Professional Portfolios

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 teacher's 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

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ers prefer not to include such a statement, the act of writing a philosophy helps a teacher clarify beliefs about teaching and can be useful as a learning tool and is helpful to readers. The philosophy statement puts emphasis on establishing connections between teaching philosophy and actual methods and outcomes by reflecting on the teaching of craft. Photographs and visual documentation can be added to a portfolio but are not necessarily to be required. Hurst, et al (1998) stated that photographs and visual documentation can provide some of the strongest support for a teacher's efficacy. If photographs are included they must be captioned and identified. Letters or recommendation from former principals, mentors, or instructors (in the case of new teachers) are also items which can be included in the portfolio. Though not necessarily required in this school's portfolio, letters of recommendation from professional contacts serve to validate claims of competency made by a teacher (Campbell & Brummett, 2002). It is also required that teachers include a listing of personal professional goals that they want to achieve in their classroom or at a particular school. Teachers should also include a short-listing of goals for

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