Teaching Portfolios At McMaster

• Check in with your Chair and colleagues to glean local culture and requirements relevant to your teaching portfolio
• Review SPS B2
• Review the Preparing a Teaching Portfolio Guidebook by the MacPherson Institute
• Ask colleagues in your Department or Faculty to see their portfolios for examples

As you begin to develop your teaching portfolio, it can be helpful to reflect on various levels of context that may inform or inspire your teaching including:

At the Faculty and/or Departmental Level:

• Consider how teaching and learning is prioritized or articulated within the culture and strategic priorities of your Faculty and/or Department. It is also important to take stock of disciplinary norms or expectations that have a direct effect and influence on your perspectives, practices, and pedagogical approaches, as they may be unique when compared to other Faculty/Departmental cultures and/or disciplinary norms.

 At an Institutional Level: 

• Consider and familiarize yourself with current institutional strategies for teaching and learning at McMaster University and the ways your teaching aligns with institutional policies and priorities. The Preparing a Teaching Portfolio Guidebook offers a list of resources on strategic priorities for teaching and learning at McMaster on pg. 11.

At a National or International Level:

• It may be that defining a context for your teaching spans national or international boundaries by engaging with specific areas of educational research and/or the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). If so, explain within your teaching portfolio how your teaching is founded and informed by active engagements in educational research and/or trends and innovations from Scholarship of Teaching and Learning more broadly.

While a teaching portfolio is informed primarily through the values, principles, and beliefs articulated by an instructor, in addition to the institutional strategies and priorities noted above, McMaster also offers an institutional definition of “teaching” activities as well. McMaster’s University Revised Policy And Regulations With Respect To Academic Appointment, Tenure And Promotion explains that:

“Teaching encompasses the selection and arrangement of course topics and materials, lecturing, leading class and seminar discussions, assisting students during office hours, laboratory and studio teaching, marking of student submissions (especially when editorial comments are given to the student), the setting of examinations that permit accurate assessment and continue the learning process, and the supervision of student research at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Teaching-stream faculty are not normally expected to be involved in graduate courses or supervision, although it will sometimes be possible (as, for example, in the MBA Program).”

Keep this institutional definition of teaching activities in mind as you begin to think about what supporting evidence and examples you will want to collect and showcase within your teaching portfolio.

Often, the most persuasive forms of evidence come from the perspective of others who can attest to the impact, innovation, and effectiveness of your teaching, be it, students, staff, colleagues or peers. Consider including a variety of evidence within your teaching portfolio including, but not limited to:

• References from colleagues and former students
• Mid-semester formative feedback solicited from students to improve teaching and learning 
• Records of participation in teaching-related professional development activities 
• Invited peer reviews of your teaching

For additional guidance on what types of evidence you may wish to gather or showcase in your teaching portfolio, please see the “A Guide for Providing Evidence of Teaching” developed by the University of Calgary Taylor Institute by Kenney et al. Keep in mind that any specifications in SPS B2 (for example, don’t include student comments from end-of-term course evaluations) beat any external advice you may come across when crafting a portfolio specifically for McMaster tenure, permanence, and promotion.

Now that you’ve identified and started collecting your teaching evidence, reflect on the totality of what this evidence represents about your personal teaching philosophy, practices, and contributions.

Begin by writing or revising your Teaching Philosophy Statement to reflect your core personal beliefs or values, methods, impacts, and goals as a teacher. The values and beliefs articulated in your teaching philosophy statement will serve as a cornerstone in the teaching portfolio. Next, describe how you have put these beliefs or values into practice within the Description of Teaching Practice section. Continue to outline your Contributions to Teaching, for example, course design, publications and research on teaching and learning, presentations on teaching and learning, professional development, educational leadership, reports on issues pertaining to teaching and learning. Finally, make note of which evidence should be included in Part B: Supporting Documentation to best support these claims.

When brought together, Parts A and B craft your argument and interpretation of what the evidence in your appendices means about your effectiveness as an educator.

Once all of the parts and components of your teaching portfolio are drafted, review, revise, and align your portfolio as a whole coherent document. Good teaching portfolios are well-organized and aligned. Each section in the portfolio should be organized by headings and/or subheadings and written to build on the values, examples, and evidence of your development and achievements. Overstated by this point, the portfolio should also align with the SPS B2 criteria and any criteria specified by your Department Chair. During these final stages of portfolio refinement, it is advisable to create a title page and table of contents prior to submission.

Teaching portfolios are best thought of as living documents that should be updated annually alongside your resume or CV, ideally in advance of your annual review. It may be tempting to file your teaching portfolio away in the proverbial desk drawer, but returning to it once a year to update your portfolio with notable achievements, self-reflections, and forms of evidence demonstrating your effectiveness and evolution as an instructor is a beneficial archive for future reviews, promotion or tenure purposes, teaching award applications, as well as documenting your formative or summative growth as an educator.

Are you stuck in your teaching portfolio journey? Needing help or further advice? Please feel welcome to reach out to the MacPherson Institute for additional support by completing a “Request Support” form. We can help advise on teaching portfolio components, offer consultations, course refinements, peer observations of teaching, and other workshops relevant for teaching portfolio development.