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<h1>
Full text of "<a href="/details/ERIC_ED414597">ERIC ED414597: More Than
"Just" Assessing: A Discussion of Questions, Concerns, and Complications Related
to Portfolio Evaluation.</a>"
</h1>
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<small><a href="/details/ERIC_ED414597">See other formats</a></small>
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<pre>DOCUMENT RESUME
ED 414 597
CS 216 117
AUTHOR
TITLE
PUB DATE
NOTE
PUB TYPE
EDRS PRICE
DESCRIPTORS
IDENTIFIERS
Martin, Eric V.
More Than "Just" Assessing: A Discussion of Questions,
Concerns, and Complications Related to Portfolio Evaluation.
1997-03-00
10p.; Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the
Conference on College Composition and Communication (48th,
Phoenix, AZ, March 12-15, 1997) .
Reports - Research (143) -- Speeches/Meeting Papers (150)
MFOl/PCOl Plus Postage.
College Freshmen; Discourse Analysis; Discourse Modes;
Evaluation Methods; *Freshman Composition; Higher Education;
*Portfolio Assessment; Portfolios (Background Materials) ;
*Writing Evaluation; Writing Processes; Writing Research;
Writing Skills
Academic Discourse; ^Writing Contexts; *Writing Tasks
ABSTRACT
A study examined: (1) first-year college students and their
perceptions of writing; (2) teaching assistants and their discursive
preferences; and (3) possible limitations in the program's approach toward
portfolio assessment. The study began with the examination of narration,
persuasion, and analysis papers from six freshman portfolios. These papers
were analyzed to identify "salient patterns" that might indicate a writer's
using a discursive form to satisfy a particular paper assignment. Results
indicated that the narration assignment elicited the "story form"; all essays
were written in the first person, and all featured a narrator who was
struggling to make sense out of something. Most of the persuasive papers
found students speaking through objective, third-person narrators. For the
analysis paper, the approach that most students took was less analytical than
argumentative. Findings revealed a great deal about how the students
perceived academic writing, what teachers valued in the portfolios, and the
limitations of the program's portfolio requirement as it was then designed.
Findings suggest that, because students lacked a text type for completing the
analysis assignment, they mediated between a familiar kind of academic
writing and the new writing situation. Findings also suggest the value of
conducting more and even wider analysis of the material collected in
portfolios. (Contains four references.) (CR)
it******************
* Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made
* from the original document.
CSAIU II 7
More Than Just Assessing: A Discussion of Questions, Concerns,

and Complications Related to Portfolio Evaluation
A paper submitted for the 1997 meeting of the Conference

on College Composition and Communication
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

Office of Educational Research and Improvement
EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION
/ CENTER (ERIC)
Er This document has been reproduced as
received from the person or organization
originating it.
Minor changes have been made to
improve reproduction quality.
Points of view or opinions stated in this
document do not necessarily represent
official OERI position or policy.
March 12-15, 1997

Phoenix, Arizona
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Dr. Eric V. Martin, Director of English and Writing Across the Curriculum
The University of Findlay 1000 North Main Street, Findlay, Ohio 45840
Voice: (419) 424-4643 Email: martin_e@lucy.fmdlay.edu
BEST COPY AVAILABLE
Martin 1
Introduction
In her call for proposals for this years convention, Cynthia Selfe writes, Literac
y
education has never been a simple task a matter of just teaching or just writing.
Likewise, I
think, it has never been a matter of just assessing, although the evolution of w
riting assessment
sometimes suggests otherwise.
Thirty years ago, indirect assessment methods such as multiple-choice tests were
the norm.
These methods of assessment were used unreflectively. That is, they were a means
to just
assess a students writing ability and little more. Scholars eventually challenged
the use of
indirect assessment instruments, and a turn to direct assessment procedures such
as timed essay
examinations followed. The assumption, according to Edward M. White in Portfolios
as an
Assessment Concept, was that an essay test was a better indicator of a students tr
ue ability
because the essay test required real writing (32-33). Of course, advocates of port
folio
assessment are now challenging this assumption. They argue that timed writing re
veals only how
well a student can complete a very narrow form of writing. This form, they continu
e, gives little
indication of how well a student will perform in real writing situations.
As an advocate of portfolio-based instruction, I support these arguments at both
the
theoretical and pedagogical levels, but Ill confess to being made nervous by how
they are framed.
We must exercise greater caution when using terms like form and real writing situat
ions.
Otherwise, we ran the risk of repeating past mistakes. More specifically, we ran
the risk of
allowing the writing included in student portfolios to entrench itself into comf
ortable and familiar
forms as we go about the business of just assessing. In my talk today, I will sha
re findings
from a recent study which reveal how this entrenchment can take place, and I wil
l call for
additional studies of portfolio assessment that extend beyond discussions of ped
agogical appeal to
include systematic analyses of the materials we are now collecting.
Martin 2
The Study
Before I became the Director of Writing Across the Curriculum at The University
of
Findlay (a small private university in Northwest Ohio), I served as the Assistan
t Director of
Writing Programs at a large, midwestem university. A significant portion of that
job entailed
training and supervising the forty graduate teaching assistants who taught the i
ntroductory
composition course. In order to do so, my staff and I visited the TAs classes, co
llected sets of
marked papers, and guided the TAs as they coordinated their students efforts in d
eveloping course
portfolios. While working in this capacity, I noticed that the TAs students seeme
d to complete
most if not all of their portfolio papers by invoking one of two discursive form
s which I called the
story form and the essay form. In the former, the students essentially told stories
with well-
defined beginnings, middles, and ends (or morals). In the latter, they wrote the
more traditional
argumentative essay (which I will describe in more detail in a moment.) These tw
o forms,
particularly the argumentative essay, seemed to dominate the writing that the st
udents turned in for
their portfolios. As a result, I decided to conduct a study to learn more about:
1) the first-year
students and their perceptions of writing, 2) the teaching assistants and their
discursive
preferences, and 3) possible limitations in the programs approach toward portfoli
o assessment.
At the time, the English 101 portfolios required anywhere from five to seven wri
tings for a
total of (at least) twenty pages of finished nonfiction prose. Of these, one pap
er had to have
narration as its primary aim; one had to have persuasion as its primary aim; and
one had to have
analysis as a primary aim. I decided to limit my analysis of each portfolio to t
he three papers that
exhibited these controlling aims. (Note: Throughout this talk, I will refer to t
hese texts as the
narration paper, persuasion paper, and analysis paper simply for ease of discussion. T
he
program did not endorse writing instruction by means of the modes.)
Guided by the procedural steps that Thomas N. Huckin outlines in his Context-
Sensitive Text Analysis (90-93), I began the study by examining the narration, pe
rsuasion, and
analysis papers from six freshman portfolios. I analyzed these papers to identif
y salient patterns
that might indicate a writers using a discursive form to satisfy a particular pap
er assignment. I
Martin 3
noted such stylistic features as the writers use (if any) of the first-person, fi
gurative language,
outside sources, personal experiences, and personal observations. I also noted t
he structure of the
introductory paragraph, that of the essay itself, the location of the thesis sta
tement, and other
variables that emerged as I read. I then used these variables to code the narrat
ion, persuasion, and
analysis papers from twenty-eight additional portfolios ranging from grades A to
D. All thirty-four
of these portfolios came from a random sample of 120 portfolios which itself cam
e from the 1,200
portfolios submitted for evaluation the previous semester. My findings revealed
a great deal about
how the students perceived academic writing, what our teachers valued in the por
tfolios, and the
limitations of our programs portfolio requirement as it was then designed.
Findings
Not surprisingly, the narration assignment elicited the story form mentioned befor
e. The
original prompt read: Narrate an event or a related series of events in your life
, past or present.
Analyze or interpret those events so that readers can understand something of wh
o you are and
why. In other words, and Im paraphrasing here, write a personal essay in which you
reflect on
a significant experience in your life.
As one would expect, all of the students told a story, even though some told bet
ter stories
than others. All of these essays were written in the first-person, and all featu
red a narrator who
was struggling to make sense out of something, typically the death of a family m
ember or the
championship season that will never be repeated. Writers of all abilities used f
igurative language in
this paper and most attempted to hook their readers with creative introductions. I
n the
conclusions of these narratives, most students attempted to draw all loose ends
together by stating
the significance of the experience. Writers of lesser ability often concluded wi
th an explicit moral
of the story. Throughout these essays, the students foregrounded their morals, va
lues, and
beliefs. These instances were frequently signaled with lines like: My parents alw
ays taught me
that ... or As a Catholic, I believe that Such lines reveal that the students and
TAs were
able to establish plausible rhetorical contexts for these papers where the stude
nts authority was
Martin 4
central to the discussion. Things changed dramatically when the students wrote t
heir persuasive
papers. Id like to describe these essays before suggesting a possible connection
between the
story and essay forms that has implications for portfolio evaluation as a whole.
As I mentioned earlier, the persuasive paper elicited the essay form. A portion of
the
original prompt read: In this paper, you are to persuade readers to adopt your po
int of view on an
issue or topic that interests you. Of course, this assignment has long been a mai
nstay of freshman
composition. And it elicited some familiar discussions.
Most of these papers found the students speaking through objective, third-person
narrators.
These dispassionate narrators typically argued that todays society would be better
if a certain
point of view were adopted or if a certain course of action were taken. They did
so by
summarizing the arguments made on both sides of an issue and by letting the logi
c of their claims
then speak for itself. Unlike the personal essays, the students rarely used figu
res of speech in this
paper and vivid description was also nonexistent. The introductions to these pap
ers were generally
of the funnel variety and ended with a thesis statement that frequently outlined
the rest of the paper.
The conclusions typically summarized the main points of the paper and reiterated
a point of view or
course of action. The topics for these papers were almost always national issues
(e.g., gun
control, gays in the military, the smoking ban, etc.). Finally, most students ei
ther kept their
personal experiences and observations out of their discussions entirely, or they
included such
information but kept it to a minimum, typically revealing their personal stakes ve
ry briefly near
the end of an essay. And its here where possibly rich connections between the sto
ry and essay
forms were overlooked by students and teachers alike.
Like Kurt Spellmeyer and various others who have argued the need for more person
alized
academic discourse, I believe that the students who included personal informatio
n in their
persuasive papers set themselves up for powerful discussions. One paper in parti
cular illustrates
this point. It examined euthanasia and attempted to persuade readers to see the
value of mercy
killing. The student began the paper by sketching the topic in broad terms befor
e narrowing to her
thesis. She then summarized several essays that argued against euthanasia before
summarizing
Martin 5
several more that supported her point of view. She then steamed to her conclusio
n. However,
prior to concluding, the student broke the form of the argumentative essay and ins
erted a
paragraph which said, essentially, that she was in favor of mercy killing becaus
e a friend of hers
from high school had been in a car accident and was comatose. Because he would n
ever lead a
normal life, she argued, the life support should be shut off.
This paper, in my estimation, should have started where it ended. That is, the s
tudent
could have explained the situation with her friend in as much or little detail a
s she felt comfortable
with, and then she could have tapped this ethos to comment on published argument
s about
euthanasia . In other words, she could have situated the discussion in relation
to her own
experiences and observations in a way that blended the story form and the essay for
m.
However, she did not think to do this and neither did her teacher. Teacher and s
tudent alike
seemed to regard the narrative paper and persuasive paper as entirely separate f
rom one another.
And, just to complicate matters further, the students who did not blend the two
forms were
rewarded, it seems, with higher grades than those who did. Put in simplest terms
, the A writers,
whose friends also have tragic accidents, never hinted at their personal connect
ions to a topic, and
they appeared to get rewarded at some level for it. On the other hand, many C and D
writers
who did not know nearly as well the rules of the academic writing wandered into
such territory and
seemed to pay a price for the encroachment. This begins to reveal the power of t
he academic essay
as a form. Its power was revealed a second way when the students wrote the paper
in which
analysis was the primary aim. Id like to discuss this paper briefly before gettin
g back to the larger
issue at hand.
The assignment for the analysis paper asked students to analyze some facet of po
pular
culture. The prompt read: Through systematic observation or primary research, gathe
r data
about some aspect of popular culture, then explain and analyze your findings. Dat
a, the prompt
went on to say, could take the form of TV shows, music, social events, interview
findings, etc.
Most students chose to write about the consumption of alcohol on college campuse
s.
However, the approach that most took was less analytical than argumentative. Mor
e specifically,
Martin 6
skilled and unskilled writers alike employed the same form they had used to writ
e the persuasive
paper when faced with this new writing situation. As a result, most students did
not analyze an
observation so much as prove one, sometimes to ridiculous ends. An example will
illustrate my
point.
One student who received an A for her portfolio began her analysis paper with th
e line,
College campuses foster an ideal environment for the consumption of alcohol. She t
hen
attempted to narrow her discussion to a provable thesis just as she had done in
her persuasion
paper, but the new assignment seemed to resist as much. In her lengthy introduct
ion, she touched
upon: 1) the out of control behavior of her peers and how they regard their action
s as normal,
2) the lack of responsibility many college students show when drinking and the p
otential
consequences, 3) the fact that students can have fun without drinking, 4) the in
fluence of the Greek
system on alcohol consumption, 5) the influence of the media on young people whe
n it comes to
alcohol consumption, and 6) the impact of alcohol advertising on gender roles an
d related
stereotypes. Any of these topics would have made for a fine analysis essay; inst
ead, the student
bypassed all of them and concluded her introduction with the following thesis: ..
. the
consumption of alcoholic beverages is a prominent aspect of culture on college c
ampuses. Thus,
rather than explore why many college students drink, this student decided to pro
ve that many
college students drink. She had, in other words, invoked the familiar form of th
e argumentative
essay to complete the assignment even though the form was poorly suited for the
task at hand.
As I mentioned above, this students approach was far from isolated. And in explor
ing her
approach further, I have since decided that most students had to take this appro
ach to the analysis
assignment because most had never completed such a writing before. As a result,
they invoked a
familiar text type a term that linguists Robert de Beaugrande and Wolfgang Dressier
define as a
heuristic for producing, predicting, and processing textual occurrences (186). Be
cause the
students lacked a text type for completing the analysis assignment, they mediate
d between a
familiar kind of academic writing and the new writing situation. This finding, w
hen coupled with
the others that I have shared here, begins to reveal the importance of viewing p
ortfolio-based
8
Martin 7
instruction as something more than a pedagogical advancement. Together, these fi

ndings
underscore the need for increased teacher and administrator reflection on this p
opular assessment
tool. As a way of concluding this presentation, Id like to raise some questions t
hat might help us
get started with such work.
Conclusion
None of us can write outside of forms or text types. However, skilled writers do
nt live by
text types so much as they appropriate and remake them as they move from one wri
ting situation to
the next. This observation raises questions regarding the kinds of writing we as
k our students to
complete, the discursive practices we as instructors prefer, and the role of the
portfolio in
broadening our views of each. Are we, for example, using portfolios simply to re
affirm the place
of familiar discursive forms the way timed essay examinations do, or do we view
the portfolio as a
space in which exploration, interrogation, and appropriation of form is possible
? Furthermore, are
we as instructors willing to help students complicate form when they do in fact
have opportunities
to bridge classroom work with real writing situations? Along these same lines, are
we prepared
to deal with the resulting discourse which may challenge our notions of textuali
ty? Finally, are
those of us in administration prepared to address the challenges that a broader
conception of
portfolio assessment will present? After all, what we find may upset us.
In the end, I hope my study suggests the value of conducting more and even wider
analyses of the material we are collecting in portfolios so that we do not repea
t the mistakes of the
past when it comes to assessment. It would be wrong, I think, simply to reaffirm
in a new venue
that which has always been while overlooking that which could be.
I look forward to hearing your ideas.
Martin 8
Works Cited
Beaugrande, Robert de, and Wolfgang Dressier. Introduction to Text Linguistics.
London:
Longman, 1981.
Huckin, Thomas N. Context-Sensitive Text Analysis. Methods and Methodology in
Composition Research. Eds. Gesa Kirsch and Patricia A. Sullivan. Carbondale: Sou
thern
Illinois UP, 1992. 84-104.
Spellmeyer, Kurt. Common Ground: Dialogue, Understanding, and the Teaching of
Composition. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice, 1993.
White, Edward M. Portfolios as an Assessment Concept. New Directions in Portfolio
Assessment. Eds. Laurel Black, Donald A. Daiker, Jeffrey Sommers, and Gail Styga
ll.
Portsmouth, NH: Boynton, 1994. 25-39.
I ^ ( f l
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More Than Just Assessing:
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Title: Paper presented at the

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