Week 12 Project: Professional Portfolios
The purpose of this project is to develop a set of guidelines for the contents of professional portfolios to be created by teachers as part of their professional development. According to Zubizarreta (1994), the portfolio is a narrative document in which a faculty member concisely organizes details of his or her teaching efforts and accomplishments. Most portfolios run 8 to 10 double-spaced pages in length and offer selected information about such issues as a teacherÆs assigned responsibilities, philosophy, methods, materials, classroom experiments, participation in workshops, and other professional development efforts and teaching goals. A portfolio may include evaluations from students, peers, and supervisors along with student projects that concretely demonstrate learning.
A growing literature articulates the need to address the fundamental mismatch between new demands for teachers and existing opportunities for their professional growth (Xu, 2003). Teaching portfolios have evolved as a mechanism to promote school-centered professional development, but determining what should be placed in a portfolio can be difficult. Xu (2003) suggested that there are three types of portfolio models: the learning portfolio, the assessment portfolio, and the employment portfolio. Learning portfolios are personalized collections of teacher work that is used to promote reflection and ownership over the learning process. Assessment portfolios are selective collections of teacher work gathered according to structure guidelines set by the organization to provide information about a teacherÆs effectiveness. Employment portfolios are customized collections of information presented to prospective employers to help them evaluate a teacherÆs suitability for a professional position.
For the school in question, what is recommended is a combination of the learning and assessment portfolios as descr...