Student learning portfolios can help universities make admissions decisions, but up to 5 percent of high-school students said they could not get help from teachers as they prepared them, academics said on Tuesday at a news conference arranged by the Ministry of Education.
The ministry’s curriculum guidelines released in 2019 for 12-year basic education require students to compile a portfolio of their learning outcomes over the three years of high school.
Since 2022, university applicants have been required to submit their portfolios.
Photo: Rachel Lin, Taipei Times
However, some students told education rights group EdYouth that their teachers refused to assist them, with their learning portfolios, causing concern among parents over children’s rights to apply to universities, two professors said.
Lin Kuo-ming (林國明), a professor in National Taiwan University’s Department of Sociology, last year conducted a survey of high-school students and high-school teachers nationwide, with a response rate of 76.39 percent among 2,825 students and 78.32 percent among 1,228 teachers.
About 5 percent of students said that their teachers were unhelpful with their learning portfolios, while 80 percent of teachers said they helped, Lin said.
The survey showed that 70.85 percent of teachers said they could not help due to tight schedules and overwhelming amounts of work, while 69.87 percent said they were uncertain whether the portfolios would matter to professors, Lin said, urging the ministry to write a policy to guide teachers regarding the matter.
Department of Higher Education Director-General Liao Kao-hsien (廖高賢) said that the ministry would collaborate with the Education Administration to prepare a policy and guide teachers to help students collate their portfolios.
Although some students believed the portfolios would give richer students an advantage over others, the research showed that less than 2 percent of students attended cram schools to polish up their portfolios, while satisfaction with their portfolios was not affected by the urban-rural divide, their parents’ occupations and their family’s social status, Lin said.
Eighty percent of teachers believed that producing a portfolio would help students develop abilities and explore their aspirations, while 90 percent of students reported acquiring a new skill from the work, he said.
Underprivileged students tended to believe that the portfolios helped them explore their aspirations and cultivate skills, he added.
The ministry said that it commissioned National Sun Yat-sen University (NSYSU) to research the opinions of professors who have reviewed written applications for admission to universities, with more than 3,300 surveyed every year.
The percentage of professors who read written applications at the second stage of the university admissions process has increased every year, said Shih Ching-lin (施慶麟), a professor in NSYSU’s Institute of Education.
Most professors review 31 to 60 written applications per year and spend about 14 minutes reading each application, Shih said.
Meanwhile, the National Federation of Teachers’ Unions suggested setting a deadline for uploading PDF files of the portfolios, a format allowed in the university admissions process.
Department of Higher Education head Kuo Chia-yin (郭佳音) said that the issue would be examined, with the needs of students of different backgrounds, such as those from experimental education providers, taken into account.
Additional reporting by CNA
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
BITTERLY COLD: The inauguration ceremony for US president-elect Donald Trump has been moved indoors due to cold weather, with the new venue lacking capacity A delegation of cross-party lawmakers from Taiwan, led by Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), for the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump, would not be able to attend the ceremony, as it is being moved indoors due to forecasts of intense cold weather in Washington tomorrow. The inauguration ceremony for Trump and US vice president-elect JD Vance is to be held inside the Capitol Rotunda, which has a capacity of about 2,000 people. A person familiar with the issue yesterday said although the outdoor inauguration ceremony has been relocated, Taiwan’s legislative delegation has decided to head off to Washington as scheduled. The delegation
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
Another wave of cold air would affect Taiwan starting from Friday and could evolve into a continental cold mass, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Temperatures could drop below 10°C across Taiwan on Monday and Tuesday next week, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. Seasonal northeasterly winds could bring rain, he said. Meanwhile, due to the continental cold mass and radiative cooling, it would be cold in northern and northeastern Taiwan today and tomorrow, according to the CWA. From last night to this morning, temperatures could drop below 10°C in northern Taiwan, it said. A thin coat of snow
RSS