The Use of Portfolio to Assess Students’ Performance

Recent educational developments such as constructivism and multiple intelligence theories as well as society requested new trends engendered to radical change in traditional approaches of instruction and assessment. For this reason, alternative assessment approaches are needed in assessing both learning process and learning product. Nowadays, one of the alternative assessment techniques used in various disciplines such as mathematics, science and social sciences so forth is portfolio. The purpose of this study was to introduce portfolio assessment method which is used commonly in educational contexts recently. To achieve this aim, some information of portfolio such as its definition, its developing process, selection of contexts, its advantage and disadvantage were presented. Also, portfolio assessment method is compared with traditional one in terms of different aspects. Further, to exploit portfolio assessment method effectively some suggestions were made.