Abstract:

Despite considerable research on portfolio use still little is known about settings, users characteristic and conditions of portfolio assessment that go along with sustained portfolio use. The portfolio instrument has grown popular (mainly as a learning tool) in quite a number of different professional and educational settings and has been advocated for a number of different purposes as well. Still it is largely undetermined what types of portfolio are best suited for what kind of purposes for which kind of users. To illustrate: as tool for development it could have been applied extensively in professional development settings but to date as a tool the portfolio has mainly flourished in (teacher) educational settings. The underlying question of the presented study is why the portfolio in its different formats has addressed its audiences differently and has been applied in varied settings diversely for the benefit of multiple users.

In this study three different settings of sustained portfolio use were investigated, representing different types of use (i.e., : Portfolio as a performance dossier in vocational education; as a reflective tool in teacher education, and as a personal development tool in a business training course).
Users characteristics related to learning preferences of in total 112 participants were analyzed on outcome variables: self directedness in learning, feedback provision, and performance orientation in learning. Descriptive data of participants (work experience, age, gender) were gathered as well. In the design of the study the participants were asked to appraise a number of portfolio features on user satisfaction. As a subsequent step it was analysed how user characteristics were related to portfolio types and use (multiple regression analyses). It was determined how portfolio type matches with prefered use.

The overall analysis showed that only a 46 % matching occurred which implies that in most settings users do not consider the portfolio instrument they use apt to their purposes or aligned with their learning characteristics. This finding could help to identify appropriate adaptations to the way in which users of the portfolio apply the instrument.

Keywords:

Assessment, teaching, learning to teach, portfolio.