Analysis of elementary school science and technology teachers? views and attitudes towards portfolio (file of student's product) one of alternative assessment methods (example of elementary schools in the center of Manisa)

Nowadays, new developments in the science and technology have necessitated also changes in the field of training. Due to the fact that general teaching method is inadequate in the field of training trainers have started to adopting modern approaches. In order to catch these advances and changes; after revising and renewing, old programs have been applied by progressive stages since 2005-2006 academic year by the Ministry of Education, Education and Teaching Committee. With the effect of constructivism, applied in new programs, concept of assessment, which is based on learning process, has been brought foreground especially in measurement and evaluation applications and has necessitated using alternative assessment methods like portfolio.This research was carried out in order to determine the attitudes and views of science and technology teachers?, working in elementary, schools towards portfolio assessment method (file of personal development, file of student?s product) which is one of alternative assessment methods.The research is a descriptive study and is designed as a general scanning model. This research was carried out with 64 science and technology teachers who works in 36 different primary schools in the center of Manisa. In order to determine the attitude towards portfolio assessment method, ?An Investigation of Teachers? Attitudes Towards Portfolio Assessment? which was found in English after literature scanning and studied its reliability and validity by researcher after translating into Turkish has been used in the research. In addition, a semi-structured interview form compiled by researcher has been used in order to determine the teacher?s views about the portfolio assessment. The measure of attitude has been applied on 64 teachers and one to one meetings with 12 of them have been hold. While the quantitative data which was obtained from measure of attitude has been analysed with the SPSS 15 package program, the qualitative data which was obtained from the meetings has been analysed with the technique of descriptive analysis. In the analysis result of quantitative data obtained from measure; t-test, analysis of variance (ANOVA), frequency and percentage has been calculated and on the other hand in the analysis of qualitative data with the frequency and percentage, quotations of people?s views have been presented.As a result of the research; it was seen that the attitudes of teachers? towards portfolio assessment method didn?t show an important change according to their sex, university they graduated, priority and their lesson hours in a week. It was determined that applying portfolio assessment in science and technology lesson is suitable, it is right for the purposes of applicability because it enables to know student and follow intimately but portfolio assessment is time consuming and needs plenty of paper use and also it is a tiring work and lastly, teachers need a comprehensive training (theoretical-practical courses and seminars) so that they can apply the portfolio assessment method efficiently.