Professional Learning Portfolio Construction

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Professional LearningPortfolio Construction

• Dr Chris Reading
• Professional Development Lecture Series
• University of New England
• 1 March 2006

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Overview

• stages in portfolio creation
• portfolio structure
• sample portfolio entries

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Portfolio stages

• portfolio planning - purpose, audience, process
• working portfolio - standards, evidence, tools
• interject personality
• reflective portfolio - for standards artifacts
• portfolio turns professional
• connected portfolio - organize, link
• presentation portfolio - record, present, evaluate

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Stage 1 portfolio planning

• what is the purpose of the portfolio?
• who will be the audience for the portfolio?
• what process will you use to create the
  portfolio?
• You know you are ready for next stage when you
  have
• identified purpose and primary audience
• identified standards/goals as organizers
• selected development software (HTML or PDF)

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Stage 2working portfolio

• identify content of standards and evidence needed
• select software tools
• identify storage and presenting medium
• gather multimedia materials
• INTERJECT PERSONALITY
• You know you are ready for next stage when you
  have
• collected artefacts
• interjected personality into the artefacts

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Types of evidence

• artefacts academic work
• reproductions student work
• attestations academic progress, volunteer work
• productions documents prepared JUST for
  portfolio e.g. goal statements, reflections,
  captions (on EACH piece of evidence)

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Stage 3reflective portfolio

• write a reflective statement for each standard
• select artefacts that represent the goals
• write reflective statements for each artefact
• set learning goals for the future
• Campbell, Melenyzer, Nettles, Wyman (2000)
• Portfolio and Performance Assessment in Teacher
  Education

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Reflection guide

• What? What is important to share about this
  artefact?
• So What? Why has this artefact been chosen for
  inclusion?
• Now What? What are the implications for future
  teaching experience?

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Portfolio turns professional

• You know you are ready for next stage when you
  have
• selected relevant artefacts
• written reflective statements for the artefacts
• AND identified learning goals for the future

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Stage 4connected portfolio

• organize artefacts (using hyperlinks)
• identify patterns through the linking
• final review and editing
• share with appropriate audience
• use to make learning or professional development
  decisions

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Navigation tips

• these are particularly important for electronic
  portfolios but also relevant for paper-based
• ensure structure allows ease of navigation
• navigation should allow use choice
• there should be a seamless integration of
  standards, artefacts reflections

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Linking process -gt learning

• You know you are ready for next stage when you
  have
• inserted all artefacts and relevant reflections
• (hyper)linked the document to allow navigation
• sought peer review of the portfolio ready for
  publishing

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Stage 5presentation portfolio

• record the portfolio on appropriate medium
• present to an audience (real or virtual)
• evaluate the effectiveness in light of portfolio
  purpose

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Portfolio structure

• Now how will the portfolio be arranged
• around teaching standards
• NSW - Professional Teaching Standards
• other standards

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NSW Professional Teaching Standards as a structure
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Overview
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Demonstration of competence - based on national
standards
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Demonstration of competence - based on state
standards
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Articulate what each element means - e.g. 1
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Articulate what each element means - e.g. 2
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Reflection guide - revisited

• What? What is important to share about this
  artefact?
• So What? Why has this artefact been chosen for
  inclusion?
• Now What? What are the implications for future
  teaching experience?

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What? information reports

• One aspect of the program I wrote for my third
  year practicum, involved introducing my year six
  class to information reports. The students had
  not done any previous work with information
  reports, and I had never taught this text type
  either. As a result, I foolishly endeavoured to
  introduce the structure, and all the grammatical
  features of an information report in just one
  lesson. The learning goals which I set for this
  lesson were entirely inappropriate, as I intended
  to teach the students too many new ideas in one
  lesson. As a result, the students had totally
  lost concentration by the end of the lesson and
  any hope of meaningful learning was lost.

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So what? information reports

• I had read in the text, Educational Psychology,
  about the importance of setting challenging but
  realistic goals for students (McInerney
  McInerney, 2002 210), because achievement of
  these goals promotes students self efficacy and
  motivation for learning. The teaching experience
  recounted here may not have been particularly
  successful, but it was very powerful in ensuring
  that I actually realised the importance of
  identifying clear and appropriate learning goals
  for my lessons, and that my ability to set
  appropriate learning goals was one aspect of my
  teaching practice that required improvement.

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Now what? information reports

• I still value my tendency to over plan for each
  lesson so that I do not run short of valuable
  learning experiences for my students. However,
  since this incident, I have made a conscious
  effort when preparing lessons to ensure that I
  acquire a more thorough understanding of the
  level my students are working at, but more
  importantly I have taken the time to break any
  new concept I am teaching into simplified steps,
  order these steps in a logical sequence, and
  present this sequence at a rate which young minds
  can realistically manage.
• I have had significantly more success with
  lessons since adopting this approach to planning.
  Consequently, I will continue using this approach
  in my future teaching to ensure that the lessons
  I plan, and the inherent learning goals are
  appropriate to the students I am teaching and
  will provide the most meaningful learning
  experiences possible.

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Possible artifacts (evidence)

• academic work
• teacher planning
• student work
• extra-curricular activities
• teaching episodes
• awards, prizes
• recommendations

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Portfolio work sample

• It is essential that teachers are competent in
  reporting the students achievements to their
  parents so their parents can clearly see what
  their child has achieved.

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Lessons on length

• I will also aspire to extend the children who
  need it by including estimation activities, which
  use the skills they have learnt in a more
  challenging manner.

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Austswim instructor

• I realise the value of assessment in this
  situation as it can act as a benchmark for the
  instructor who has the child the following year.

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Tennis coaching reference

• I am required to organise students into ability
  and age groups, teach one of these groups and
  ensure every student behaves appropriately.

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Behaviour management plan

• If I can communicate my boundaries to my
  students, I will ensure that my classroom will be
  an effective learning environment for my students.

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Sharing
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Dont forget

• delete and modify contents of the portfolio as
  you develop professionally
• include the best evidence that you have for each
  standard
• seek advice from others before, during and after
  the process
• explain and justify all the portfolio inclusions