Developing a teaching portfolio to showcase your teaching ability

Abstract

Universities are currently placing greater emphasis on teaching. Many are increasing their commitment to teaching and exploring ways to improve and reward teaching excellence. A teaching portfolio is an important document that showcases a teacher’s achievements in teaching. It includes selected documents and materials on teaching activities and presents evidence of their effectiveness. Having a comprehensive teaching portfolio has been vital to my success in receiving national teaching excellence awards. This paper will report on the processes I followed to develop my teaching portfolio, demonstrating how this is an important exercise in self-reflection. For example, to prepare my teaching portfolio I had to (a) understand my personal teaching style, (b) scrutinise what I did in the learning and teaching environment, and (c) examine the impact of my teaching on student learning. This paper will also outline a typical table of contents in a teaching portfolio. For instance, it will show how a teaching portfolio should integrate material from oneself and others, and highlight the learning outcomes. Finally, this paper will consider the importance of documenting how teaching has evolved over time.