Portfolio Development and the Assessment of Prior Learning: Perspectives, Models and Practices

by Elana Michelson

For over thirty years, portfolios have been used to help adult learners gain recognition for their prior learning and take greater control of their educational experiences. The portfolio has become a distinctive means of assessing such learning, serving as a meaningful alternative to conventional papers and standardized testing. Portfolio Development and the Assessment of Prior Perspectives, Models, and Practices provides a primer of flexible approaches to shaping and conducting portfolio-development courses. It offers practitioners in the field an extensive range of model assignments, readings, and classroom activities, each organized around a specific Academic Orientation, The Meaning of Education, Personal Exploration, Learning from the Outsider Within, The World of Work and Careers, and Dimensions of Expertise. Twelve case studies by practitioners in the field then show how academics in the US and around the English-speaking world have adapted the portfolio to changing circumstances in order to deliver academically rich educational services for adults. These case studies highlight portfolio development in the context of web-based instruction, changing institutional imperatives, service to historically disenfranchised groups, partnerships with industry, and cross-institutional cooperation.In addition to serving as a valuable hands-on resource for practitioners, Portfolio Development and the Assessment of Prior Learning locates portfolios and assessment in a broad social and intellectual context. Thus, the authors also offer an historical overview of the usefulness of portfolios in the assessment of prior learning and then consider their use in the future, given current trends in higher education for adults. The book explores the implications of a changing educational landscape, in which new student populations, budgetary pressures, and understandings of knowledge both enrich and challenge student-centered approaches such as portfolios.The approaches and case studies are not only valuable to adult educators but, equally, to faculty in higher education concerned with the development of competency- and outcomes-based assessment.

306 pages, Paperback

First published September 28, 2004

About the author

Elana Michelson is a New York City girl who has encamped to the Hudson Valley, where she writes, reads, gardens, and volunteers with local social justice organizations. After thirty-five years as a professor, she has put down a beloved career of academic writing (and student papers) in favor of writing murder mysteries. She earned a PhD in English from Columbia University, but gets her knowledge of the life and times of Part of the Solution by, well, having been there.

Reviews

[Kari · Rating 2 out of 5]

This must be what my inter-library loan system sent me. Not what I expected, since I wanted a different book. About all I can do with it is look at the references and see if I want to read any.