A way to document your teaching practice

If you apply for an academic teaching position or for a promotion, it is likely you will need to prepare a teaching portfolio (also known as a pedagogical portfolio). Rather than waiting until you are applying for a new position or for promotion, we encourage you to start building your teaching portfolio now and to add to it regularly.

You can start building your teaching portfolio today and add to it as you work thorough the material in this learning resource. You may also find it helps you begin to identify areas where you want to focus a little extra effort in the near future, perhaps because a particular issue is especially important to you, or because you find you don't yet know as much as you would like to about an aspect of your teaching or your role as an academic teacher.

Teaching portfolios slides for download.pdf

There are two main components of a teaching portfolio:

1. A reflective teaching statement
This is a piece of writing that outlines, explains, and argues for the values and ideas that underpin your teaching practice. It explains why you teach the way you do. It also integrates your ideas with relevant pedagogical theory and literature. This is important because it is not possible to build a credible opinion about teaching and learning based on anecdotes and personal experience alone. In fact, anecdotes and personal experience can sometimes lead to verifiably incorrect opinions about teaching and learning.

Some common questions this text should answer are:

- - - What motivates you as a teacher?
    - What characterizes your approach to student learning?
    - What do you value?
    - What do you try to achieve when you teach?

2. A collection of annotated artefacts
These are selected samples of work you have done as a teacher. They serve as evidence of the various claims you make in your teaching statement. Any artefacts you include should represent your own work. You should always specify if you have collaborated with another teacher or adapted existing material to produce an artefact. Think of it in terms of the same sort of academic integrity you would use for research products.

Artefacts that could go in a teaching portfolio include, but are not limited to:

- - - Teaching documents
      - Course syllabi (for courses you have developed)
      - Lesson plans
      - Lecture material
      - Handouts
      - Lab instructions
      - Sample exam questions or other assessment tasks
      - Assignments or projects
      - Student evaluations
    - Multimedia
      - Teaching videos
      - Web-based teaching content
      - Podcasts used for teaching
    - Teaching experiments
      - New ideas you have tested
      - Assumptions you have explored
      - Conventions you have challenged or confirmed
    - Improvements
      - Things that weren't working that got better
      - Things that were working but that now work much better

Each artefact must be accompanied by an annotation. It is important to annotate artefacts clearly and carefully so that it is easy to see how each one relates to or supports a claim you make in your teaching statement. Some artefacts are easier to interpret than other, but every one you include should come with its own explanation. It is a good idea to include the following information in a typical annotation:

- - - A statement of the problem or challenge related to student learning that the artefact addresses
      - A problem is not necessarily something negative. It could also be a question or an observation, and it could be quite positive.
    - A description of your deliberate design or actions to address the problem or explore the observation
    - An explanation of the outcome you observed

The structure of a teaching portfolio can vary substantially across disciplines and contexts. One example of a structure that can work looks like this:

1. An introduction
A brief statement of the purpose of the portfolio and an overview of its structure and key points.

2. A pedagogical biography
A brief account of the type, amount, and context of your teaching experience. This section should be thorough but not lengthy or overly detailed. The purpose is to give an overall picture of your experience.

3. A reflective teaching statement
As explained above, this is a text that articulates your values and assumptions about teaching and learning and how these things inform your teaching. Importantly, it must go beyond your own experience and anecdotes, and should integrate your ideas with relevant theory and literature.

4. Annotated artefacts
These are your carefully selected samples that illustrate key parts of your teaching statement. In one possible structure, the annotations can be integrated into your teaching statement as evidence immediately linked to claims you make there, but another option is to keep the artefacts and annotations separate. To improve readability, you can place the actual artefacts in an appendix at the end of the portfolio, and simply include brief descriptions of the artefacts here, before providing the associated annotations.

5. A forward-looking conclusion
This section explores what's next for you as a teacher. It should summarize the key points in previous sections and relate them to your next steps.

6. A sincere reference list
This list should only contain sources that are truly meaningful for your approach to teaching and your understanding of learning.

7. (Optional) An appendix
This might be where you put most of your artefacts. You might also include any other supporting information that is relevant for your portfolio, such as letters from colleagues or students, additional documentation of your teaching, or relevant publications you have authored.

Further reading:

Open access: Guide to Teaching Dossiers from the Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning at the University of Calgary: https://taylorinstitute.ucalgary.ca/resources/teaching-philosophies-and-teaching-dossiers-guide
You can also download the guide directly: Teaching Philosophies and Teaching Dossiers Guide.pdf