Book Reviews

This collection of twenty-three articles by different authors, plus a foreword by Peter Elbow and an introduction by the editors, seems a comprehensive reference book for those interested in portfolio assessment. Articles are divided into four sections, "Portfolios for Proficiency Testing," "Program Assessment," "Classroom Portfolios," and "Political Issues," a utilitarian system enabling administrators, composition directors, or individual teachers to quickly discover the aspects of this form of evaluation with which they are personally concerned.

The section entitled "Portfolios For Proficiency Testing" concentrates upon the various situations, such as placement tests or exit exams, in which the use of a portfolio, a packet of the student's best writing, seems to be a fairer means of evaluating ability. This approach will make sense to those in the discipline who feel that a timed essay, a single sample involving only one writing genre, cannot accurately measure a student's overall skills. This approach will also seem more attractive to those teachers who desire a method of evaluation that encourages students to use the process approach that most of us use in the classroom; unlike timed exams, the portfolio system rewards prewriting, drafting, and revision. Most of the articles note the problems caused by these large scale changes in evaluation, such as the lack of faculty concensus about which aspects of writing actually reflect competency, or the possibility that standards will be lowered when students are evaluated upon compositions that have undergone numerous revisions and are thereby atypical. The situations involved in this section of the book are diverse, involving suggestions from British grade schools to American Master's degree programs.

Equally varied are the scenarios discussed in the articles of section two, "Program Assessment," most of which concern discoveries about how and how much students actually learn about writing in composition classes. Because portfolios usually include all assignments, including drafts and revisions, and not just the polished pieces to be evaluated, there is a clear record of development. Student metacognative skills improve when they are aware of how their intellectual skills evolve. Composition directors and teachers find portfolio assessment beneficial for measuring what types of assignments seem to work best. Further, when students were asked to collect writing from courses in disciplines other than English into a college career portfolio, it was discovered--predictably--that students had not been asked to use composition skills very frequently.

Section three, "Classroom Portfolios," contains those articles in this collection most applicable to and practical for the individual teacher. This section gives hope to the instructor wanting to use current theories of composition and pedagogy in composition courses. All of the difficulties one can imagine such a system would entail are here discussed and artfully solved. The bottom line seems to be that portfolio course teachers, who are excited by the rewarding prospect of not simply writing comments on essays in order to justify grades, are better able to encourage and empower students to assume responsibility for their own improvement.

The diffusing of power is also one of the main subjects in the final section, "Political Issues," but the focus here is more upon the changing faculty role. Particularly in English departments where all members are forced to use portfolio assessment, many problems arise. Primarily because teachers must understand each other's writing assignments and classroom goals before they can adequately evaluate a portfolio, the issue of academic freedom must be addressed. Should, for example, a tenured full professor who feels that her personal system adequately and fairly evaluates writing progress be expected to allow other teachers to study her methods and assess her students' work? The undermining of ultimate authority has caused some bruised egos, but it seems true that we need more peer review in our largely unregulated system. It is shown in these articles that faculty arguments about writing standards are ultimately good for English departments because they foster professional growth and increase ideological sensitivity.

Although the articles in Portfolios involve a wide variety of settings and purposes, the strengths and weaknesses of this form of evaluation remain fairly constant from author to author; it is this similarity that is both the best and the worst aspect of this text. While the authors note different ways of dealing with the general format, they mostly discuss the same pros and cons in a way that might seem maddeningly redundant. The frequently repeated beneficial aspects of portfolio assessment are, of course, not terribly problematic and make one feel that this is the ideal alternative method for those uncomfortable with the accountability movement that has become so prevalent in higher education in the past decades. Teachers do not need to justify grades in a dictatorial tone but can, through beneficial comments, focus on student improvement. Even weak writers or students with low academic self-esteem will only be graded upon their best work, three or four highly polished and frequently revised pieces of writing. These works are chosen by the student, so he or she has a feeling of improvement and, hopefully some pride in ownership. The editor/helper/teacher is in a more pleasant position because the student is naturally more committed to improvement.

Further, the English department, when the entire faculty uses portfolio assessment, is also in a position designed to foster learning and update writing competency standards because some form of concensus must be met before evaluating can begin. Through discussions of various grading criteria, faculty grow closer professionally and more clearly define the goals of their institution. That the portfolio system is extremely malleable and able to be adopted by nearly any school is clearly shown in the variety of situations elaborated in the articles.

Still, beneficial as the system is in some aspects, it is equally detrimental in others. As the editors themselves assert, it is "messy, bulky, nonprogrammable, not easily scored, [and] time consuming" (xx). It is messy, not simply in terms of increased paper loads, but also because of faculty egos. The system seems to work best with the collaboration of at least two other faculty members. Just this few evaluators requires compromise, professional involvement, and shared assignments. When the system is adapted by an entire department, it is easy to see how questions of academic freedom can occur. Who decides which teaching style and which genre emphasis will define writing competency? The system demands that nearly all aspects of the teaching environment will be discussed, but some teachers balk at this amount of outside involvement in their routines. Even those teachers who would be willing to allow their habits to be shared with colleagues are daunted from using portfolios because they seem to involve more work for the teacher of composition, especially at mid-term and finals when the literature classes they teach must be evaluated as well.

Faculty must also be prepared to diffuse the concerns of grade obsessed students who want constant "guesstimates" of scores and who will revise each assignment ad nauseum. Conversely, the instructor must also expect the equally disinterested students who will only write the three or four essays that they will ultimately submit for evaluation and ignore other assignments without even attempting them; these students will never revise, having learned too well the lesson of a system ultimately based upon standardized testing that does not allow time for prewriting, drafting, or editing. Also, students know that for exams in other academic disciplines that require essays, there is the need to write quickly without much revision in a time-limited situation.

Revision becomes the basis of student/teacher instruction in a portfolio system, so several articles in this text discuss the problem of plagiarism: when students are encouraged to get help from the instructor, lab tutors, classmates, friends, or family, does there come a point at which the writing no longer counts as their own? Further, when students turn in several polished pieces of writing that demand a grade higher then they could have earned in a typical composition class where revisions are not so strongly encouraged, the issue of grade inflation must be a concern. Another difficulty is that all this revision makes it a must that students have access to computers and know how to use them.

Portfolios is a comprehensive text designed to make a reader consider all aspects of composition, particularly how it should be taught and assessed. For those readers left feeling that they need further information, the end of the book contains a bibliography of more articles about portfolio evaluation. However, the text is so comprehensive in scope that most readers will feel able to make an informed decision about whether or not a portfolio system would enhance their students' composition skills. Should this form of assessment be adopted, English instructors will have in Portfolios a useful source to refer to for motivation and creative problem solving.

Laura C. Lambdin
Francis Marion University