Re-viewing Portfolio Writing from a Metacognitive Perspective

Abstract

Portfolio writing, a pedagogic construct of the late 20^th century, which can be viewed as one of the latest branchings of the mainstream writing research, can also be considered as an offshoot of the ‘paradigm shift’ (Thomas Kuhn,1962) from the long prevailing product approach to an emerging process approach. Theory, research and classroom practice, all had been confined to the written products; and ‘the writer’ was more or less neglected.  The process approach brought to the forefront, the psyche of the writer by giving equal importance to the psycho-cognitive processes underlying the activity. The term ‘activity’ has been used here in the sense that writing is a higher order mental activity. Portfolio writing, moving one step further, reveals not only the writer’s ability at composing in the present, but consolidates the schema of the past, as well as forecasts the writing potentials of future, too. This paper tries to validate, how simultaneously the process and the product together result in the learning outcome, in the context of assessing writing performance.