An excerpt from Handbook on Teacher Portfolios for Evaluation and Professional Development by Tucker, Stronge, and Gareis

DEVELOPING A TEACHER PORTFOLIO

True wisdom is to know what is best worth knowing, and to do what is best worth doing.
Edward Porter Humprey

The image of a professional artist carrying a large, bound portfolio of her work is familiar enough to us, and it is an image that readily comes to mind when one mentions portfolios. But what image comes to mind when one speaks of teacher portfolios? How should teachers present collections of artifacts intended to capture the essence and quality of their performance as planners, instructors, assessors, classroom managers, and as contributing members of the profession? We suggest that effective portfolios are deliberately structured to allow for both accountability and creativity. There are, therefore, some very practical questions to consider when developing teacher portfolios. In this chapter, we answer several of those key questions both for teachers and for administrators who may be responsible for developing a portfolio program:
• What is the role of performance standards in developing portfolios?
• What should a portfolio "look like"?
• What is the role of artifacts in portfolios?
• How can captions add value to portfolios?

What is the Role of Performance Standards in Developing Portfolios?

In order to have a basis for documenting and evaluating performance, you must first define what teachers should know and be able to do. That is the role of performance standards in a portfolio-based evaluation system. The portfolio, then, is a means of accounting for a teacher's development within the context of that set of professional performance standards.

But teaching is a highly integrated craft, so how does one define teaching in terms of performance standards? Perhaps, in part, due to the standards movement in K-12 schools, there is a proliferation of sources for identifying professional performance standards. Call them performance standards, job responsibilities, critical competencies, or a host of other names, but they remain a set of identified skills vital to effective teaching.

Sources abound. The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) has developed criteria identifying key teacher responsibilities for teachers seeking national certification. The Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC) has developed a model for principles of effective teaching. The Performance Assessment System (PAS), developed as a consortium of urban and rural school districts in California, Washington state, Maryland, and North Carolina, uses a combination of NBPTS, INTASC, and state standards for its framework. Connecticut serves as just one example of a state that has defined various "dimensions of teaching," which it uses in the assessment of novice teacher preparedness. In a neighboring New England state, the University of Southern Maine has identified teacher performance assessment standards. On the West Coast, Stanford University experimented in the early 1990s with its BioTAP program, outlining four critical areas of teaching. In each of these examples, teacher responsibilities have been identified as a foundation for assessing and improving teacher performance. By linking assessment directly to responsibilities of the profession, portfolios can serve as an excellent way to gauge teacher effectiveness.

Performance standards are the foundation of effective teacher evaluation systems. A fair and comprehensive evaluation system should provide sufficient detail and accuracy so that educators and their supervisors can reasonably understand their performance expectations. The expectations of teacher performance can be usefully conceptualized using a three-tiered system, in which teaching domains represent areas of teacher competencies, performance standards are the competencies that teachers are expected to exhibit, and performance indicators are specific examples of those competencies. For purposes of this text and for the examples provided in it, we have identified four Teaching Domains:

1. Instructional Skills
2. Assessment Skills
3. Learning Environment Skills
4. Professionalism

Within each domain, performance standards describe the actual duties and activities in which teachers engage. For example, an important instructional skill is to select and use resources that are compatible with students' needs and abilities. In the area of assessment, a teacher must be able to assess student performance and use assessment results to make daily and long-range decisions. Performance standards define the domains of teaching at a functional level of specificity. In other words, performance standards put teacher responsibilities into operational terms.

We illustrate below how the domain of professionalism can be articulated through four specific performance standards. Certainly, individuals or organizations may debate the specific categorization or wording of these performance standards, but the example offers one possible iteration.

Domain: Professionalism
• The teacher demonstrates ethical and professional behavior.
• The teacher participates in an on-going process of professional development.
• The teacher contributes to the overall school climate by supporting school goals.
• The teacher initiates and maintains timely communication with parents/guardians and administrators concerning student progress or problems.

Beyond the level of performance standards, performance indicators provide an even greater level of specificity for teacher responsibilities. Performance indicators are used in an evaluation system to do just what the term implies: They indicate a teacher's performance in terms of observable behaviors. However, any list of performance indicators is not intended to be exhaustive, nor are such indicators meant to be prescriptive. Instead, performance indicators serve as examples of specific behaviors that are illustrative of the standards. Below, we illustrate sample performance indicators for the fourth performance standard under "Professionalism," which was listed above.

Domain: Professionalism
Performance Standard: The teacher initiates and maintains timely communications with parents/guardians and administrators concerning student progress or problems.
• The teacher responds promptly to parental concerns.
• The teacher encourages parental involvement within the school.
• The teacher provides information regarding school/community functions to parents/guardians.
• The teacher works with community members in carrying out school and community sponsored functions.

A complete set of teacher domains, performance standards, and performance indicators has been developed to serve as a generic model for this text or for an organization seeking to develop its own framework for teacher responsibilities. Please see "Performance Standards" in Appendix A and on the companion CD for details.

Performance standards are essentially a definitional description of the craft of teaching. By identifying what a teacher should know and be able to do, you are defining a measure by which teachers can judge their own work and have their performance evaluated by others. Whether portfolios comprise an element of a given evaluation system or not, standards of performance should be central to any evaluation system. Moreover, when performance standards are tied to teacher portfolios, you have the basis for an evaluation mechanism characterized by a balance of accountability and creativity.

What Is the Role of Artifacts in Portfolios?

The portfolio process requires teachers to be observers, to be self-critical, to conduct research, to collaborate, to allow for mistakes, and to learn continuously. This complex combination of habits and skills must be used as teachers are assembling their portfolios. Teachers must grapple with the responsibilities forwhich they are accountable, and then they must identify the artifacts of their work that can serve as evidence of their performance. Artifacts, therefore, are central to the portfolio process.
What are Artifacts? Artifacts are the products and by-products of teaching that demonstrate a teacher's performance. They are the raw materials on which teachers reflect and from which they learn. Here are three other recent definitions that may be helpful:
Wolf: "Tangible evidence of teaching and learning."
Riggs & Sandlin:"Actual documents of the life and work of the teacher."
Painter :"Any evidence that teachers use to document or support how they meet teaching standards."

Types of Artifacts Available to Teachers

Although the number of artifacts from which a teacher may choose is limited only by his or her creativity, every artifact can essentially be grouped by two characteristics: (1) who produced it? and (2) why was it produced? Answering these questions provides a helpful matrix by which to categorize the many artifacts that may possibly be included in a teacher portfolio. The following represents a variety of possible types of artifacts grouped by category.

Produced by the Teacher About the Teacher
• Photojournal depicting classroom activities
• Photos of classroom environment
• Bibliographies of texts, resources, etc., used
• Documentation of in-service training or coursework
• Videotape of teaching
• Audio tape of teaching
• Written description about instruction
• Résumé
• Statement of philosophy of education
• Professional development plan

Produced by Others About the Teacher
• Parent surveys
• Student surveys
• Interviews
• Focus groups
• Peer observations
• Teacher competency tests (e.g., Praxis)
• Unsolicited letters/notes from parents, students, colleagues, & community members
• Solicited letters of recommendation
• Previous evaluations by supervisors
• Awards or recognition
• Newspaper articles about the teacher

Produced by the Teacher for Teaching
• Teacher-made assessments (e.g., tests, quizzes, rubrics, etc.)
• Assessment feedback to students
• Learning styles inventory
• Case studies of students
• Action research results
• Professional articles or presentations by teacher
• Lesson plans
• Modifications of lesson plans
• Computer-generated presentation materials
• Classroom management plan
• Samples of communication with parents and students
• Unit overviews
• Pupil gain data
• Teacher-made instructional materials (e.g., handouts)

Produced by Others for Learning
• Student assessment results (i.e., student performance on assessments, including standardized tests, teacher-made tests, projects, etc.)
• Student work samples (i.e., student performance on instructional activities and assignments)
Although there are 39 examples of artifacts listed above, these examples are not intended to be exhaustive. Teaching is a creative, ever-evolving craft. Therefore, one would expect that other examples of meaningful artifacts will continue to emerge or may already be obvious to you from your own experience. Also, there is a level of specificity not addressed in the lists above. For example, under "Samples of communications with parents," a teacher might include class newsletters, a log of telephone contacts, samples of progress reports, records of parent-teacher conferences, and more.

Our contention, in short, is that the very act of teaching lends itself to documentation through artifacts. Indeed, they meet three important criteria for useful artifacts:
1. Each of the artifacts listed above is a product or by-product of teaching. In other words, these artifacts would not be created solely for inclusion in a portfolio.
2. Each of the artifacts can be readily reviewed in a portfolio form. Indeed, of the 39 artifacts listed, only four are not inherently conducive to being included in a portfolio notebook. However, we have advised districts that choose notebooks as their portfolio format to allow for teachers and administrators to prearrange for nonstandard artifact entries, such as videotapes, when appropriate.
3. They all are evidentiary of one or more of the performance standards that we have identified previously in our model of teaching competencies.