School of Education - Portfolio Guidelines

A portfolio is a tool that allows you to demonstrate growth and thinking skills through the display of work-over-time. It is a product that facilitates self-reflection, self-improvement, intrapersonal understanding, professional growth, interpersonal skills, as well as conceptual understandings and skill development. A portfolio:

Is a purposeful collection of an individual’s work that exhibits effort, progress, and achievement in your professional preparation.
Is a visual representation of an individual as a developing teacher/counselor.
Represents an individual as a professional through his/her personal choices of works that reflect his/her knowledge, skills, attitudes, beliefs, and values over time.
Becomes a window into an individual’s thinking, a means of understanding his/her journey in becoming a teacher/counselor.
Provides a complex and comprehensive view of an individual’s performance in a professional context.
Offers a broad and in-depth picture of an individual’s professional thinking and professional practice.
Becomes a foundation for constructing a portfolio for interview purposes.
Becomes the instrument used to indicate the completion of the requirements for licensure.

To facilitate self-reflection.
To provide an individual with a means to demonstrate a knowledge of and ability to apply the ten Wisconsin Standards for Teacher Development and Licensure and the twenty-two UW-Platteville School of Education Knowledge, Skill and Disposition statements.

To facilitate the process of self-reflection on teaching, learning, and growth-over-time.
To model effective teaching practices.
To meet the needs of students as they enter the teaching/counseling profession through continued self-reflection for personal and professional growth.
To facilitate integration of an individual’s professional coursework.
To provide a mechanism for an individual to display his/her work to prospective employers.
To create a showcase of an individual’s work for internal (assessment of UWP outcomes for the School of Education) and external assessment (DPI - Department of Public Instruction, NCATE - National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education) purposes.
To create a document that provides evidence of a candidate’s preparedness and competence required for licensure.