Finland

In the recommendations of the Finnish Information Society Programme for Education, Training and Research 2004-2006 it was announced that good overall and pedagogical ICT skills enable the teaching professionals to develop their own work and refresh their teaching methods. Supporting this need the Finnish Virtual University has funded several sub-projects through funding they received from the Ministry of Education. “TieVie” is one of the funded projects by the Ministry of Education.

The TieVie project offers training free of charge to all the teachers and other staff members in Finnish universities. Training started in 2001 with two courses, one part of the program aimed to provide skills in using ICT for educational purposes and the other part aimed at content-specific and professional applications, the production of digital learning materials, institutional information management, and an ability to assist, support and train colleagues, develop the school community and act a part of an expert network. During the training the participants collect all products in a portfolio.

The Ministry of Education monitors the number of participants, their affiliations and the work they have achieved during the training. Until now 934 persons have passed the course and the amount of participators this year’s course is 100. The aim is that by 2007 at least 75% of teachers have the knowledge and skills to use ICT in teaching. (Ministry of Education 2004). The funding from the Ministry has decreased yearly for the aim of creating local courses of ICT in different universities.

Norway

The Norwegian Ministry’s Programme for Digital Competency 2004 – 2008 states that by the end of 2008, portfolio assessment should be in use at all levels of the educational system in Norway. Thus, the use of portfolios is an imperative at all levels of the Norwegian educational system. Norway has witnessed a number of strong official commitments to the use of portfolios since 2003, with the emphasis on e-portfolios. In 2003 a white paper to the Parliament proposed that portfolios should be used in primary education for learning, as an overall assessment tool and for school-parent contacts. From 2003 teacher education had to integrate the use of portfolios in their plans, as portfolios were considered one of the important tools of “The Quality Reform”, a major educational reform in higher education.
The Norwegian policy documents use the concepts “portfolio”, “digital portfolio” and “assessment portfolio”, often in connection with policy statements of using more ICT in education and introducing new methods of teaching and learning. However, it is up to the individual school and teacher to define what pedagogical, technological and other implications the portfolio imperative should have.

Italy

In Italy portfolio use in schools for assessment purposes is high on the policy agenda and part of the school reform. The Italian Ministry of Education (MIUR )i introduced the use of the portfolios in school with the Ministerial Decree Nr. 100 dated September 18th 2002. The article 7 describes the portfolio as “Competence portfolio” and as an object that includes: descriptions of the progress of the student; document (assessment test, projects, etc) produced by student during the school year. The law indicates that the portfolio should be updated and compiled by the student’s family and teacher (in accordance with the working team – head teacher).

The second step in the introduction of the portfolio was made with the Law Nr. 59. The annex “Indicazioni Nazionali per i Piani di Studio Personalizzati nella Scuola Primaria” (Presidential Decree Nr. 275/99) describes portfolio structure, its fuctions and management. It is divided into two sections: the evaluation and orientation sections, both of which aim at helping the student to be aware of his/her skills.

At a national level the Italian Ministry of Education is to disseminate the use of portfolio, which is supported by the teachers’ training through INDIRE’s e-learning environment. INDIRE offered to teachers a training course with experiences in the use of portfolio at national and international level and exchanges of opinions with experts via synchronous and asynchronous tools.

Catalonia

The Catalan Ministry of Education has been involved in the training and coordination of a small number of primary school teachers who pilot the European Language Portfolio (ELP) in Catalonia to reach the principles and aims of the Council of Europe in the field of modern languages.

The concept of the European Language Portfolio (ELP) was developed by the Language Policy Division of the Council of Europe, piloted from 1998 to 2000, and launched on a pan-European level during the European Year of Languages (2001) as a tool to support the development of plurilingualism in language learning. The ELP was designed partly to mediate the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEF) levels of language learners and to help them record their competencies in an internationally transparent manner and manage their language learning on a lifelong basis.

The schools and the teachers taking part in the project were selected following a public announcement made by the Catalan Ministry of Education. They were offered tailor-made teacher training sessions, an earmarked budget was assigned and teachers and schools were given institutional recognition from the Department of Education for their contribution. Two teams were created to pilot ELP in mainstream education: one for the 8-12 pupils’ ELP and another for the 12-18 year-olds.


Policies on portfolio use in other European countries

In most other European countries portfolio use in teacher training has only been taken up recently or is not yet on the national policy agenda and mostly driven by organisational initiatives. In the field of teacher training, if not centrally directed, the universities have their own policies of introducing the use of portfolios in teacher education. The UK and the Netherlands will be illustrated here as examples where the development of e-portfolios is quite high profile. These two examples also show an emphasis different to the countries of the case studies, they encompass e-portfolios also as a tool for documenting lifelong learning and to move between different stages of education.

Much experience with the implementation of digital portfolios has been acquired in the Netherlands, through both national projects and initiatives set up by most higher education institutions. Here the creation of portfolios is strongly connected to issues such as competence development, employability and lifelong learning. In the Netherlands there have been a number of examples of the use of the portfolio in education where teachers (at university) are trained in education that is competence-oriented and prepares students for a clear professional practice. (Surf Stichting 2004). The university teachers training division at the University of Amsterdam has, for example, been working for years with the competencies for teachers.

E-portfolios are an emerging area of technology-supported learning which is beginning to be reflected in UK policy. Although no formal national e-portfolio system exists at the moment, e-portfolios are referenced in mainstream national policy. They might be seen as providing the ‘glue’ between elements of the learning and assessment processes. There is a widespread policy support for national implementation of an e-portfolio process and consequently work has been commissioned to support the drawing up of detailed specifications.

The e-Strategy, ‘Harnessing Technology’ refers to e-portfolios in their relation to the personalised on-line learning space. Every school and college will have a personalised on-line learning space by 2007-8 ‘with the potential to support e-portfolios’. The paper outlines the use of e-portfolios as a personalised tool for learners that supports them at all stages of education and with progression to the next stage. Although the extent and function of an e-portfolio has yet to be defined, the e-strategy does point to key components which it believes e-portfolios must have.

The 14-19 Education and Skills Policy White Paper (DfES 2005) was unequivocal in its support of the introduction of technology to support assessment. In this policy paper, e-portfolios were seen as a way to support the practical assessment of vocational and occupational courses. The Qualification and Curriculum Authority (QCA) was explicitly encouraged to continue its assessment modernisation programme.

The Higher Education Funding Council for England’s (HEFCE) e-strategy also mentions e-portfolio as a strand of work it expects to continue. E-portfolios in the higher education sector are largely concentrated around good practice in personal development planning.

Although these policies tend to refer to different components of the e-portfolio process, taken together, they form a comprehensive view of what e-portfolios could encompass in their support of learning, teaching and assessment (UK country 2005).

A recent EUN survey on Assessment schemes for Teachers’ ICT Competencies revealed that more flexible, learner centred, forms of assessment and accreditation for teachers’ competencies are needed (Balanskat 2005). Portfolios could play an important role in that process. Some other countries have only started to take initiatives accordingly, which are briefly mentioned in the following.

In the context of the recommendations of the Swiss Conference of Cantonal Ministers of Education- CDPI-EK concerning the development of teachers competencies in ICT use, there is also a proposition to develop personal training portfolios in ICT related teaching competencies that are to be recognised across cantonal boarders and, wherever, possible, internationally compatible.

France has also started to look into the issue, especially in relation to the C2i certification for teachers and other students at universityii.

In Northern Ireland the regional training unit will run on-line programmes of professional development using e-portfolios. On-line access to material, peer-to-peer, email and file exchange facilities will be mandatory requirements for the professional qualification for headship in Northern Ireland.

In Germany the use of portfolios for students is envisaged to be integrated in the concept of the full day schools as a means of showing competencies students have in using new technologies.

In countries where there are no special national scale initiatives and projects for the use of e-portfolios in schools, work is in progress for regulating ICT-competencies and their evaluation, as well as to create suitable conditions to endeavour these competencies, e.g. Lithuania. Portfolios could play an important part in that process. However, information about developments and different e-portfolio initiatives is not yet available in many countries at national level.

This part of the paper looked into policy practices, and the following part will present several case studies to give more insight into the practical implementation of portfolios in the field of teacher training.

References

Balanskat, A. (2005) Assessment Schemes For Teachers' ICT Competence – A Policy Analysis, Results from PIC/P2P Survey, European Schoolnet, Brussels.
http://www.eun.org/insight-pdf/special_reports/
PIC_Report_Assessment%20schemes_insightn.pdf

Council of Europe (2001)Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dysthe, O. (2004) The Challenges of Assessment in a New Learning Culture,
Lecture to the NERA/NFPF 32 Conference, Reykjavik, Island, March 11 – 13.

Department for Education and Skills (2005) Harnessing Technology: Transforming learning and children's services. UK. http://www.dfes.gov.uk/publications/e-strategy

Education and Skills Policy White Paper (2005). DfES, UK.
http://www.dfes.gov.uk/publications/14-19educationandskills/pdfs/14-19WhitePaper.pdf

Electronic portfolios in the Netherlands (2004) Surf Stichting, Netherlands.
http://www.surf.nl/en/download/Electronic_Portfolio_Netherlands.pdf

Finnish Information Society Programme for Education, Training and Research 2004-2006. (2004:14), Publications of the Ministry of Education, Finland. http://www.minedu.fi/julkaisut/koulutus/2004/opm14/opm14.pdf

Lithuanian country report on ICT in Education, (2005), Insight Country Report, European Schoolnet.

PLUTO project Report (PLUTO-sluttrapportering). (2004), Norway http://www.itu.no/Dokumenter/Rapporter/1079504795.59/view

A short brochure in English summarizing the results is available at http://zalo.itu.no/ITU/filearchive/ENG_PLUTO_FV.pdf

Rees Jones, P., Vuorikari, R. (2004) Building Scenarios, EPICC project outcome.

Tartwijk, J. van, Driessen, E. (2004) Functions of Electronic Portfolios in Higher Education. In P. Boezerooij & P. Gorrissen (Eds.). Dutch e-Learning in Europe, SURF foundation, Utrecht, pp. 8-10.

UK country report on ICT in Education, (2005), Insight Country Report, European Schoolnet.
http://insight.eun.org