Teaching portfolio offers a means to promote better teaching and to document teaching achievement. Discuss the concept of a teaching portfolio and its importance to an academic.

I. Definition

There are various definitions of what teaching portfolio is. Fry and Ketteridge (2003,p.242) define teaching portfolio as a personal record of achievement and professional development as a university teacher. Fry and Ketteridge elaborate that it is a carefully selected and structured collection of material that may demonstrate a level of attainment, a range of skills and activity and/or progression (2003,p. 242).

Abrami, dApollonia and Rosenfield ( 20) define teaching portfolio as a comprehensive collection of descriptive and evaluative information on individual faculty teaching, which might include a statement of teaching responsibilities, course syllabi, instructor self evaluations, a description of improvement efforts, peer assessments, participation in teaching conferences, videotapes of instruction, student exams and essays, alumni ratings and so on (p.392-393). Morss and Murray (2005,p.7) provide a short yet succinct description of the dual functions of teaching portfolio when they describe it both as a collection of the educators works and the evidence of the educators works.

II. Forms of teaching portfolio

There are many forms of teaching portfolios. (Seldin,Miller and Seldin (2010,p.6) provides an example of a content page of a teaching portfolio.Such a portfolio might include the following entries :

Teaching Portfolio

Name of Faculty Member

Department/College

Date

Table of Contents

1.Teaching Responsibilities

2.Teaching Philosophy

3.Teaching Methodologies

4.Student Evaluations for Multiple Courses

5.Classroom Observations

6.Review of Teaching Materials

7.Representative Course Syllabi

8.New Instructional Initiatives

9.Evidence of Student Learning

10.Statement by the Head of Department assessing the lecturers teaching contribution to the department.

11.Teaching awards.

12.Teaching goals.

13.Appendices.

The forms of teaching portfolio evolve in tandem with technology. Contemporaneous with the hard copy, written ones, teachers and educators are increasingly preparing teaching portfolios in digital or electronic form. Teaching portfolios developed and displayed in digital format are often called digital teaching portfolios, multimedia portfolios, electronic portfolios (e-portfolios), e-folios and webfolios (Ndon 2010, p. 373).

III. Why the need to prepare teaching portfolio?

There are many reasons why educators prepare teaching portfolio. For example, faculty members are invariably being made accountable to provide some type of evidence of the effectiveness of their teaching, teaching portfolio therefore is a way in which to provide such evidence (Bernstein, et. al., 2006 as cited in Gurung and Schwartz 2009,p.68).

Seldin,Miller and Seldin (2010,p.6) list down other reasons why teaching portfolio should be prepared by faculty members as follow :

Portfolios can be used to determine award winners among educators in a learning institutions.

In case of retirement, portfolios serves as written repository of a professors tacit knowledge through which the professor transfers his/her experience to faculty members who takes over their position.

Teaching portfolios are like company profile for a learning institution whereby it provides data on the teachers performance to persons and organizations operating off campus, such as government agencies, boards of trustees, alumni, the general public and advocacy groups.

However, according to Seldin,Miller and Seldin (2010,p.6), there are two most often cited reasons for preparing teaching portfolios. The first one is to provide evidence to be used by the management in personnel promotion decisions. The ability of a teaching portfolio to provide the management with importance information on what individual professors do as teachers, why they do it, how they do it and the outcome of what they do, is the central reason why the management of a learning institutions require their professors/teachers to prepare teaching portfolios. Because the portfolios contain various data, portfolios provide the management with solid evidence/material from variety of sources. This material enables the management to better recognize and evaluate the effectiveness of faculty members as teachers inside and outside of classroom. When portfolios are submitted for personnel promotion decisions, the focus should be on evidence that documents the professors best work as a teacher and demonstrates that significant student learning (cognitive or affective) has taken place. Other factors that should be focused in teaching portfolios when they are submitted for personnel promotion decisions are the particular faculty members achievements, awards and successes.

The second most cited reason is to improve teaching performance (Seldin,Miller and Seldin 2010,p.6). Teachers and lecturers are hired by institutions with the expectation that they will deliver first-class performance.The teaching portfolios will assist the teachers and lecturers in this respect. A portfolio is a valuable aid in professional development of teachers and lecturers for three important reasons : (1) the level of personal investment in time,energy and commitment is high (since teachers/lecturers prepare their own portfolios) and all these personal investment/sacrifice is a necessary condition for change; (2) preparation of the portfolio moves many teachers/lecturers/professors to reflect on their teaching in an insightful,refocused way; and (3) teaching portfolio is based on discipline-based pedagogy i.e. the focus in a particular teaching portfolio is on teaching a particular subject to aparticular group of students at a particular time in a particular institution(Seldin,Miller and Seldin 2010,p.8).

IV. Conclusion

As discussed above there are many benefits of preparing teaching portfolios both to the lecturers/teachers and also to the learning institutions which employ them. On the teachers/lecturers part, the portfolios will act like a map which guides them through the up and downs of their teaching experience. It will also act like a reservoir of written experience which enable them to reflect on what they have done rightly and wrongly. On the institutions management part, teaching portfolios will make the task of deciding who merits a promotion becomes easier and less arbitrary. As such this short paper submits that teaching portfolios is something that cannot be dispensed with by the teaching profession.

References

Abrami, P.C., dApollonia, S. & Rosenfield, S.( 2007) The dimensionality of student ratings of instructions : An update on what we know and what we do not. In, Perry,R.P. & Smart,J.C. (Eds.) The scholarship of teaching and learning in higher education: an evidence-based perspective (p. 385-445). The Netherland : Springer

Fry,H. & Ketteridge, S. (2003) Teaching portfolios. In Fry,H.,Ketteridge,S. & Marshall,S.(Eds.) Handbook for teaching and learning in higher education (p.242-252). London : Kogan Page Limited

Gurung, R.A.R. & Schwartz, B.M. (2009) Optimizing teaching and learning: practicing pedagogical research. West Sussex : John Wiley & Sons Limited.

Morss,K. & Murray, R. (2005) Teaching at university: a guide for postgraduates and researchers.London : Sage Publication Ltd.

Ndon,U.T.(2010) Hybrid-context instructional model: the internet and the classrooms: the way teachers experience it.USA : Information Age Publishing Inc

Seldin,P., Miller, J.E. & Seldin, C.A. (2010) The teaching portfolio: a practical guide to improved performance and promotion/tenure decisions.San Francisco : John Wiley & Sons Inc.