Dilemmas faced establishing portfolio assessment of pre-service teachers in the Southeastern United States

College Student Journal, Sept, 2005 by Meta Van Sickle, Margaret B. Bogan, Michael Kamen, William Baird, Carolyn Butcher

There is increasing pressure to evaluate and document the capabilities of students exiting teacher education programs. A professional portfolio can serve as an effective tool for documenting this process. Faculty wishing to institute portfolios in pre-service teacher assessment should be aware of the difficulties that arise during discourse and planning. Court ruling on professional practice should be incorporated into the mind-set of committees when developing procedures and polices of portfolio management. The notion of teacher professionalism as identified by the courts should serve as fuel for continued deliberations to incorporate portfolio assessment strategies into a program. A positive offshoot of portfolio deliberations can be the development of program-wide mission statement or vision for the teaching profession.

**********

Portfolio assessment is often used by faculty in teacher preparation programs as part of the graduation requirements for pre-service teachers. In some cases, portfolio assessment has replaced the traditional "exit exam". The purpose of portfolio assessment in either case is to receive a more thorough and accurate portrayal of the future teachers' abilities and skills in the classroom and in the school. Authors such as Cavanaugh and Linek (1995), Peterson (1989), and Ryan and Kuhs (1993) suggest that portfolios show the abilities and interests of the student. They further purport that a major value of portfolio creation is for the student to self-evaluate their understanding and personal growth. Such portfolios would contain documentation of attitudes, behaviors, achievement, improvements, thinking, and reflective self-evaluation (Linek, 1991).

Students select items for portfolio inclusion so as to exhibit that they possess the knowledge and skills needed to teach. The breadth and quality of materials a student chooses for inclusion in his/her exit portfolio, substantiates that she/he is ready for full time induction into the classroom. Such self-evaluation would be consistent with the literature on self-reflection (Schon, 1983, p. 50). Student's need to think about what they are doing while they are doing it if they are to become effective teachers in the K-12 schools (for an example of portfolio directions see Appendix A).

Reflective action on the student's part assists in the process of attaching the theory portion to the practical, learning setting portion of their course work. Thus students would be able to frame the question(s) that arise, devise an action, and subsequently, think about the instantaneous nature of their work. These reflective practices should be evidenced in an exit portfolio as changes in action, and usage of educational theories across the program.

Portfolios are often used in combination with other data such as grade point average, National Teacher Exam scores, state developed teacher tests, field notes, and completion of a planned program to give college faculty a comprehensive tool with which they can assess student progress and professional aptitude. Such combinations of assessments are becoming a prevalent part of the information that is forwarded to state departments of education for state certification/liscensure processing. However, portfolio assessment for certification purposes is a relatively new concept in the field of professional education.

Dilemmas arise anytime a new evaluation format is established to determine what students need to know and be able to perform in a professional arena. In the past, the criteria for certification/licenser was based on what candidates know and thus tests were deemed appropriate as the only measure. Many states now demand evidence about the future teacher's ability to perform. For example, in South Carolina, novice teachers must pass a ten dimension set of performance indicators prior to completion of student teaching. Dilemmas begin with the decision to use portfolios and continue after portfolio use has begun.

Faculty Dilemmas

Faculty often see the dilemmas as consisting of 1) what is professional judgment? 2) how to manage the time involved with reading and evaluating a mass of materials? 3) which materials to collect? at what intervals? or what duration? beginning and final products or only final products? 4) how materials are scored? and 5) how to mediate disagreements among faculty in judgment and methodology?

Goodlad (1997a &b) addressed issues that are inherent in this discussion. In the first article, he recognized the irony of teachers who were "ill prepared and casually admitted into teaching and then subjected to harsh measures of accountability" (p. 46). In part II of the article he identified some programmatic shortcomings that could be addressed by exit portfolios if they contained information about the student throughout their planned program for teacher certification/liscensure. Goodlad suggested two issues or programmatic shortcomings inherent in the current teacher certification process. There are three or four distinctively separate faculty groups conducting the several segment of teacher education curricula without benefit of a commonly shared mission, professional education faculty, academic faculty, state board administrators, and college advisors In addition, there exists the widespread faculty perception that accreditation procedures are a chore, to be carried out by the director of teacher education and a few colleagues (p. 47). Exit portfolios can be designed to address these two issues provided there exists an institutional goal/mission and teacher standards that all future teachers should meet.