some experience with portfolio assessment for purposes of teacher evaluation, and another group that has had no experience in this area, will be assessed for their attitudes toward the assessment process.
The attitudes that will be examined consist of some of the attitudes often mentioned in the literature on teacher perceptions of portfolio assessment for teacher evaluation. These attitudes are: a) whether teachers feel that the portfolio assessment, while useful in some cases, requires too much subjectivity in terms of evaluation; b) whether teachers feel that portfolio assessment takes them away from their "real job" of teaching; c) the extent to which they believe that portfolio assessment is really the only fair way to evaluate teachers; d) whether they believe that portfolio assessments a good idea but that it should only be used for student teachers; e) whether they feel that most teachers would really enjoy the process of compiling portfolios; f) the extent to which they believe that portfolio assessment is probably more informative than any kind of standardized competency testing; and e) the extent to which they would find it difficult to advocate portfolio assessment due to lack of standardization regarding what should be placed in the portfolio.
The general purpose of the study is to determine whether teacher attitudes toward teacher evaluation using portfolio assessments differs in depending upon whether or not they have had actual experience with the process. In an effort to gain further insight into the possible relationship between attitudes toward portfolio assessment and experience with the process, the study will also collect some demographic background information on teachers (age, gender, number of years teaching).
Subsidiary analyses will then be conducted to determine whether the degree of attitude difference between experienced and non-experienced groups is related to one or more of these teacher...