994-95 portfolios were received, they were submitted to a content analysis by the same native speaking evaluators who had visited each program in their assigned language and carried out the COCI testing with these case study students. Thus, the evaluators were familiar with the teachers and students whose portfolios they content-analyzed. The objective of the content analyses of the portfolios was to gather evidence that students had demonstrated growth in the four language skill areas from September to May.

The evaluators prepared an individualized report of each students' growth in the target language based on materials in the portfolio. These individualized reports for each of the case study students became a permanent record in our data system. At the same time, our portfolio reports were also given to the teachers in Autumn 1995 for their feedback and discussion regarding student progress in the LCTL. The intent of providing teachers with the reports was to encourage teachers to use the portfolios to determine whether they needed to adjust their curriculum to enhance the target language acquisition of students.

Because there is no commonly agreed upon practice for conducting a content analysis of portfolios, the language evaluators met frequently to discuss similarities and differences noted in the case study portfolios. Out of these discussions, a format was decided upon for the content analysis and reports to be prepared by the evaluators. The intent of the analysis was to create a record of the specific contents of the portfolio and to categorize the contents by language skill (listening, speaking, reading, writing and cultural knowledge) demonstrated. In addition to this, evaluators provided their impressions of the student's growth in the target language based on their global interpretation of the materials in the portfolios including FLOSEM and COCI ratings.

Analysis of the 1994-95 school year portfolios showed that teachers who had prior experience in using portfolios as a means of performance assessment of language development provided much better documentation of student language learning. For instance, teachers who participated in our pilot phase of portfolio development (school year 1993-94) and who followed our guidelines for developing language portfolios organized the items in the portfolio more systematically and provided sufficient materials for evaluators to adequately document the student's language learning progress. Also portfolios which contained a table of contents proved to be very useful for both teachers and students as they planned and implemented portfolios in the foreign language classroom.

In 1995-96, the portfolios of case study students submitted by teachers to the Evaluation Team were divided into two groups for analysis. In the first category were case study students for whom we had amassed at least two years of language data using our system of student portfolios. The second category consisted of case study students for whom we had only a single year (1994-95 or 1995-96) of data because students: (a) graduated from high school in 1995, (b) discontinued their language study after June 1995, or (c) served as new and/or replacement cases in 1995-96 for students who had left the language program through either (a) or (b) above. There were a total of 71 students for whom we had two years of language portfolio data available. The language evaluators compared the growth in language ability across the two years using all information available in the portfolios which included writing samples, quizzes, video and/or audio tapes of oral presentations, cultural projects, 2 or 3 FLOSEM ratings and COCI ratings done by our language evaluators.

Since the accumulation of summaries based on the content analyses of portfolios amounts to approximately 1,200 pages of text, we will only provide a sampling of the portfolio summaries prepared by the language evaluators to give the reader an idea of the process engaged in to make the portfolios meaningful in this evaluation study. What follows are the portfolio summaries for five prototypical students enrolled in a high school Japanese or Korean language program across a two-year span of time. In order to ensure confidentiality of students, they are identified by their first name only. Students names, language studied and level of instruction are as follows:

It is also important to observe the differences in portfolio summaries between the 1994-95 and 1995-96 periods. Teachers and students were adept in the development of portfolios in the second time period and as a consequence the language evaluators' reports were more extensive for the second period. Also, in their second period reports the language evaluators commented when appropriate on a case study student's language growth between the two time periods when such evidence was available.

Summaries of Three Students Enrolled in High School Japanese Program:

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