When the term assessment is heard, tests generally come into mind (Russell & Airasian, 2012). However, assessment of children from birth to preschool years is different. They cannot read or write (Wortham & Hardin, 2016), and they also learn differently and at different rates. Therefore, it is necessary to accommodate assessment accordingly (Shepard et al., 1998). A portfolio is a well-accepted authentic assessment type (Gronlund & Engel, 2001). It is at the heart of assessment with young children because of its potential to recognize the uniqueness of each child (Kingore, 2008). To define the concept, portfolio means a collection of student work over time and documentation of growth in specific curriculum areas (Fiore, 2012). Despite its reported advantages, there are several challenges of the portfolio assessment process to reach offered benefits. For instance, there is no single way to do a portfolio. Therefore, teachers might create their own system which works for them (Kankaaranta, 1996). That being said, this uncertainty and flexibility of formative assessment can be demanding for teachers at the same time (Bell & Cowie, 2001). They have crucial role in this process, and there are different affective factors to consider upon teachers’ practices. Investigation of portfolio assessment and all these possible factors together might provide a comprehensive picture of portfolio assessment and provide practical implications to the field and teacher training.   

Identifying relationships and examining factors that affect teachers’ portfolio practices might enable understanding of teacher participation and allow for more successful portfolio practices in the portfolio assessment process (Kiser, 2008). Available related literature constituted the background for this research study, and intention and self-efficacy beliefs were proposed as predictors of teachers’ portfolio assessment practices. To explain, intention to perform or not to perform was identified as the most important determinant of a behavior according to Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) (Ajzen, 2005). Goal intention provides commitment to achieve it and has a primary role in understanding the motivated behavior (Gollwitzer & Bargh, 1996). Supporting this, intention and self-efficacy beliefs were found to have similar impacts on formative assessment practices. It was confirmed that teachers are more likely to practice assessment if they feel confident (Yan & Cheng, 2015). The probable reason for this is that self-efficacy beliefs can contribute to teachers’ ability to deal with stressful and challenging situations (Bray-Clark & Bates, 2003). However, since teacher self-efficacy is context-specific and differs across different tasks (Bandura, 1997), teachers can feel more or less efficacious in different circumstances (Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998). For this reason, the current study focused on preschool teachers’ self-efficacy specifically in portfolio assessment. Furthermore, as a part of this study, teaching experience was also investigated as a factor on portfolio practices to enable interpretation of findings by considering different factors.

To conclude, since teachers have a crucial role in portfolio assessment process, their practices on portfolio assessment are worth to examine in the field. However, the literature does not provide a comprehensive picture of teachers’ portfolio assessment practices. There are fewer research studies on portfolio assessment in both national and international literature. (e.g. Alaçam & Olgan, 2016; Appl et al., 2014; Krnjaja & Pavlović- Breneselović, 2016). Related literature also confirmed different challenges (Chen & Cheng, 2011) and misconceptions of teachers in portfolio assessment (Tangdhanakanond & Archwamety, 2019). All these imply a demand for research studies on portfolio assessment in early childhood education in both national and international contexts. To respond this need, this research study focused on portfolio assessment, and the scales were developed as a part of this study based on an extensive national and international literature review.

This research study was designed as a correlational research. It was aimed to investigate predictors of early childhood education (ECE) teachers’ portfolio related practices. Data collection instruments were developed as a part of the study and administrated by the researcher after getting required ethical approvals. To this end, four scales were developed including portfolio related practice, content, intention, and self-efficacy beliefs. In the process of scale development, the same steps were followed for all of the scales. Initially, an item pool was created based on the related literature review. There are no scales about portfolio assessment in ECE. However, there are some in the international literature yet having different purposes (e.g., Butts, 1997; Jones, 1998; Sonnier, 1999). As a first step, operational definitions were made based upon a detailed literature review. Next, an item pool was created for each scale by the researcher, and items were matched with the dimensions. Then, expert opinions were taken from seven faculty members: three from the field of early childhood education, two from the field of measurement and evaluation, and two from the field of science education. Experts were asked to evaluate each item’s suitableness to a specified construct and evaluate each item in terms of clarity. After making necessary revisions suggested by experts, cognitive interviews with think-aloud protocol were conducted on scales with two early childhood teachers working in public preschools in Ankara. It was requested from participants to think aloud while answering the questions and tell everything that they were thinking (Collins, 2003; Drennan, 2003). After the cognitive interviews, some minor changes were made on a few items for clarity. All the scales were finalized to be administered in the pilot study. Pilot data were collected from 371 early child teachers. Scales were subjected to exploratory factor analysis (EFA), and Cronbach’s Alphas were also generated for each scale. Then, main study data were collected from a total of 621 ECE teachers, and factor dimensions were confirmed in the Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) as well as reporting Cronbach’s alpha for reporting reliability of each scale. Moreover, to answer research questions, two following analyses were conducted: Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) for research question, “Is there a significant difference in ECE teachers’ portfolio-related practices with respect to years of teaching experience?” and “Standard Multiple Regression for “How well can early childhood teachers’ portfolio-related practices be predicted by portfolio-related intention and self-efficacy beliefs?”

Based on factor loadings and revisions in EFA and CFA analysis, it was confirmed that portfolio practice scale consists of three factors including content, child participation, and sharing. One factor was also extracted for intention and self-efficacy beliefs scale. According to descriptive analysis, teachers were found to have similar scores in content, child participation, and sharing in the portfolio process. Related to content, they mostly agreed on “Including different products that reflect the development of children in different areas”. In terms of child participation dimension, they mostly reported, “Enabling children to examine their own portfolio”. Moreover, regarding sharing, their most frequent practice was “Communicating with parents about the portfolio in matters such as supplying materials, organizing portfolio sharing days”. Portfolio content survey also showed that different kinds of activities, worksheets, and personal information about the child are the most frequently included components in child portfolios. To investigate whether portfolio practices differ by years of experience, one-way MANOVA analysis was conducted. It was found that teaching experience did not significantly contribute to teachers’ portfolio practices in terms of content, child participation, and sharing. Moreover, three separate standard multiple regression analyses were conducted to investigate whether self-efficacy beliefs and intention predict portfolio practices in content, child participation, and sharing. To control for inflated Type 1 error, Bonferroni adjustment was applied by dividing the alpha level of .05 by the number of analyses intended (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2019). Analysis results presented that the model with intention and self-efficacy beliefs was significant for teachers’ portfolio practices regarding content, child participation, and sharing. β values also indicated that self-efficacy beliefs make a stronger contribution to explaining these dependent variables than intentions.

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