What is a Teaching Portfolio?
A teaching portfolio is a document or resource (e.g. a website) that represents you as an educator, along with your contributions to teaching and learning. It serves as a place to articulate your beliefs about teaching, learning, and students, supported by a record of your teaching methods, impacts and goals. It can be used to illustrate “the excellence (quantity and quality) and engagement (scholarly work and scholarship) of an educator’s teaching activities” (Sheakley, 2022).
A teaching portfolio provides the opportunity to engage in meaningful reflection, compile evidence of your effectiveness as an educator, and craft the narrative around your teaching journey, while also serving as a critical resource for obtaining recognition of your effectiveness as an educator. Unlike a resume or curriculum vitae, which provides an overview of all your qualifications, experiences, and accomplishments, the intent of a teaching portfolio is to curate a refined collection of the very best evidence of your teaching.
Why Do I Need a Teaching Portfolio?
Teaching portfolios can be used for summative or formative purposes, ranging from promotion and awards to reflection and continuous improvement. While formative use of a teaching portfolio can happen anytime and is likely self-directed, summative use of a teaching portfolio will happen as part of various evaluative processes throughout a faculty member’s career, including applications for:
- Teaching-track or tenure-track positions
- Promotion, permanence, or tenure
- Teaching awards
At McMaster University specifically, faculty are expected to showcase their achievements and unique contributions to teaching and learning through the teaching portfolio as part of tenure, permanence, and promotion. Keeping an up-to-date teaching portfolio is also beneficial to McMaster educators in that they can share it with their department Chairs in the context of annual performance reviews, though this may not be a requirement.
References
Sheakley, M. (2022). Documenting Educator Work: The Educator Portfolio. In Huggett, K. N., Quesnelle, K. M., & Jeffries, W. B. (Eds.), An introduction to medical teaching: Innovation and change in professional education, vol 20 (pp. 319-332). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85524-6_21