The purpose of this study was to compare personal investment levels among nonmusic major piano students in the contexts of portfolio and teacher-directed assessment. Three problems were addressed: 1) identifying students' perceptions of direction, persistence, continuing motivation, intensity, and performance in the context of teacher-directed goal setting, choice of instructional activities, and evaluation of performance; 2) identifying students' perceptions of the five personal investment behaviors in the context of portfolio assessment; and 3) comparing student perceptions as identified in problems one and two.

The purpose of this study was to describe how sixth-grade students talk about their writing and their writing portfolios in a natural setting. A qualitative approach was used in the study. Through interviews, classroom observations, and analysis of site artifacts, I studied four female sixth graders’ talk in the context of a writing workshop for eighteen weeks. Assuming the role of limited participant observer, I spent a minimum of six to eight hours each week in the classroom observing and interviewing the informants during the second semester of the 1993-1994 school year. The primary questions I addressed were (a) How do sixth graders talk about their writing? and (b) How does writing fit into the informants’ personal literacy configurations? I codified all data in order to analyze how students talked about their portfolios. Two themes of talk emerged in this analysis: textual responses--responses to content, language, perspective, and mechanics; and affective responses--the role of association, imagination, accomplishment, singularity, effort, fantasy/realism, and entertainment value in their writing. Results revealed that the research participants applied a wide array of criteria-- both textual and nontextual in nature--to their writing and their writing portfolios. These criteria did not increase Significantly in number; however, students’ abilities to articulate the criteria developed. In addition, results indicate the social nature of writing. Five complex, interactive, and recursive factors highly influenced the manner in which students talked about their work: students’ prior writing experiences, shared trust, ownership and responsibility, classroom activities, and the opportunity to reflect. Results also suggest that students have the ability to assess their own writing and, therefore, should participate in self-assessment and in the establishment of a common composition vocabulary. Furthermore, the study reveals that portfolios encourage ownership and responsibility and aid Students in seeing themselves as writers. Finally, portfolios can be powerful reflective tools that may help many students in articulating their thoughts about their writing and in making revisions to their pieces. Students who do not see revision as an essential part of writing, however, may reap few benefits from portfolio assessment. / Ph. D.

The purpose of this study was to describe the criteria that students reported using when selecting writing samples for an assessment portfolio. Specifically, the study involved content analysis of student responses to five prompts which asked the students to give selection criteria for writing samples in language arts portfolios prepared for assessment. The population consisted of twelve eighth grade students in three urban middle schools. The students were in classes that were participating in the New Standards Portfolio Assessment Field Trial. In addition to the responses to prompts, students also submitted writing samples to be scored using New Standards rubrics. The writing samples were evaluated to determine if the students successfully selected pieces of their writing to provide evidence of standards attainment. Through the analysis of the student responses to the prompts, two categories of selection criteria were noted. Public standards were the standards that corresponded with the criteria that were presented to the students through their use of New Standards performance standards, portfolio exhibit requirements, and entry slips. Personal standards were criteria that did not correspond to the published criteria presented to the students. Ten sub-categories were identified. These ten sub-categories became the instrument for analysis and tabulation of the students' reported criteria for selecting writing samples for their portfolios. Findings indicated that students were willing to use the public standards and that they used them more frequently than personal standards in justifying selections for the assessment portfolio. However, student identification of appropriate criteria did not guarantee that the writing samples that the student submitted received scores that would indicate standards attainment.