Attitudes of Al-Makassed elementary English teachers towards portfolio assessment in their classes

النوع : Mémoire

Portfolios, best defined as repertoires of students' work samples that display students' efforts, progress and reflection, represent a paradigmatic shift in assessment, for they differ from traditional tests which sometimes show decontextualized and fragmented learning. Although there are many proponents of portfolio assessment, there has been little research done on teachers' attitudes towards this assessment tool. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate teachers' attitudes towards portfolio assessment in the context of AI-Makassed institution. Participants were 38 elementary English teachers who had been implementing portfolio assessment for two years in 6 different Al-Makassed schools. The second purpose was to investigate the differences in attitudes between teachers in two different elementary cycles with different teaching experiences and educational attainment levels.--A modified version of an existing questionnaire was used to collect data. Frequency distributions as well as percentages were used to analyze data and address the questions raised in the study. In addition, a t-test was used to determine any significant differences in attitudes between teachers with high and low teaching experience. One-way Anova was used to test for any significant differences among teachers with different educational attainment levels. Furthermore, another t-test was used to determine any significant differences in attitudes between teachers in the upper and lower elementary cycles. Results showed that the 32 teachers who returned the questionnaire evidenced positive attitudes towards portfolio assessment and believed that portfolios were a valuable tool for documenting students' growth over a certain period of time. Furthermore, most respondents identified practical problems with portfolio use including allotting time to portfolio conferences, portfolio organization and assigning grades to them and listed problems with the weight, size and place of portfolios. No significant differences were found in the attitudes among the various subgroups of teachers. The results were discussed and recommendations were made for future research.