Le portfolio dans l’enseignement supérieur : perceptions des étudiants et intentions des enseignants

The purpose of this introductory paper is threefold. We start by setting out the literature review underlying the research we propose in this journal issue. Accordingly, we first consider studies that have shed light on the important role of students’ perception in educational contexts. Specifically, these studies have shown that students’ perception of pedagogical contexts and teaching activities (either related to assessment or training) are more relevant in determining their approaches to learning and their behaviour than the actual contexts and activities. It should be underlined that students’ perception may be significantly different from the pedagogical intentions of the teaching activities’ developer. Secondly, we will show how this general idea about a potential gap between students’ perception and teacher’s goals can be applied to the use of a portfolio. Indeed, this tool is widely used in higher education nowadays in a reflexive and experiential perspective of learning and assessment, as well as in an effort to hold students accountable for their learning and assessment processes. The second objective of this paper is to present the shared methodological research design and the different tools (semi-structured interviews and online surveys) we developed together for data collection in the three different contexts. Finally, we present one table by educational context in order to highlight their characteristics (note that papers 2 to 4 explore each of these more in depth). The conclusion will highlight the research problem that bring together the researchers within this study and will guide the reader through the following sections.