ABSTRACT
It’s one thing to talk about teaching portfolios in general, another to look at the particulars that might comprise one. To do so, we asked eight faculty from a variety of campus settings and disciplines to develop sample entries — entries based on the work-sample-plusreflection model set forth in Chapter Three. We offer their entries here as a means of exploring more concretely the character of useful portfolio entries; as such, they seem to us to raise a number of interesting issues.
A first and fundamental issue is about how to characterize the entries here: What are they evidence of? Following the work of the Stanford project team, we argued earlier that a useful image for portfolios is as a selective display of “best work.” But “best work” might not be the best label for what one observes in the entries set forth here. This is not to say that they don’t portray exemplary practices; it is to say that their exemplariness is not what most strikes the reader.
It seemed to us, rather, that what one sees in most of the eight entries is evidence of reflectiveness: an ability (and willingness) to look one’s performance in the eye, to step back from it, to assess strengths and weaknesses, to raise hard questions, and — importantly — to see routes to improvement. Donald Schön’s work on “reflective practice” might be an appropriate framework for understanding the potential of portfolios.
Relatedly, in entries such as Tim Riordan’s and Bill Whipple’s — both of which examine the evolution of a course over time — we’re struck by evidence of change and development. The capacity to document growth over time is, of course, one of the ways that portfolios improve on other methods of documentation. Nevertheless, we’re left asking, what would a “best work” entry really look like? Is it something the field should be working toward?
A number of the entries rather immediately raise issues about length: How much of a sample do we need to see to get a sense of the larger weave? It should be said here that most of the entries that follow have been abridged and slightly edited for publication. We did so in order to keep the length of this monograph under control — but also because it seemed to us that less was sometimes sufficiently revealing. But we’re aware, too, having shared several of these entries with faculty groups, that some readers will want more. In the case of James Wilkinson’s entry — reflections on the evaluation of a student essay — some reviewers have responded, “We need to see several essays by this student in order to evaluate the rightness of Wilkinson’s reflection.”
There’s unlikely to be any simple formula for “how much is enough,” but further experimentation might get us closer to a sense of what is sufficient.
Related to the general issue of “how much” is a more particular one about the relative usefulness of the two aspects of the entry: work sample and reflection. One reader of the eight entries observed that the reflections carried most of the weight; for him, the work samples added little. Other readers — such as those responding to the Wilkinson entry with calls for further student papers — found themselves wanting more work samples. In theory, of course, the work sample “grounds” the reflection and gives it credibility, while the reflection gives meaning to work samples whose significance would otherwise be ambiguous. But that theory needs testing in practice.
Another set of issues arises around the model of the four core tasks of teaching proposed in Chapter Three. Our point in proposing them was not (as we say) that they’re the only possible framework for entries, but that some structure is needed and the four seem a useful place to begin. Nevertheless, our experience with the eight entries here (most of which were produced with one of the four tasks in mind) suggests that trying to match entries to any set of prescribed categories might be tricky business. For instance, an entry such as Jennifer Hicks’s, based on Classroom Research she conducted in a composition course, might fit under either “evaluating student learning” or “keeping up with the field.” The point is a simple but important one: that the boundaries between categories are ambiguous and overlapping. Their purpose is not to pigeon-hole or restrict but to provide an organizing structure for selecting, presenting, and interpreting material
An obvious issue raised by the entries that follow is one of representativeness. No single entry — no matter how carefully and thoughtfully prepared — can (or should) be the sole basis for judgments about overall teaching performance. As argued earlier, one needs to see a range of entries representing a variety of teaching tasks. Exactly how many entries are needed, representing what span of time and activities, will depend on purpose and perhaps on other variables we need to know more about.
Finally, it might be useful to say something about what the entries presented here are not They are not final, polished pieces of work; they are not “models” meant to be imitated. Rather, they are excerpts from first efforts, rough drafts, if you will, of a thing that is very much being invented. We look forward to discussion of these entries and the generation of others that will expand the repertoire.
