Decoding portfolio- A CBSE Professional Development Session

A professional development session on ‘Decoding Portfolio’ was conducted by the Academic Coordinator of CBSE, Ms Varsha Dillikar on September 12, 2020, Saturday. The presentation, discourses and the discussions during the programme was substantial food for thought.  The striking fact which emerged was that the process of building the portfolio ushers a series of skills that dominoes into the ability to comprehend individual strengths and challenges over a period of time, thereby promoting the art of reflection. The teachers have often observed during their conversations with students that though the students can accurately tell what they were doing in a particular subject, they struggle to articulate what they might be learning. Constructing a personal portfolio to trace the learning curve encourages the students to take a few minutes to capture not only what they have learned, but also to analyse the ‘how’ and ‘why’, which will ultimately allow them to delve deeper into the content. The session also evidently outlined that the ‘assessment as learning’ is directly proportional to the student portfolio, which eventually leads to the development of metacognitive skills. The said skills in turn are scientifically proven to open the gates to taking learning beyond the classroom paraphernalia, a much sought-after ideal of the entire teaching-learning process. Thus, it can be clearly visualized that for portfolios to be truly valuable to both students and teachers, they need to provide an insight into not only what students created as a representation of their learning, but also how and why they created it. If the ultimate goal is to develop students as life-long learners, they need an opportunity to make connections to the content as well as the overarching learning objectives. Thus, to draw a conclusion, the session intended that the student portfolio is a living, breathing dossier of the learner’s achievements; thus, curating, reflecting and sharing should be at the helm of affairs. It lives on to tell the tale long after the academic year has ended. So, perception unified with a vivid imagination at its pivot, portfolios become summative in nature and can be viewed as a supplement to the end of a unit, project, or activity.