[[alternative]]An Investigation of Students’ Performance in Learning of Visual Arts by Comparing Two Groups with High and Low Scores of Portfolio Assessment.

[[abstract]]This study investigates the application of portfolio assessment on visual art instruction and its influence on sixth-grade students with different learning achievements, aiming to increase the efficacy of visual art adaptive instruction. The title of the visual art curriculum for this research is “My Album”. It is developed for multiple assessments: teaching goals and the evaluation of students’ achievements in each unit of the course are designed according to the seven basic art behaviors. The results then form the basis for quantitative analysis. In addition to in-class observation of each stage of the course, four students with special achievements are also interviewed to provide a more complete picture. Based on the conclusions and limitations of this study, some suggestions are made to visual art education and for future research. The main findings of this research are as follows: I. The application of portfolio assessment on sixth-grade visual art instruction provides a varied method in evaluation, diversity in teaching, and results in vigorous responses from students. It promotes interest in learning, and has positive influence on both high- and low-achievement students. II. There are differences in the seven basic art behaviors among sixth-grade students with high or low learning achievement. Some art behaviors of the high learning achievement students are below expectation, while some of the low learning achievement students perform better than expected. This demonstrates that the traditional assessment of student performance only by their art works may not help them develop their abilities in the many aspects of art education. III. Some art behaviors of high learning achievement students reach only medium overall performance; on the other hand, those of low learning achievement students manage to achieve medium or even high performance. This means that portfolio assessment is likely to be more beneficial to low achievement students rather than to high achievement students. Finally, according to the conclusions and limitations of this study, the researcher made some suggestions to visual art education and some relevant research.