The contents of a portfolio may well be dictated bay any CPD or in-house evaluation scheme in which you are involved. As well as postgraduate modules connected with external CPD, such as those mentioned above, you might be maintaining an evidence file in connection with your career path through your school. This may consist of evidencing that you’ve met certain standards relating to the career stage that you’ve reached or aspire to. In the UK currently there are standards for:
- Qualified Teacher Status (Q);
- Guidance for Newly Qualified Teachers;
- Mainscale Teachers (C);
- Upper Payscale (Post-Threshold) Teachers (P);
- Excellent Teacher (E);
- Advanced Skills Teachers (A).
A good starting point, then, might be to set yourself targets of evidence gathering around appropriate Standards.
A portfolio will often have two main components. It will show evidence that standards have been met; and it will carry reflective writing.
Let’s first consider evidence. Evidence is easy to gather. It will include:
- Lesson plans;
- Schemes of work;
- Samples of pupil response-written work;
- Samples of marked pupil work;
- Your own evaluations of your own (and other colleagues’)
- colleagues’ evaluations of your teaching;
- evidence of INSET;
- evidence of effective pastoral work;
- evidence of effective professional work (meeting agendas and minutes, for example);
- formal evidence of pupil achievement (examination results);
and so on. The list is bordering on the infinite, so before you begin to gather evidence you should decide what your portfolio is for, and what evidence is essential for that. If you’re only maintaining a portfolio for your personal development as a teacher (rather than for a specified career intention) than you should probably focus on evidence of growth in teaching and learning.