Making the Grade: A Journey in Designing a Quality Rubric Design
Teacher education programs strive to create and maintain rigorous, achievable standards
for educators beginning with teacher candidates and continuing through the their professional
life. Practice of this philosophy must begin development in the preservice teacher in order to lay
the foundation of future investment toward their own continued professional development.
Portfolios have continued to become a growing presence in field-based teacher education
programs in an attempt to track the progress of teacher candidates on their path to achieving
these standards. However, their effectiveness in attaining an accurate picture of teacher candidate
achievement has been unstable. A major issue in the utilization of portfolios is an inconsistent
assessment system. While the understanding of rubrics has improved portfolio evaluation, their
reliability has proven tentative at best.
To what extent can rubrics be used as an effective tool for evaluating preservice teachers’
portfolios?
Literature Review
Portfolios have been an assessment tool utilized by teachers for over two decades. Most
commonly they are developed in the elementary school setting, typically in the language arts
content area (Farr & Tone, 1998). However, more recently, higher education has found portfolio
development for evaluation purposes to be on the rise (Galloway, 2001). This is especially true
for teacher education programs. With increased accountability and state and national standards,
teacher education programs have turned to portfolios to demonstrate candidate achievement in
content and developmental proficiencies, dispositions, and performance skills (Shannon & Boll,
1996).
By definition, portfolios are “a planned and organized collection of information that
describes and documents and individual’s experiences, knowledge, skill, achievements,
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Convention