The Students Portfolio as an Alternative Strategy to the Standardized Competencies Assessment Tests

Abstract

This paper is part of a wider research, which focuses on education competencies assessment (I+D Research Project, ref. SEJ-2007-66967), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education. What we show in this paper are data from one of the case studies we carry out as part of this project. We have developed a "collaborative research" to understand and analyze the educational processes taking place in the "learnings of second order" ("learning how to learn"). In this sense, we've performed a didactic experimentation with portfolios of student in a 5th grade classroom; the conclusions presented are the result of this particular study. As a final, we conclude that portfolios of student can be an interesting strategy for educational evaluation; as well as it can become an "alternative strategy" to the standardized competency assessment tests, which predominate in the current educational landscape.

Keywords

• portfolio
• assessment
• competencies
• learning how to learn
• collaborative research