For your final project this week, you will be developing a portfolio. In order t

Question

For your final project this week, you will be developing a portfolio. In order to help you better understand the purpose of your assignment, we want to take a deeper look into the use of portfolios as an assessment tool. Chapter 6 of the course text discusses how portfolios are used to develop a holistic picture of a child’s abilities by providing a framework to gather and evaluate artifacts ((Howard, V. F., & Aiken, E., 2015).As a professional working with children, your role in portfolio assessment is a vital one. For this discussion, we will focus on the importance of portfolio assessment in the classroom or childcare center.

Discuss how portfolio assessments support you as a professional in your quest to ensure thegrowth of the children with whom you work. Make sure to include specific examples of the purposes of portfolios to support your thinking.

Explain how you will manage the logistical piece of using portfolio assessments. Reference section 6.2 Portfolio Logistics from the course text to support your explanation.

Describe the different types of evidence that are included in portfolios. Make sure to explain the role the children will play in this piece of the portfolio process.

Discuss how you will include families in the portfolio assessment process, and why this important to the portfolio process

Explain how the portfolio process you will use with children mirrors the portfolio you are creating for your final project in this course.

*You must properly cite and reference the course text in every discussion. A citation is a parenthetical note within the body of your response. It comes after a direct quote or a paraphrase. A reference comes at the end of your response and refers to the required reading or material. Use in-text citations.*

Howard, V. F., & Aiken, E. (2015). Assessing learning and development in young children. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education

Explanation / Answer

Early childhood assessment is a tool used to gather and provide educators, parents, and families with critical information about a child’s development and growth. A general consensus for assessment reform is reflected by the volume and variety of professional literature on various methods of assessment and the number of states that are seeking alternative means to evaluate students. Educators use the term authentic assessment to define the practice of realistic student involvement in evaluation of their own achievements. Authentic assessments are performance-based, realistic, and instructionally appropriate (Pett, 1990). One method of authentic assessment is to assemble and review a portfolio of the child's work. The portfolio is a record of the child's process of learning: what the child has learned and how she has gone about learning; how she thinks, questions, analyzes, synthesizes, produces, and creates; and how she interacts--intellectually, emotionally and socially--with others. Arter and Spandel (1991) define the portfolio as a purposeful collection of student work that exhibits to the student, or others, her efforts or achievement in one or more areas. According to Meisels and Steele (1991), portfolios enable children to participate in assessing their own work; keep track of individual children's progress; and provide a basis for evaluating the quality of individual children's overall performance. Wide use of portfolios can stimulate a shift in classroom practices and education policies toward schooling that more fully meets the range of children's developmental needs. The portfolio can include work samples, records of various forms of systematic observation, and screening tests. Engel (1990) emphasizes that "work samples meet the need for accountability while recognizing and supporting individual progress." They keep track of a child's progress--in other words, they follow the child's success rather than his failure. Teachers and parents can follow children's progress by reviewing children's writings, drawings, and logs of books read by or to them, videos or photographs of large projects, tape recordings of the children reading or dictating stories, and so forth. Childhood assessment is a process of gathering information about a child, reviewing the information, and then using the information to plan educational activities that are at a level the child can understand and is able to learn from.

Observing and documenting a child’s work and performance over the course of a year allows an educator to accumulate a record of the child’s growth and development. With this information, educators can begin to plan appropriate curriculum and effective individualized instruction for each child. During systematic observation, young children should be observed when they are playing alone, in small groups, in large groups, at various times of day and in various circumstances. Systematic observation must be objective, selective, unobtrusive, and carefully recorded (Bertrand and Cebula, 1980). Ideally, a portfolio includes observations in several or all of the following forms:

-Anecdotal records. Anecdotal records are factual, nonjudgmental notes of children's activity (Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, 1991). They are most useful for recording spontaneous events. They should be cumulative, revealing insights about the child's progress when they are reviewed sequentially.

-Checklist or inventory. The checklist or inventory is one of the easiest tools for recording children's progress. It should be based on instructional objectives and the development associated with the acquisition of the skills being monitored. In general, observations should be based on regular activities, not on specially designed or contrived activities.

- Rating scales. Rating scales are appropriately used when the behavior to be observed has several aspects or components, such as a child's success at following directions in different situations.

-Questions and requests. One of the most effective and easiest means of gathering information is to ask direct, open-ended questions of individual children. Open-ended requests such as, "I'd like you to tell me about this," elicit samples of the child's expressive language ability. Asking children about their activities also often yields insights into why they behave as they do.

-Screening tests. Screening tests are used to help identify the skills and strengths that children already possess, so that teachers can plan meaningful learning experiences for their students. Findings of screening tests and developmental scales should be considered with work samples and other, more subjective, material that the teacher assembles in portfolios. The assessment information revealed by such instruments is not appropriately used for grading, labeling, grouping, or retaining children.

This assessment record is also a great tool to share with parents so they can follow their child’s progress at school, understand their child’s strengths and challenges, and plan how they can help extend the learning into their homes. Decisions about what items to place in a portfolio should be based on the purpose of the portfolio. Without a purpose, a portfolio is just a folder of student work. The portfolio exists to make sense of children's work, to communicate about their work, and to relate the work to a larger context (Arter and Paulson, 1991; Paulson and Paulson, 1991). According to Murphy and Smith (1990), portfolios can be intended to motivate students, to promote learning through reflection and self-assessment, and to be used in evaluations of students' thinking and writing processes.In early childhood education, portfolios should contain a statement of purpose and a wide variety of work samples, including successive drafts of work on particular projects. Children should be involved in choosing items to preserve so that they can analyze their work themselves.

Methods of child assessment can be informal (conducting natural observations, collecting data and children’s work for portfolios, using educator and teacher ratings) and formal (using assessment tools such as questionnaires and standardized testing). Both methods are effective and can help inform educators and parents about a child’s progress. (Catherine E. Snow and Susan B. Van Hemel, 2008).

-Assessment aligns with instructional goals and approaches. Different types of assessments have different purposes. It is important to first determine what should be measured; then find the assessment program that best assesses those goals.

-Assessor knows the child. The adult conducting the assessment should have a pre-existing relationship with the child. Ideally the assessor is the educator.

-Assessment is “authentic.” Assessment should take place in a child’s normal setting. The assessment should reflect everyday relationships and experiences. It should be conducted in familiar contexts and settings (such as the classroom).

-Observations are ongoing and diverse. For a comprehensive assessment, observations should be made at a variety of children’s activities and be ongoing in order to fully see the progress of a child.

-Assessment is a cycle. Although specific methods for assessment tools vary, the process is cyclical. The cycle allows educators to make changes to their curriculum to better serve children in their program. The cycle is as follows:

(a) Instruct.

(b)Observe

(c) Document

(d) Analyze, evaluate

(e) Summarize, plan and communicate

(f) Instruct (The cycle is repeated)

The material in a portfolio should be organized by chronological order and category. Since all information in the portfolio is dated, arranging the work samples, interviews, checklist, inventories, screening test results, and other information should be simple. Meisels and Steele (1991) suggest further organizing the material according to curriculum area or category of development (cognitive, gross motor, fine motor, and so forth). Once the portfolio is organized, the teacher can evaluate the child's achievements. Appropriate evaluation always compares the child's current work to her earlier work. This evaluation should indicate the child's progress toward a standard of performance that is consistent with the teacher's curriculum and appropriate developmental expectations. Portfolios are not meant to be used for comparing children to each other. They are used to document individual children's progress over time. The teacher's conclusions about a child's achievement, abilities, strengths, weaknesses, and needs should be based on the full range of that child's development, as documented by the data in the portfolio, and on the teacher's knowledge of curriculum and stages of development. His use of portfolios to assess young children provides teachers with a built-in system for planning parent-teacher conferences. With the portfolio as the basis for discussion, the teacher and parent can review concrete examples of the child's work, rather than trying to discuss the child's progress in the abstract.

Appropriate assessment of young children should involve the children themselves, parents, and teachers. The portfolio method promotes a shared approach to making decisions that will affect children's attitudes toward work and school in general. It frees the teacher from the constraints of standardized tests. Finally, using portfolios in assessment allows teachers to expand the classroom horizon and enlarge each child's canvas. Thus, the teacher can focus on the child and develop an intimate and enduring relationship with him.

References:

Arter, J., and Paulson, P. Composite Portfolio Work Group Summaries. Portland, OR: Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, 1991.

Arter, J., and Spandel, V. Using Portfolios of Student Work in Instruction and Assessment. Portland, OR: Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, 1991.

Bertrand, A., and Cebula, J. Tests, Measurements, and Evaluation: A Developmental Approach. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1980.

Early Childhood Assessment: Why, What, and How by the National Research Council. Catherine E. Snow and Susan B. Van Hemel, eds. The National Academies Press, 2008.

Engel, B. "An Approach to Assessment in Early Literacy." In C. Kamii (Ed.), Achievement Testing in the Early Grades: The Games Grown-ups Play. Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children, 1990. ED 314 207.

Grace, C., and Shores, E.F. The Portfolio and Its Use: Developmentally Appropriate Assessment of Young Children. Little Rock, AR: Southern Early Childhood Association, 1991.

Meisels, S., and Steele, D. The Early Childhood Portfolio Collection Process. Ann Arbor, MI: Center for Human Growth and Development, University of Michigan, 1991.

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