Тheme: The role of a teacher in the teaching process and Teachers’ portfolioand its structure The role of a teacher in the teaching process

Preparing Your Portfolio
Once you have gathered the supporting documents you need, it generally takes a totalof 12 to 15 hours to prepare your portfolio. When you begin toassemble it, you have many choices of material to include. Now is the time to be Preparing a Teaching Portfolioselective. How do you go about choosing what will be most appropriate? One helpfulstrategy is to think about a teaching portfolio as an argument — much like one you wouldmake in a scholarly article or monograph — in which you provide the reader with acontext, state a main point or theme, and then select and organize the rest of the materialaround that point. Two of the greatest pitfalls in developing a portfolio are including toomuch material and inserting it in raw form (without explaining why it is there). Thinkingof the portfolio as an argument can help you avoid these pitfalls by giving you a methodfor selecting and shaping the material that will go into it.
As you would with any argument, consider its purpose and audience:
• Why are you creating this portfolio? For tenure or promotion? For a teachingaward? For your own developmental purposes? Or for some other reason?
• Who will be its primary readers? (Of course, if you are creating this portfoliofor yourself, you will be its primary reader. But you may ask colleagues toreview and discuss the material with you.)
Given your answers to these two questions, what main points about your teaching doyou want to make? You will likely highlight these points in your teaching philosophystatement. What evidence do you have, or can you get, to support them? All thefollowing material you include in your portfolio should provide evidence that in someway supports your main points. Remember that including supporting evidence does notmean you should eliminate “failures.” On the contrary, discussing why a teachingstrategy did not work and how you have changed or will change it is evidence that youcan adapt and improve as a teacher.
While preparing your portfolio, consider working with a mentor (or mentors). Aneffective mentor need not be someone who is evaluating you, but can be any facultymember — in your own or a different discipline — who is interested in enhancing thequality of teaching.
About how much material would they like you to include?
Teaching experience and responsibilities. This section provides a contextfor the main points you make about your teaching. Here you summarize courses you areteaching or have taught in the recent past, including number of credit hours, whether thecourse was required or elective, number of students, and whether they were graduate orundergraduate. Teaching activities outside the classroom,such as advising graduate or undergraduate students, supervising students engaged inindependent studies, and otherwise mentoring students, are also important to include.