Chapter 8 - Feedback in portfolio-based writing courses

Summary

Process approaches to the teaching and learning of writing remain popular and convincing. At the same time, portfolios are becoming an accepted tool for demonstrating abilities and performances in key skill areas; portfolio-based assessment of writing is one of the most researched forms of alternative assessment and is now accepted in many different teaching contexts. Writing courses that use a portfolio-based approach to assessment appear to provide a fertile environment in which teachers and learners can engage in feedback on writing and thus mesh well with process approaches.

However, concerns have been raised that a portfolio-based writing course puts assessment at the top of the agenda and therefore colors feedback exchanges with the awareness that this text will be formally assessed (Roehmer et al., 1991). This chapter looks at the effects of a methodology for the teaching and learning of writing that values process approaches, specifically feedback and revision, and that also incorporates assessment by portfolio. By focusing on one case study, I try to understand whether multiple drafting, stimulated by a feedback-privileging teaching and learning environment, results in work that is judged to be better postrevision; and I ask whether teacher-judges working in a portfolio-based assessment at the end of a course oriented to process writing recognize and reward the student's multiple revisions stimulated by the feedback.

Portfolios for assessment and beyond

Portfolio assessment is the best-known and now most popular form of alternative writing assessment (Belanoff & Dickson, 1991; Hamp- Lyons, & Condon, 2000; Yancey & Weiser, 1997).