Although proponents support portfolios' value to enhance the reflective thinking of novice teachers and imply that such thinking improves teachers' practice, few studies have confirmed these assertions by directly measuring in-depth reflection or describing conditions that develop it. In this study, reflective thinking in preservice…

Many quality assurance systems rely on high-stakes assessment for course certification. Such methods are not as objective as they might appear; they can have detrimental effects on student motivation and may lack relevance to the needs of degree courses increasingly oriented to vocational utility. "Alternative assessment" methods can…

The dangers of a single story in current U.S. large-scale writing assessment are that assessment practice does not align with theory and this practice has negative effects on instruction and students. In this article, I analyze the connections or lack of connections among writing theory, writing assessment, and writing instruction, critique the…

Inquiry-based science education (IBSE) seems to be the appropriate method to encourage interest in science and technology education. The core principles of IBSE are involvement of students in discovering natural laws, linking information into a meaningful context, developing critical thinking and promoting positive attitudes towards science. IBSE…

Learning to systematically analyze the relationship between teaching and student learning is an important but difficult skill to engender in teachers. In this study, we examine how pre-service teachers who were introduced to a framework for analyzing teaching in a video-based teacher education course drew on this tool to analyze their own practice…

The ePortfolio is a useful educational tool that is utilized in many educational institutions to showcase student accomplishments and provide students with an opportunity to reflect on their educational progress. The objective of this study was to develop and test an artifact from an introductory soil science course to be included in the…

We analyse the electronic portfolio (ePortfolio) in higher education policy and practice.While evangelical accounts of the ePortfolio celebrate its power as a new eLearning technology,we argue that it allows the mutually-reinforcing couple of neoliberalism and the enterprising self to function in ways in which individual difference can be…

Portfolio assessment (PA) has been extensively adopted for writing development in the past three decades. Much research on PA primarily investigates students' and teachers' perceptions of its benefits, and how it influences students' motivation and general writing abilities. Despite its purported effectiveness, not much has been…

High-stakes external assessment for practical courses is fraught with problems impacting on the manageability, validity and reliability of scoring. Alternative approaches to assessment using digital technologies have the potential to address these problems. This paper describes a study that investigated the use of these technologies to create and…

This issue of "Assessment Update" presents the following articles: (1) Effective Leadership Assessment: A 360-Degree Process; (2) Editor's Notes: Accentuating the Positive in Our Work; (3) The Broadcast Education Association's Model Rubrics Project: Building Consensus One Rubric at a Time; (4) Building a Better…

In 1991, the AACU issued a report on improving undergraduate education suggesting, in part, that a curriculum should be both comprehensive and cohesive. Since 2008, we have systematically integrated our research methods course with our capstone course in an attempt to accomplish the twin goals of comprehensiveness and cohesion. By taking this…

Schools of business are increasingly focused on efforts aimed at measuring, documenting, and improving student learning. E-portfolios have been introduced by a number of schools for purposes of assessment to meet the mandates of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business or similar accreditation agencies. E-portfolio, including a…

Increase in tuition fees means there will be renewed pressure on universities to provide "value for money" courses that provide extensive training in both subject-specific and generic skills. For graduates of chemistry this includes embedding the generic, practical, and laboratory-based skills associated with industrial research as an…

This study examines one part of a validity argument for portfolio assessments of teaching practice used as an indicator of teaching quality to inform a licensure decision. We investigate the relationship among portfolio assessment scores, a test of teacher knowledge (ETS's Praxis I and II), and changes in student achievement (on…

Our article focuses on using portfolio assessment to craft quality teaching. Extant research literature on portfolio assessment suggests that the primary purpose of assessment is to serve learning, and portfolio assessments facilitate the process of making linkages among assessment, curriculum, and student learning (Asp, 2000; Bergeron, Wermuth,…