The “TYCA Guidelines for Preparing Teachers of English in the Two-Year College” neglects to mention portfolios or eportfolios as a best practice with which two-year faculty should be prepared; the authors argue that eportfolio pedagogy and practice should be part of two-year faculty preparation to best serve both students and faculty at two-year colleges.

This article discusses the contradictions of portfolio reflective writing for basic writing students and suggests a more dialogic option of third-party address.

The article provides suggestions for using a grading contract/portfolio approach to assessing writing for introductory composition classes comprised of basic writers.

This essay chronicles an English department overhauling its rubric design, curriculum, and portfolio in order to emphasize a wider range of “real-world” writing.

The online IPJ (Interactive Portfolio Journal), open to the individual student and the teacher but not to the whole class, allows online discussion to draw from both public and private voices, and productively uses the traditional focus on collective critical exchange in tandem with private reflection

Reviews four books: Listening Up: Reinventing Ourselves as Teachers and Students, by Rachel Martin; Disturbing the Peace, by Nancy Newman; Let Them Eat Data: How Computers Affect Education, Cultural Diversity, and the Prospects of Ecological Sustainability, by C. A. Bowers; Assessing the Portfolio: Principles for Practice, Theory, and Research, by Liz Hamp-Lyons and William Condon.

Suggests that beginning writers can improve skills when they exchange letters with peers, teachers, and others. Offers a brief historical perspective on the use of letters as a pedagogical device. Outlines current applications of letter writing and exchanges in: English as a second language; technical and business writing; composition and literature classes; and portfolio reflection letters.

Shares freshman-composition students’ stories about portfolio assessment (interviewing students at length three times during the semester), to examine ways students understand portfolios, how portfolios work, and why sometimes they do not. Suggests concerns relevant to implementing department-wide competency portfolios. Argues that community colleges may be better situated than large universities to reap the benefits of portfolios.

Describes how a reader-response approach can help students construct a portfolio of readings that reflects their development as poetry readers. Describes using a reader-response journal, communal learning activities, and a portfolio to create a recursive process through which students develop a better understanding of how poetry works. Discusses evaluation of the portfolio.

Explores issues, problems, and procedures involved in large English departments which use portfolio assessment and where part-timers and full-timers need to collaborate in this process. Offers recommendations involving the relationship of part-time and full-time teachers in such programs.

Asks if there is a place for portfolio assessment in the literature classroom. Finds that portfolios help students use writing to engage literary texts in multiple and productive ways, and offer opportunities to examine effects of the reading process over the course of the writing pieces. Argues for a particular kind of portfolio focusing on a single literary work.