Professional Portfolios in Teaching - Essay Example

Professional Portfolios in Teaching While Professional Portfolios are being used to provide substantiation of the various skills and abilities that is desired in a teaching candidate, they allow teachers to present their qualifications, experiences and accomplishments in a manner that can distinguish themselves far ahead of their counterparts. Professional Portfolios are the vehicle through which teachers can present evidences of their growth and achievements over time. The professional arena is increasingly being competitive and characterised by a very low level of humane considerations. Speedy turnovers of professionals have also been noticed. It is at this critical juncture that a professional is required to update himself, excel in his respective area and sing the tune of the market. More so for a teacher, because, not only is he supposed to develop himself, he is also required to relay this development to his students, generating an overall improvement in the teaching-learning process. A comprehensive Professional Portfolio, therefore, would aid continuous development of a teacher besides embellishing his professional competence. Apart from showing professional growth over time in assorted educational situations, a portfolio would provide a venue to undertake reflective thinking, self-provoking exercise and identification of relevant pitfalls. The purposeful and careful documentation of what teachers are doing in school encourages teachers to conduct ongoing self-evaluation and reflection, and provides them with information to guide future self-improvement and professional development. This review process would fuel positive developments in a teacher, and all the while, the benefits would be radiated to the students. Although it is essential that a teacher document and review his activities to fuel professional development, he must clearly understand the key components of such development. Professionalism, to mature, requires undisputed appreciation of the profession, clear understanding of strengths and weaknesses and a continuous thirst to improve the prevailing state of affairs. Identification of one's strengths and weakness is the very first step towards any development. Professional development does not mean random application of development interventions to an individual professional. It stands for need-based and priority-focussed development process and entails, as a prerequisite, a clear identification of strengths and weaknesses. Like any other real-time service providing, interactive and hugely sensitive professions, self-reflection is crucial in teaching. This may be the only infallible, absolute characteristic of all good teachers. Good teachers routinely think about and reflect on their classes, their students, their methods, and their materials. They compare and contrast, draw parallels and distinctions, review, remove and restore. By doing this, they identify and develop an inventory of their strengths and weaknesses. This inventory, when subjected to analysis and prioritisation, would suggest areas that need attention. This platform would guide identification of development priorities and appropriate interventions. Developing a professional portfolio would enable teachers to review their progress and guide them towards more improvements (Edgerton, Hutchings, and Quinlan, 1991). While it is very important that a teacher understands his strengths and weaknesses, it would be incomplete if not demonstrated adequately. He must ensure that his strengths are appropriately applied for the overall improvement in the teaching-learning process while continuing to develop himself as a teaching professional. In the meantime, while it is important that his allied weaknesses are properly communicated, a teacher must review them and ensure that the impacts are minimal. In the longer run efforts must be made to minimise them. In this tune, opportunities are to be explored and created by a teaching professional to demonstrate his positive and negative attributes. It is essential, however, that these efforts are properly orchestrated and maximum benefits accrue to the teaching environment in general, and towards the professional development process of the teacher in particular. A professional portfolio, as noted by Edgerton, Hutchings, and Quinlan (1991), encouraged teachers to take important new roles in the observation and review of teaching. Learning to teach is a life-long developmental process. A teacher, therefore, must never forget that he is a student first. By nature, knowledge does not subscribe to stagnation. Besides perennial updates and changes, knowledge and academia does experiences regular upsurges of unique schools of thought. A teacher, by professional requirements, is required to accommodate and address these new challenges through appropriate update of their curriculum. This entails that a teacher would have to be a continuous learner. He must engage regularly and constructively on new happenings and developments focused on his own and his students' learning - approaching teaching as a learning process. This would fuel tremendous development in the profession besides the much-needed justification of his stand as a teacher. Portfolios capture the intellectual substance and "situatedness" of teaching in ways that other methods of evaluation cannot (Edgerton, Hutchings, and Quinlan, 1991). Teaching is a dynamic profession. While the profession, by its nature, experiences a host of institutional and environmental changes, changes in attitude, personal attributes, preferences and priorities of the teacher cannot be ruled out too. All these are bound to implicate tremendous impact on the career goals of a teacher. The teaching environment is changing radically. The numerous changes in the lifestyle, customs, values and aspirations of the people in this modern world are manifested in students also. This had posed numerous challenges to teachers and the teaching profession. While, considerable successes have been achieved in effectively addressing these challenges, there have been incidences of severe pitfalls. Technology is changing the way in which education is being delivered. Learning is taking place more and more via this digital medium. A relatively new concept, this technological revolution is apt to swallow the profession if proactive actions are not taken. Teachers are confronted hugely by this challenge since they are known to be generally less avid with this form of medium. More closer to the profession, teaching as a vocation is continually losing its core essence. Teachers are changing profession faster and more and more leaps are being made towards administrative positions. On the personal level of teachers, studies have indicated their dissatisfaction with regard to job, salary and the overall teaching environment. It is crucial that a teacher must understand these challenges confronting the profession and be prepared to deal with them. The teaching profession exists in a very dynamic environment. Therefore, teachers must anticipate more such likely changes that would come to the profession. These challenges should not be, however, taken in a negative sense but as opportunities - opportunities to improve and develop as a professional. People have realised for years that a problem is in itself a solution. Similarly any new issue will have a cluster of associated opportunities. These opportunities in the profession should be harnessed to develop one's own potential. While change is a continuous phenomenon, teachers must be its torchbearers, and move the teaching-learning process towards betterment. While he would be emanating similar tendencies in his students and facilitating overall improvement in the learning process, the teacher would derive successes through a bounce-back impact. All the while, the teacher would be strengthening his professional portfolio and moving ahead towards his career goals. Portfolios have gained much attention recently, chiefly for their uses in assessing teachers' development. Teachers have found portfolios to be efficient tools for documenting and evaluating their progress in the profession. They serve as proof of the accomplishments achieved during teaching experiences or educational careers. Consummate professional portfolios provides clear picture of where the teachers have been, where they are now, and where they are going in the education profession. Despite the many advantages of portfolios, there are also issues related to their implementation, content, and interpretation. Portfolios are sometimes regarded as messy to construct, cumbersome to store, and vulnerable to misrepresentation (Wolf, 1991). They can also be time-consuming if not implemented in a productive and selective manner. Nevertheless, there are many benefits out of this process. Seldin and Annis (1990) found that teachers in one study perceived their portfolios to be accurate representations of their teaching. Further, the study found that bad teaching could not be 'whitewashed' through an attractively presented portfolio. In other words, a portfolio cannot be used to present ineffective teaching as effective. More so ever, the point is not only on the development of portfolios. It encompasses the broader development of the teacher and the overall teaching-learning process. As more and more teachers have come to use them, portfolios have forged a new culture of professionalism about teaching. Bibliography Ashton, P., &Webb, R. (1986). Making a difference: Teachers' sense of efficacy and students achievement. New York: Longman. Campbell, D. M., Cignetti, P. B., Melenyzer, B. J., Nettles, D. H., Wyman, R. M. (1997). How to develop a professional portfolio: A manual for teachers. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Edgerton, R., Hutchings, P. & Quinlan, K. (1991). The teaching portfolio: Capturing the scholarship in teaching. Washington, DC: American Association for Higher Education. Evaluation tool carries a wealth of professional information, www.nsdc.org Fuller, E. F. (1969). Concerns of teachers: A developmental conceptualization. American Educational Research Journal, 6(2), 207-226. Palmer, Parker. (1999). "The Grace of Great Things: Reclaiming the Sacred in Knowing, Teaching, and Learning." In The Heart of Knowing: Spirituality in Education. Ed. Stephen Glazer. NY: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam. Torrance, E. P. (1970). Encouraging creativity in the classroom. Dubuque, IA: Wm. Brown. Seldin, P. & Annis, L. (1990). The teaching portfolio. Journal of Staff, Program and Organizational Development, 8(4), 325-332. Wolf, K. (1991). The schoolteacher's portfolio: Issues in design, implementation, and evaluation. Phi Delta Kappan, 73(2), 129-36. Wolf, K. (1996). Developing an effective teaching portfolio. Educational Leadership, 53(6), 34 37. Read More