Preparing a Teaching Portfolio.doc

Preparing a Teaching PortfolioBy Danielle Saucier, MD, CCFP, Department of Family Medicine, Laval UniversityTeachers of family medicine often complain that their work as teachers is not adequately recognized by the faculty evaluation system, which tends to view research and administration as the only worthy accomplishments. A teaching portfolio or dossier is an excellent way of evaluating your teaching practice and professional development needs. It can also be used to convince others of your contribution.What is a teaching portfolio?The teaching portfolio documents a teachers activities and accomplishments in the field of education. It can take the form of a curriculum vitae of a few pages in length or the form of a full dossier. According to Shore,6 the teaching portfolio is to education what the list of publications, grants, and university awards is to research. Maintaining a portfolio involves keeping a copy of every document pertaining to your accomplishments as a teacher as well as evaluations of your teaching. Why create a teaching portfolio?Creating a teaching portfolio will serve you on a personal level even before it becomes useful to your department. It can be viewed from two different perspectives: 1. It is an ideal document for supporting an appointment or promotion, particularly when your strength lies in education rather than in research. Faculty administrators may also require teachers to keep an up-to-date portfolio for evaluation purposes. Most articles on the subject are written from this perspective.2,5-6 In 1992, the annual Certification Workshop provided an opportunity for department heads, program directors, and those in charge of faculty development for our departments to discuss faculty evaluation as a means of faculty development.72. Your teaching portfolio may be used for a formative evaluation of your teaching and for recognizing the importance of your work as a teacher. Obviously, the portfolio is just one of the many ways of emphasizing quality teaching and encouraging teacher to pursue their professional development. Most incentives for this originate with policies and activities at the department or faculty level (e.g., faculty development days and scholarships), or even at the university level or outside the academic community (e.g., the Section of Teachers Annual Workshop). Maintaining a teaching portfolio is your responsibility. You can use it as a self-assessment tool or as a basis for discussion with your faculty development officer or department Chair.Maintaining and periodically updating your portfolio yourself will make you aware of your strengths and weaknesses. For example, you may note that your course outlines have been better organized and more coherent over the past three years, or that you have not taken part in any teacher training activities in the last two years. You may realize that you rarely ask your students or colleagues for feedback, and that you need their perspective. This process will help you to more clearly identify your professional development needs.You can also update your teaching portfolio with your faculty development officer, who acts as a counsellor. Together, you can go over your course notes, workshop outlines, and evaluation tools as a formative evaluation exercise. This will help you to recognize your learning needs and plan professional development tailored to these needs. The faculty development officer can use this information to get a clear idea of the needs of the faculty as a whole.Lastly, every teacher will at some point be evaluated by the department Chair. If your department does not already have a policy on periodic performance review, it will be adding one in the near future as this trend is emerging in every university. Presenting a teaching portfolio will make it easier for your department Chair to manage your activities within the department and acknowledge your work. You will be able to justify making time for special education projects and have something tangible on which to base your request for a raise. Futhermore, the information it provides will help your department Chair, on a political level, to promote the important contribution that the department of family medicine is making to the faculty of medicine in terms of teaching, if it does not have a strong research tradition. The problem is the same everywhere: the Chairs of 75 departments of family medicine in the United States ranked the teaching activities of their departments members above average in relation to the other clinical departments in their faculty.3What should a teaching portfolio contain?The information contained in a teaching portfolio can be organized in many different ways.1-2,4-6 However, it is always divided into two sections: 1) the portfolio itself, which is a list of everything that you want to document, and 2) supporting documents.I like Rothmans format.5 He suggests that the teaching portfolio should contain: 1) teaching activities and student evaluations for all teaching levels (e.g., a talk on diabetes to senior citizens, tutoring and mentoring medical students, seminars for residents, participation in College examinations); 2) faculty administration, professional development, and educational research activities; 3) participation in, or organization of, education-related conferences; and 4) awards, scholarships, and outside consultations on teaching, educational research or development. However, you might prefer to follow the format suggested by your local promotion committee. Shore6 suggests dividing supporting documents into the following three sections:1. Results of the quality of your teaching(e.g., your students marks on examinations and their accomplishments, proof that you helped your colleagues improve their performance). Admittedly, there is little material in this regard for clinical teaching, and the impact of a single player is often difficult to gauge. Remember to keep a copy of presentations by the students you supervise, or request a letter outlining your activities to help a colleague. 2. Your teaching materials(e.g., lists of courses taught and numbers of students, course outlines, teaching materials produced, teaching innovations, and any steps taken to evaluate and improve your teaching). 3. Information provided by other individuals(e.g., evaluations by students or colleagues, requests for consulting, invitations to teach). You may feel that compiling a teaching portfolio is painstaking and ego-boosting with little relevance to what you do. Nothing could be further from the truth. In practical terms, keeping a record of your accomplishments in one place makes them easier to find the next time you want to use them or when you decide to apply for a position within the faculty. However, there are more important reasons for compiling a portfolio. Critically examining your work and evaluations is a process of formative self-evaluation. Reviewing your portfolio with your faculty development officer or department Chair is an opportunity to plan your own professional development as a teacher, as well as that of your colleagues. You are helping to reinforce the importance of the teaching role and to promote education of the finest quality, both at the department and faculty level. Good luck!References1. Fayne HR. Practicing what we preach: key issues in faculty evaluation. In:Annual Meeting of the American Association of Colleges for Teache