Week 3... the correct one!

As I suspected, the previous Yancey article was not the correct one, although I found it to be interesting and pertinent to our discussions. Here's the correct review...

Kathleen Blake Yancey describes portfolios as diverse cultural artifacts, collection devices, and assessment tools that are a means of education reform to combat those assessments and strategies that are uniform and standardized.

I particularly find the individualized nature of portfolios to be appealing. It is, of course, highly beneficial to all classrooms, but I work in an alternative high school. Everything we do is individualized in nature. Yancey explains that these portfolio projects are "intended to serve the learning needs of the students in a particular classroom who are working with a particular teacher... by their very nature portfolios make possible the developmental charting of individuals, as well as a rich portrait of the writer" (4).

Yancey goes on to discuss the pedagogical approach to portfolios. Because portfolios are process centered, Yancey suggests students be asked to provide evidence of the various parts of their processes. For example, with my brainstorming binder, I could ask students to include X number of brainstorming activities in their portfolio for a given piece of writing to provide evidence of the brainstorming time that went into that work.

Next, which Yancey identifies as of special importance, are the reflections and inquiry aspects of portfolios. "The distinction between a storage folder and a portfolio is reflection, the review and consideration and narration and analysis and exploration of what learning is occurring in writing" (5). Further, Yancey states the reflective portion of portfolios should have a balance of intuition and cognition. "It may be, then, that one of the chief benefits of reflection is its role in bringing intuition both into focus and into the composing classroom" (5). This balance within reflection and inquiry requires the students to become active learners. They become responsible for their own learning.

I think getting students to adjust to this responsibility, especially my students who are all at-risk, will be challenging and take significant adjustments on the parts of both the teacher and the students. But I also think that once the changes begin to take hold, students will become more willingly involved in their own learning endeavors. I like that Yancey clarifies that portfolio pedagogy is time-intensive and that such growth does not take place over night- something I think Baker proved to be true in her experiment that I reviewed earlier!