Developing a comprehensive teaching portfolio — A scholarly personal narrative

Abstract

Academic teaching portfolios may be required by institutions of higher learning when they review the experience and skills of a prospective faculty member or when they review the application for promotion by current faculty members. Teaching portfolios are furthermore a significant contributor to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, as it provides tangible evidence of personal engagement in trying to improve teaching practice. However, not all academics compile comprehensive teaching portfolios due to a lack of awareness of what is required or due to ignorance of its perceived value. The research question therefore arises: "How may academics develop a comprehensive teaching portfolio to accurately reflect their personal engagement and acquired skills". The purpose of this paper is to present an academics personal perspective of how to structure and formulate such a portfolio that will provide tangible evidence of good teaching, personal experience and acquired skills. The author received an Advanced Career Teaching Award from his institution and a Commendation for Teaching from the Council of Higher Education in South Africa during 2015, thereby validating his submitted teaching portfolio as being comprehensive. A scholarly personal narrative is used that may be linked to a constructivist research methodology that recognizes the validity and usefulness of a researcher's personal experience in a specific discipline. Critical subsections of the teaching portfolio relate to one's teaching statement, practice and evidence. The last subsection, teaching evidence, should present many photographs and sketches with a detailed label of the academic's achievements and of student learning, accounting for more than 75% of the teaching portfolio. Each of the subsections are elaborated in the paper in an attempt to provide a guideline to new or struggling engineering academics of how to develop a comprehensive teaching portfolio, thereby mitigating any perceived misconceptions regarding its structure and formulation.