Teacher Education Portfolio Research Report: Analysis and Insights

This report provides a comprehensive overview of teacher portfolios, addressing their purpose, importance, and essential components. It begins by defining the role of a teaching portfolio as a tool for outlining accomplishments and documenting teaching effectiveness, supported by research from Elton (2012) and Farrell (2015). The report then details the significance of a teacher portfolio for job applicants and professional development, emphasizing its use for reflecting on teaching experiences and refining skills. It outlines the necessary contents of a teacher portfolio, including a statement of teaching philosophy, documentation of teaching activities, student evaluations, and honors. The report concludes by stressing the importance of starting portfolio preparation early in a teaching career, with references cited in APA style, and emphasizes the value of continuous self-reflection and professional development as highlighted by Darling-Hammond, Jaquith & Hamilton (2012) and Tucker, Gareis & Stronge (2013).

Running head: TEACHING PORTFOLIO
TEACHING PORTFOLIO
Name of the Student
Name of the university
Author’s note

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TEACHING PORTFOLIO
Purpose of creating a teacher portfolio
A teaching portfolio acts as an important tool for the teachers in the educational field. A
teaching portfolio helps the teachers to outline his/her accomplishments in the portfolio in order
to receive a higher position in the workforce. A teaching portfolio is useful for the job applicants
for documenting their effectiveness of their teaching (Elton, 2012). Teaching portfolio can also
be used to reflect on the experiences, thus helping in refining of the teaching skills. Reflecting of
the teaching experiences have been found to have increasing the professional development of the
teachers. It helps them in understanding the gaps left in the teaching –learning process (Farrell,
2015).
The importance of the teacher portfolio
A teacher portfolio can be used by the job applicants for documenting the effectiveness of
the teaching such that it can be helpful in applying for the higher posts. Professionals can even
share their portfolio online for inviting comments from their peers for sharing the success of
teaching such that others can be benefitted from them (Elton, 2012). The personal statement from
the educator in the portfolio outlines the philosophy of the educators and the way they will alter
their methods for meeting the needs of the students (Tucker, Gareis & Stronge, 2013). A
teaching portfolio also contains sections for providing the student feedback, such as evaluation of
how a course has been taught.
What a teacher portfolio should contain
A teaching portfolio should contain thoughts about teaching, that is, a statement of
philosophy, goals and the objectives. Secondly, it should contain a list of documentation of the

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TEACHING PORTFOLIO
teaching, the list of courses that has been taught, the number of students, the entire course
description with a details of the learning objectives, the reading lists, the assignments, graded
exams and quizzes, online lectures, problem sets and videotapes of the teaching (Darling-
Hammond, Jaquith & Hamilton, 2012). Thirdly, the student evaluations of the teaching, written
comments from the students on the class evaluation, comments from the peer observer, activities
for improving the instructions, learning materials demonstrating the student’s learning, list of any
publications in the journals, incidence of any assistance to colleagues regarding teaching. List of
any honors, awards or achievements.
When you should begin preparing/organizing/collecting items for your teacher portfolio and
why
In is necessary to begin making a teaching portfolio as soon as the graduation training
begins. Even before setting foot inside the classroom, I is important to begin thinking about the
objectives and the ideas that would guide the applicant. Initially it is necessary to collect the
teaching materials as one gains experience, then one can start self-reflecting on the teaching
procedure (Farrell, 2015). The materials has to be selected to include in the portfolio. Reading
the articles and attending workshops on teaching can be helpful to identify the recent issues
related to teaching and the probable approaches. The portfolio would be developed gradually as
one builds the teaching experiences. Portfolio making should be initiated at the beginning of the
career to expand the job probabilities and to reflect on one’s strength and limitations.

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TEACHING PORTFOLIO
References
Darling-Hammond, L., Jaquith, A., & Hamilton, M. (2012). Creating a comprehensive system
for evaluating and supporting effective teaching. Stanford, CA: Stanford Center for
Opportunity Policy in Education.
Elton, L. (2012). Criteria for teaching competence and teaching excellence in higher education.
In Evaluating teacher quality in higher education (pp. 40-48). Routledge.
Farrell, T. S. (2015). Reflective language teaching: From research to practice. Bloomsbury
Publishing.
Tucker, P., Gareis, C., & Stronge, J. (2013). Handbook on teacher portfolios for evaluation and
professional development. Routledge.