Portfolios support child-centered learning

Portfolio-based assessment can and should focus everyone's attention (the student's, teachers', and family members') on the importance of learning. The idea of using a portfolio supports the child-centered approach to curriculum and instruction. It helps a teacher to understand children's development and to plan learning activities more effectively. The use of a portfolio can also become a tool to help involve family members in the learning process. Involvement of the family in the student's learning is really valuable because the portfolio can be used as a reference point for them to create real-life connections that enhance the student's learning outside of school and in the home as well. Most of all, "portfolio-based assessment should serve as a reflection of the child's development, as a foundation and context for learning, and as records of the individual child's learning experiences and accomplishments" (Burke 1999).


Portfolios help to provide a structure for encounters with children and their families. According to the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), the kinds of information that are, "essential for planning appropriate learning experiences for young children include: the knowledge of individual children, knowledge of child development and knowledge of diversity." By using observations, getting to know and understand their students as individuals, assessing and evaluating them, and involving the students' families in the learning process, teachers can build the individual student's portfolio and better support child-centered learning in their classroom (Seitz 2008).


Portfolio-based assessment can be used as a way to further instruct children as well as a way to assess them. Using a portfolio certainly does not take the place of using standardized testing, but it helps to reveal new information about students that standardized testing cannot do with simply assessing what they may or may not know, their ability to take a test, or how they compare to other students in the classroom, around their state, or throughout the nation.



Sources I used in addition to discussions from my assessment and curriculum oriented courses:

Seitz, H. (March 2008).The Power of Documentation in the Early Childhood Classroom.
Young Children. 88-93.

Burke, K. (1999). The Mindful School: The Portfolio Connection. Arlington Heights, IL: Skylight Training and Publishing Inc.