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PREPARING YOUR TEACHING PORTFOLIO

WHAT IS A TEACHING PORTFOLIO?
A teaching portfolio is a record of your professional development as a teacher. It
illustrates your philosophy of teaching and your overall approach to teaching and
professional development.

“It is a collection of materials that document teaching performance.

The portfolio is to teaching what lists of publications, grants and
honours are to research and scholarship” (Seldin, 2004: 3).

Typically, it is a personal record of your teaching experience and your reflective

practice over your career. More importantly, preparing a teaching portfolio requires
teaching beliefs and practices to be put under the microscope with the aim of
rendering explicit knowledge which may currently be implicit, and framing teaching
itself as a source of scholarly enquiry (Boyer, 1990; Schön, 1995; Lyons, 2002). While
your portfolio makes a case for who you are as a teacher, it should not be confused
with a teaching CV. Good teaching portfolios are reflective documents, which provide
a coherent narrative of the teacher’s professional journey. This narrative uses
evidence which clearly substantiates the commentary made about this journey, and
reflects on the impact that teaching has on student learning.

WHAT IS ITS PURPOSE?

Teaching portfolios have two particular purposes according to Mues & Sorcinelli
(2000):

 A developmental process for reflecting on and improving one’s teaching;

 An evaluative product for personnel decisions such as tenure, promotion, or a
teaching award.

However, best practice recommends that regardless of promotional opportunities, it

is important to develop and maintain your portfolio. It is a very useful document to
have at various points in your career and will help you to focus on developing your
skills and abilities as a teacher. It is a process which encourages us to think about our
teaching and to reflect on our approach to teaching and how this may have evolved
over time. It also helps to reinforce our worth as educators when we reflect on the
teaching and related activities over the course of an academic year.
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DEVELOPING YOUR TEACHING PORTFOLIO

In devising a teaching portfolio, the purpose will dictate content, e.g. who the
audience (if any) will be, what it is required for, etc. This factsheet refers to best
practice when compiling a portfolio for award purposes or for formative development.
Typically, an award based portfolio should contain quite extensive reflective
dimensions and should make reference to the national professional development
framework

The following standard section headings are suggested for inclusion in the portfolio.
These are:

1. Statement of Teaching Philosophy

2. Teaching Performance and Effectiveness
3. Planning and Preparation
4. Assessment and Examination of Student Learning
5. Professional Development: Past, Present and Future

Portfolios should not exceed 4,000 words in length (excluding appendices).

WHAT IS INCLUDED IN A TEACHING PORTFOLIO?

When you are choosing materials and artefacts to demonstrate how your teaching has
been effective, it is important to provide variety. Student Evaluations of Teaching are
certainly valuable, but they will need to be complemented with other evidence if you
wish provide a comprehensive view of your teaching. Think about engaging in peer
observation of teaching, or including comments from external examiners.

While teaching portfolios are unique to each teacher, the following five section
headings should help direct you in terms of what to include, and should provide a
helpful framework within which to document and reflect on your teaching.

1. Introduction: Statement of teaching philosophy

The teaching philosophy is a statement about how you view teaching and your
personal orientation towards teaching and learning within your academic
discipline. In effect, this is the part of your portfolio where you present your
ideological stance on teaching.

O’ Farrell highlights a number of questions to reflect on when considering your

personal philosophy:

 What are my goals as a teacher?

 What demonstrates my desire to grow as a teacher?
 What are the opportunities and constraints under which I learn and others
learn?
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 Has my approach to teaching changed?

 What role do my students play in the classroom (listeners, participants etc.)?
 What teaching practices do I use and prefer? Why?

It is important to distil your beliefs about teaching down to their essence. As your
teaching philosophy is a personal statement, it can be presented in the first person. It
is also a good idea to elucidate at this point how long you have taught for, and your
specific context of teaching e.g. the discipline within which you teach.

As you develop your teaching portfolio, it useful to think about how your teaching
philosophy is reflected in your practices, and how you are illustrating that.

2. Teaching performance and effectiveness

Highlight and discuss the key disciplines you teach and describe your delivery
strategies, evaluation of the quality of teaching and how you would describe the
teacher/class relationship.
o Versatility, volume and level of teaching
It is a good idea to clearly outline your teaching roles and responsibilities,
including course/module titles, and whether they are undergraduate or
postgraduate etc. This is best presented in a table.
o Range of delivery strategies and quality of delivery
How do you deliver your modules? Why do you elect to use this strategy,
and how does it impact on student learning?
How do you evaluate and reflect on whether these strategies have been
successful?
o Teacher/class relationship
What sort of classroom dynamic do you aim to develop? How and why do
you do this, and what indications do you have that you have been
successful?

3. Planning and preparation

Describe the teaching and learning methods you employ and the teaching
materials you use (case studies, handouts, visual aids, labs, etc.)
o Teaching and learning methods
How do you develop and deliver an effective learning experience for your
students?
o Teaching materials
What is the rationale behind the materials you use in class?

4. Assessment and examination of student learning

Describe your approach to assessment and discuss any innovative assessment
strategies or materials which you have developed:
o Assessment strategies
What range of specific assessment strategies do you use? How do these
strategies complement the learning outcomes of your module or course?
What impact does assessment have on your students? How do you provide
feedback for your students?
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o Innovation in assessment
Have you designed new and effective methods of assessment? You may
wish to include samples of students’ work.

5. Professional Development: Past, present and future

This section is included to give you an opportunity to reflect upon and discuss how
your teaching has developed during the course of your career and your plans for
future professional development. A brief closing section could include your
thoughts about the experience of preparing the portfolio and how it has affected
your teaching practice, or any concluding remarks you consider appropriate.

Include detail on activities that demonstrate your commitment to professional

development, or that demonstrate the regard that your professional peers hold
for you. For example, you might include information on the following:
 Invitations to teach elsewhere (as guest lecturer);
 Publications in pedagogical journals;
 Publications of student textbooks or teaching software;
 Leadership in team teaching, contribution to the development of
teaching within the University or elsewhere;
 Professional service to other Universities (as external examiner, subject
expert or adviser/consultant);
 Teaching appointments such as visiting professorships/lectureship;
 Participation in third level teaching and learning training or workshops.

FORMAT OF THE FINAL PORTFOLIO

It is useful to approach your portfolio as you would any piece of academic writing in
terms of presentation. Ensure that you include the following:
 Title page and table of contents;
 Headings and subheadings that clearly signpost the material for the reader;
 References, where appropriate, to material in appendices;
 Evidence to support every statement on your approach or contribution to
teaching.
You may also submit your portfolio electronically using an eportfolio platform of your
choice. Please ensure that the external panel are provided with any necessary
passwords to ensure full access.

NOTES
 Since the portfolio is a narrative, make sure that all supporting evidence
included in the portfolio (e.g., quantitative results of SET evaluations) is
incorporated into the textual flow of the document.
 If you have been shortlisted for an award, you will be asked to include a
teaching recording in your submission. In this case, you should also include a
short section in your portfolio that provides the context of the
class/lecture/lab etc. you have recorded and a discussion of how it fits with the
teaching narrative of the overall portfolio.
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REFERENCES AND RESOURCES FOR FURTHER READING ON TEACHING PORTFOLIOS

Boyer, E., (1990) Scholarship Reconsidered, Princeton, NJ: The Carnegie Foundation
for the Advancement of Teaching.

Edgerton, R., Hutchings, P. & Quinlan, K., (1991) The Teaching Portfolio: Capturing
the scholarship in Teaching, American Association for Higher Education, Washington
D.C.

Lahart, O. & Maher, E., (2004), ‘The teaching portfolio – a vehicle for successful
teaching at third level’, paper presented at the All Ireland Society for Higher
Education Conference.

Lyons, N. (ed.), (1998) With portfolio in hand: validating the new teacher
professionalism, New York: Teachers College Press.

Lyons, N., Hyland A. & Ryan, N., (2002) Advancing the Scholarship of Teaching and
Learning through a Reflective Portfolio Process: the University College Cork
Experience [online]
http://www.ucc.ie/en/teachingandlearning/reportsandpublications/DocumentFile,2
5791,en.pdf

Murray, J.P. (2004) ‘Why Teaching Portfolios?’ Community College Review, Summer
22(1)

Mues, F. & Deane-Sorcinelli, M., Preparing a Teaching Portfolio, (2000) [online],

available: http://www.umass.edu/cft/publications/teachingportfolio.pdf.

National University of Ireland Galway, Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching
(2007) Preparing a Teaching Portfolio [online],available:
http://www.nuigalway.ie/celt/teaching_and_learning/resources.html

O’Farrell, C., Centre for Academic Practice and Student Learning, Trinity College
Dublin, Writing a teaching philosophy statement [online], available:
http://www.tcd.ie/CAPSL/academic_practice/pdfdocs/Philosophy_Statement_06.pd
f

O’Farrell, C.,(2007) Centre for Academic Practice and Student Learning, Trinity
College Dublin and AISHE, Teaching Portfolio practice in Ireland – A handbook,
[online], available: http://www.aishe.org/readings/2007-2/

Penn State University, Schreyer Institute for Excellence in Teaching (2007)

Developing a Teaching Portfolio [online], available:
http://www.schreyerinstitute.psu.edu/Tools/Portfolios/

Schön, D., (1995) ‘The new scholarship needs a new epistemology’, Change,
November 1995.
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Seldin, P. (2004) The Teaching Portfolio: A practical guide to improved performance

and promotion/tenure decisions, 3rd Ed., MA: Anker Publishing.

Seldin, P. (2003) ‘The Teaching Portfolio’, paper presented at the American Council on
Education and Department Chair Seminar, San Diego, CA.

University of Adelaide, Centre for Learning and Professional Development (2005),

Developing your Teaching Portfolio [online], available:
http://www.adelaide.edu.au/clpd/lta/download/t_portfolio.pdf

University of Massachusetts, Center for Teaching (2007) Preparing a Teaching

Portfolio [online], available:
http://www.umass.edu/cft/publications/teachingportfolio.pdf

University of Washington, Centre for Instructional Development and Research (1998)

Developing a Teaching Portfolio [online], available:
http://depts.washington.edu/cidrweb/Bulletin/TeachingPortfolio.html

Urbach, F. “Developing a Teaching Portfolio”, College Teaching, Spring 1992, 40(2)

Wolf, K. “Developing an Effective Teaching Portfolio”, Educational Leadership, March

1996 pp.34-37