Portfolios within the preschool environment

Abstract

The academic community has been discussing the options for using portfolios within the education process for a number of years. Studies looking at this phenomenon often focus on a constructivist concept of portfolios where the child is the main agent in creating the document (Sitz & Bartholomew, 2008; Smith et al., 2003). The alternative to this is the positivist concept of the portfolio. The submitted research study is focused on the use of portfolios specifically within the preschool environment. The research's main objective was to understand how children's portfolios are used within the education process in preschools and present the children's perspective on their own portfolios. Adopting a qualitatively-focused research design, the research methods used were content analysis of portfolios, and interviews with children on their document. The research findings show that within the preschool environment, portfolios are used in a number of ways. These ways are directly linked to the teacher's belief on the importance of portfolios for preschool-age children. A child's portfolio can be a concept, a tool, a method or also a means. The results also present the children's original perspective on their own portfolios. This study is based on a part of my completed rigorosum thesis (Travnickova, 2019).