Specifics on Teaching Portfolios
(These items are from a listserv about teaching.)Teaching portfolios are very individual. If they weren't, a lot of their value would be lost. The goals of a portfolio are:
- To present a comprehensive, personalized overview of your abilities, accomplishments, and aspirations as a teacher, and
- To provide information about yourself in a clear but brief format, so that a reviewer can tell "at a glance" who you are.
The two goals seem incompatible, but they aren't. If you rely on a cookie-cutter, dry-as-dust vita to present your credentials, you'll be lost in the crowd. You need as much personal identity as possible in a portfolio. If you overwhelm the reader with too much information, though, it will never be read. A successful portfolio should emphasize highlights, not be a catalog.
I usually spend an hour with a new faculty member talking about portfolios, exploring the person's interests and talents. One outcome is a page or two of reflective thinking, a personal essay about why the person is in the teaching business. That's a key part of a portfolio, because it sets a context for everything else. It's also something that grows and changes each semester. We talk about how to motivate students, about grading, and syllabi, ...... and all of these things become paragraphs, to be illustrated later by a succinct example. As time goes one, other paragraphs are added to summarize student evaluations of teaching, or awards received, or other neat stuff. It's hard to imagine sitting down to write a portfolio in one shot. If you approach the portfolio as a framework that refine and embellish over time, it's likely to be most successful.
Take a look at Peter Seldin's book, "The Teaching Portfolio." It's a good guide to the genre. Your end product shouldn't be much more than 8-10 pages. It's an executive summary. If you want to include a videotape, that's fine. Edit it, though, so the "reader" doesn't have to watch a whole hour of class to see what you look like.
Does anyone read these things? It's hard to say. I don't think you can ever go wrong by making it easy for someone to see who you are as clearly and succinctly as possible. Search committees are staffed by busy people who get annoyed by having to wade through stacks of undigested, dull applications. On this campus, we don't see enough applications with decent portfolios (they aren't required in the hiring process in most departments).
From what I hear anecdotally, the few that do arrive make quite an impression. That's probably why our administrators are beginning to encourage faculty to develop portfolios for internal review (promotion, tenure, awards, etc.).
Steve Richardson, Director
Center for Teaching Excellence
Iowa State University
204 Lab of Mechanics
Ames, IA 50011-2130
Voice: (515) 294-2402
Fax: (515) 294-8627
stevenr@iastate.edu
A Teaching Portfolio is essentially a jazzed up dossier that adds teaching evaluations, syllabi, lesson plans and such to the usual CV with the intent of illustrating your teaching skills- a very helpful addition. The video is problematic, but of increasing use... I'd suggest, FIRST, making sure it's of high quality and shows you to advantage, then contacting each search chair by phone and asking if they'd like you to include the tape. That accomplishes two things: it makes them aware of the tape's availability without causing any awkwardness, and it makes you more prominent in the mind of the search chair. Unlike a good portfolio, a video will probably not make a committee lean towards you unless everyone has submitted one. But it can cost you a position.
From: Jeffrey A Charlston, charlja@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu
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Last Modified:
05/22/08
