ABSTRACT
Portfolios have received an increasing amount of attention not only as a way of documenting student learning but also as a tool for changing instructional practice in fundamental ways. Benefits cited have included students taking more responsibility for their own learning by assessing their own work, learning and its assessment being viewed as a developmental process that occurs over extended time periods, and the encouragement of learning activities that are consistent with current notions of how people learn and what is worth learning (Camp, 1993; Gitomer, 1989; Paulson, Paulson, & Meyer, 1991; Tierney, Carter, & Desai, 1991; Wolf, Bixby, Glenn, & Gardner, 1991). The most frequent use of portfolios has been in the area of language arts (e.g., Belanoff & Dickson, 1991; Camp, 1993; Tierney et al., 1991), although portfolio approaches are being applied across all academic disciplines. For example, a number of statewide assessment systems now include mathematics portfolios (e.g., Koretz, Stecher, & Deibert, 1993).
