The Portfolio Guide from EFA
Portfolio: artists visit
prospective clients to sell their products and win commissions. They take
along examples of their best work to demonstrate their abilities. This
collection of products - and the folder in which it is kept - is called
a portfolio.
-
Introduction
-
Homepage
-
Curriculum Vitae
-
Products
-
Process report
-
Competencies
-
Presentations
-
Overviews
-
Links
-
Tools
-
Appendix-Used terms
1. Introduction
In this guide you can find out how
and why you are going to make a portfolio
during your studies. In your portfolio you collect your products
and tutors’ and fellow students’ comments on them. In this way you can
start to build a picture of yourself and your progress during your studies.
But the EFA portfolio goes further than an artist’s portfolio: it is also
a place to look critically at what you’ve done. In it you describe
how you have learnt things and what exactly you have learnt while making
a product, as well as what you would do differently next time, what you
haven’t yet learnt and where you still need to develop. You also describe
the aspects of your product which you are not so happy with: in other words
you make your learning process not just self-concious, but visible
to others as well.
This learning process eventually
leads to you becoming a (better) qualified teacher. The requirements for
this qualification have been nationally agreed in the Netherlands. The
Faculty of Education in Amsterdam (EFA) has worked these requirements into
professional teaching competencies. These
competencies have been (or are in the process of being) formulated for
three different levels for each programme of studies (in
the Netherlands) so they can be included in the portfolio.
-
At the end of the Foundation Year (approximately
equivalent to first year of B.Ed.), you are qualified
to enter the higher years of study.
-
After another two and half years of
study, you become
qualified to start on your
Final Teaching Placement (training stage).
-
After successful completion of the
Final Teaching Placement you will be
qualified
to start teaching and you will be able to graduate and look for a job
as a teacher.
Being qualified means that you can
start teaching, but it doesn’t mean that you have reached the end of your
learning. Some competencies are only mastered by very experienced teachers.
So after you finish studying you will keep on developing your competencies.
As a student it is up to you to
show how far you have progressed with the competencies. At the end of the
foundation year you will need to prove that you are qualified to
enter the higher years of study. The portfolio is an important instrument
in helping you to do this; you will present your progress on the basis
of your portfolio. This is where you have collected the evidence to show
how you have developed. This approach represents a poweful and
versatile tool not only in teacher education, but in many aspects of active
life in virtually any field.
When you are collecting ‘evidence’
in your portfolio there is no need to restrict yourself to the products
and assignments you have carried out as part of your studies. You will
probably have been involved in all sorts of other activities which have
contributed to your development in the competencies. You might have been
involved in training 12-14 year olds at your local football club; in this
case you will certainly have learnt quite a few things about dealing with
children during adolescence. This practical experience will have contributed
to your development in the competency domain pedagogical skills. Or perhaps
you have a job in a company where you have to work intensively with others.
Your experience here will come in handy when you have to take part in learning
practices. So you can include a report of all these activities in your
portfolio, as long as you clearly demonstrate how each activity has contributed
to your development as a teacher.
Of course you will want to include
your best work in your portfolio; but it is also important to be able to
show
how you have improved. You can do this by including a first version of
a product as well as the final product. As you progress in your studies
it is likely that you will want to remove products from your portfolio:
you will have made new products which show your development in a certain
area much better. We advise you to include all your products in the first
year; you will probably only be able to judge which products to include
or not later in your studies. Your tutors will also advise you about which
products to include in your portfolio.
The form as well as the content
of your portfolio is important. The form in which you choose to present
yourself says a great deal about who you are: do you prefer a simple presentation
or one which is more colourful? Lots of pictures and gimmicks or just the
essential details? It is important to think about how you want to
present yourself to the outside world.
Portfolios can take different forms.
The cardboard folder used by an artist is just one of these. At EFA we
have chosen to have a digital portfolio in the form of a home page, which
will be accessible through the EFA intranet (only accessible within EFA)
or in a ‘private’ section of the Internet.
Why have
we chosen to have a digital portfolio?
-
A digital portfolio makes it possible
to organize a great deal of material clearly and compactly.
-
In a digital portfolio you can include
all different kinds of products: text, audio or video recordings, photos
and so on.
-
With hyperlinks you can show the links
between different parts of the portfolio and how different products are
related
to each other and to the programme.
-
Experience with digital portfolios
elsewhere suggests that you will probably find it motivating to
present yourself on your own website.
-
Working on the portfolio will contribute
to the development of your information and communication technology (ICT)
skills. It is becoming easier to make a website and even possible for those
of you who are not so digitally-gifted, and this is for life.
-
Through placing the portfolio on the
Internet or Intranet (less publicly accessible)
it can become a means of communication between you and your fellow
students and tutors, (or pupils, later...).
-
Finally, you can continue to develop
your portfolio even after finishing your studies and when you apply for
a job; you can even present yourself to your future employer through your
own home page.
At EFA the responsibility for learning
rests for a large part with you, the student. This responsibility
is made concrete through the portfolio. You have a great deal of freedom
in how you create your portfolio and include products. You also have an
opportunity to formulate your own learning aims and so determine
your own learning process. It is intended that later in your studies you
will have the freedom to make a number of choices between learning
practices and to decide for yourself how you will master the competencies.
The portfolio makes it possible for you to show that you have acquired
the necessary competencies for teaching in the way which suits you best.
The portfolio should become something personal to you, something which
belongs to you, a personal diary of how you experienced your studies. It
can be very valuable to you (as well as fun) to look back over your development
at the end of your studies. What did you think about becoming a teacher
when you first started? How did you experience giving your first lesson?
So you will use the portfolio to
make a record of your development. This will help you to understand
what the best way is for you to learn and what your special strengths and
weaknesses are. But learning doesn’t end when you leave the university/college.
If you want to become a real professional and enjoy your work, you
will need to keep on learning and developing. The portfolio is a
means of finding out how you learn so that you can keep on doing
this long after you have finished studying. In this sense your portfolio
is really the start of a long journey of discovery.
As well as giving you a lot of freedom
the portfolio also has a number of requirements. Your tutors need
to keep track of your progress in regard to the competencies. With your
portfolio (and the evidence it contains) you need to be able to show your
mentor and assessors that you understand your
learning process and what the competencies imply. For this reason there
are a number of compulsory elements in the portfolio. However you are free
to include these elements in any form you wish.
The compulsory elements of the portfolio
are:
These elements together from the main
‘menu’ of the portfolio. In this guide each of these elements will be explained
in more detail.
In order to provide you with support
while working on your portfolio, we have developed a Portfolio
Info site, where you can find all the information you need about the
portfolio and how to use it. This site includes:
-
this portfolio guide
-
a guide to using Frontpage Express
(for making web-pages)
-
demo portfolios
-
instructions for ‘screening off’ parts
of the portfolio,
-
hyperlinks to relevant web sites.
You can find this Portfolio Info site
by clicking the (i) ‘Portfolio Info Site’ at the top right of the window.
This menu option appears as i for information. Clicking on this (i) will
take you to the relevant section of the Portfolio Guide.
[ Back
to top ]
2. Homepage
This is the first page of your portfolio,
the opening page. This page is always accessible to the students and tutors
of the programme. You can screen off all the following pages using an authorisation
tool. In this opening page you introduce yourself to anyone visiting your
portfolio. You can do this for example by means of a photo, picture and/or
text. You should definitely include your name and programme of studies.
Otherwise we leave it up to you to present yourself as you wish.
[ Back
to top ]
3. Curriculum Vitae
In a CV you give a short summary
of your life so far. Employers often ask for a CV when you apply for a
job. They expect you to include things like:
-
Your personal details: full
name, address, etc.
-
Your education: secondary school
and, of course, the University where you are studying now and any previous
places where you have studied.
-
Your educational qualifications:
secondary school leaving certificate, including subjects, and any other
qualifications you may have (e.g., foundation year certificate from another
institute)
-
Your work experience: you can
include any work you have ever done (e.g. part-time jobs or unpaid work
like assisting at your local community centre, or singing in a band)
-
Other diplomas and skills:
driving licence, computer skills, languages spoken etc.
-
Your interests: hobbies, passions,
sports and so on.
You can present your CV in any way
you like (in fact the way you present your CV says a lot about the way
you see yourself) as long as you follow these tips:
-
Make the information clear to
the reader at a glance: i.e. pay attention to the lay out.
-
Make the information understandable
for an international reader: i.e. translate everything into English.
-
Include dates (i.e. years )
wherever you can.
For the university portfolio, you will
also be making a CV of your studies. This means that for your portfolio
CV you must also include a list of the modules/courses (learning
practices) you are taking and your products
from these modules.
Don’t worry if your CV seems a bit
empty at first. That’s only natural. As you progress through the programme
it will soon start to fill up and before long you’ll find yourself having
to cut it down by editing out all the less important bits. But for now
just try and include everything you can think of, however unimportant it
may seem. Have fun!
[ Back
to top ]
4. Products
Content and aims
The term product
refers to any physical object (a report, a recording, an essay etc.) which
you make as part of your studies and which is relevant to your future profession
as a teacher. Clicking Products in the main menu of the EFA sofrware will
take you to the part of the portfolio where you collect these products.
The most important reason for this collection of products is for you to
be able to document how you have progressed. At the end of the Foundation
Year you will have to present your progress
in a presentation and you will need to
use your products and evaluations to show your development. Therefore you
should include not only (extracts from) your final products but also your
first attempts to show the difference between the first version and the
final product. In this way you can show where your weaknesses lay and what
you did to improve them; the feedback you receive from your tutor and other
students will help you in this.
Approach
1. Make an opening page for the
products section of your portfolio.
On the opening page you should
make an index of all the products which you are including in your portfolio.
You can arrange these in any way you want. Ask your tutor which products
must be included. For each product in the list include:
-
a short title (with a hyperlink
to the introduction to the product);
-
the name of the module in which
you made the product;
-
the date you finished the product;
-
one sentence describing what
the product is.
2. Make an introduction to each
product you are including.
The introduction should say enough
to make someone browsing through your portfolio know whether they want
to look at the product itself. It must at least give information about:
-
the place of the product within
the module (final product, first attempt etc.);
-
your learning aims in making
this product;
-
a short description of the product
(e.g. the topic and the different elements in the product)
In the introduction you should also
make hyperlinks to:
-
the process
report for this product in which you discuss your aims and whether
you achieved them;
-
the product
itself .
If you are including more than one
product for a module, you can:
-
either make a separate introduction
and process report for each product;
-
or make one introduction and process
report for all the products which belong to one module.
3. Digital or not?
The intention is that eventually
as many products as possible are included in a digital form in the portfolio.
However there are a number of limitations:
-
Some products may be too large to fit
into the portfolio. Moreover the reader may find it tedious to read long
texts on the computer screen. It may be better to include only that part
of a product which is relevant to your progress and make a summary
of the rest.
-
It is only possible to show some products,
such as a sculpture if you are an Art student, or an experiment if you
are a Science student, by means of a photo or video
-
In this first year of the portfolio
we are unable to realise all the possibilities offered by the digital medium.
You may therefore decide to collect
some non-digital products for your final presentation. In this case you
should include an introduction and a short description with perhaps a photo
and a process report for the product.
[ Back
to top ]
5. Process report
In the process
report, you show what you have learnt while making this product. The
product
shows what you have achieved, while in the process report
you analyse your learning process, the process which led to this
product. Think about all the different steps you took to arrive at the
product. The process report should show the obstacles you met along
the way and the solutions you found. As well as the difficulties
you encountered, you should also describe what went well and what you were
good at. Use the feedback you received from your tutor and other
students to help you with this. Writing the process report should help
you to understand your individual strengths and weaknesses. Your report
should make clear what aspects of your product you are satisfied with and
anything you are less happy with. From this you should draw conclusions
about what you will do differently in the future.
You can make a separate process
report for each product or you can make one process report for all the
products and other work (exams, group assignments and so on) from one module
as a whole. But take care to restrict your report to your own work and
functioning. This is not the place to make an evaluation of the tutor and
the nature of the activities you were involved in. (You will do this in
your evaluation of the module).
In your process report you must
also refer to the competencies and show
what you learnt in relation to a number of specific competencies. The module
description in the subject guide should make it clear which competencies
are addressed in the module. If you need more information about this consult
the module tutor or your mentor. The conclusions you reach about your progress
in relation to the competencies should be copied and saved in the Competencies
section of your portfolio as well. (see section 6). In this way you will
build a comprehensive overview of your learning process which you will
use later on when you come to make a learning report about a whole period
(when your mentor asks you to do this). Your process reports will also
help you to compile information for your presentation at the end of the
foundation year.
Here are some suggestions for questions
you might ask yourself while writing your process report:
-
Why did I choose this topic
for the product?
-
What did I want to achieve? What learning
aims did I (or my tutor) formulate?
-
How did I intend to reach these aims?
What is the relationship between my learning aims and the
competencies?
-
Did I achieve what I wanted?
How do I know that?
-
What was less successful? Can I explain
that?
-
Did I receive feedback from
the tutor and/or fellow students? What was this feedback? Do I agree
with it?
-
How motivated was I to make
the product and take part in the module?
-
How was my concentration?
-
How successful was my planning?
-
What are the results? Am I satisfied
with them?
-
What am I going to do differently next
time? In what way will it be different?
When you are answering questions like
those above it is important not to get stuck in generalities (e.g.
‘the planning went well’ or ‘I enjoyed it’) but to support everything
you say with a specific reference to what you experienced (e.g.
‘we planned to take 4 hours making the recording and it took us exactly
that amount of time because we had prepared everything in advance’) or
by referring to the product itself (e.g. ‘our planning was inadequate:
as you can hear the last section of the recording has some mistakes in
it because we had no more time left to rerecord this section’).
Here are some examples of different
process reports. Which one(s) meet the criteria described above?
Example 1
I learnt a lot. The
teacher was also satisfied because I passed. The group assignment was fine.
The group also functioned well. The style of the report could be improved.
Example 2
For the cell biology practical
I had to make diagrams of microscopic preparations. I was nervous about
this, because I can’t draw very well. I tried to overcome my fear by following
the guidelines very exactly. This worked: the tutor was satisfied with
the result. I just have to watch out that my diagrams aren’t too ‘creative’
(i.e. that I imagine things which aren’t really there) and I forgot to
add a proper text to some diagrams (description of the object and scale).
Also I still make the diagrams too small and they are a bit too sketchy.
Next time I will pay attention to these points.
In the product I include
one good and one ‘not so good’ diagram with the tutor’s comments. By the
end of the year I aim to have fully mastered diagrams. I intend to report
regularly on my progress in this area in my portfolio.
Example 3
In this LP I wanted
to leave more to others and not take responsibility for everything myself.
In previous modules I ended up doing that and I don’t think it really helped
me a lot. I intended to do this mainly by making sure that I do not immediately
volunteer every time something has to be done. I also wanted to learn to
listen more to other people’s ideas. I have a tendency to think that only
my own ideas will work and then to insist on them.
I definitely succeeded
in the first aim! I left a lot to others. Some people even thought I was
too passive in the beginning, because they weren’t used to me acting like
this. It is nice to see that things can go well even without me making
the biggest contribution.
The second aim also went
quite well. I did not really agree at all with what was planned. But there
were often very useful ideas (like the idea of a rotating chair and secretary),
which I would never have thought of.
Writing a process
report and self-evaluation is not easy and it takes some practice!
During the course of the year you will have the opportunity to improve
your skills in this area.
The
EFA learning cycle
The Tools menu also includes the
EFA learning or work cycle. This cycle can help you in your analysis. It
consists of four steps: Orientation, Planning, Implementation and Evaluation.
All learning processes go through these phases. For example before you
begin a module you find out about the module and the competencies
you will work on. You also formulate your learning aims and make a plan
based on your progress so far. You implement your plans and evaluate how
they have worked out: have you learnt what you wanted to learn? What went
well and not so well and so on. You can use these phases of the learning
cycle to help you structure your process report.
Here are some examples of questions
which you can ask yourself in each of the phases:
Orientation phase:
-
Which competencies
can I work at in this module?
-
Which personal learning aims will I
formulate for these competencies?
Planning phase:
-
How and when will I work at these learning
aims?
Implementation phase:
-
What went well? What was less successful?
-
What was my own contribution to this
outcome?
-
What actions can I undertake to improve
this?
Evaluation phase:
-
Have I achieved what I wanted to achieve?
-
What feedback did I receive?
-
Do I agree with this feedback?
What are my new learning aims?
|
![](leacyc.gif) |
You can copy the diagrams of the learning
Cycle and paste them into your portfolio.
[ Back
to top ]
6. Competencies
At many schools and colleges you learn
knowledge
for its own sake, from books and lectures, without specifically asking
yourself how and why you will use this knowledge. This makes
it difficult to apply what you have learnt at school quickly and creatively
in a real situation at work. Often knowledge from books was only learnt
for a test or exam and it wasn’t used in a practical situation. In professional
practice however it is not sufficient to simply use tricks and facts
which you have learnt during training. You need to assemble a well-equipped
'toolkit' of knowledge and skills so you know how to act in the
many various situations you will encounter in your profession. You need
to have made this toolkit so much part of you that you can deal with concrete
situations which are always different and often unexpected. The skills
which enable you to be able to do this we call competencies.
Competencies can be continually
developed.
In principle you can continue to work on them your whole life! During your
studies you will develop your competencies to the level required for starting
in your profession. We call this level qualified
to start teaching. As you will need to continue developing your
competencies throughout your professional career, one skill you will definitely
need to learn in your studies is the ability to continue learning or life-long
learning. The ‘qualified to start’ level is therefore not a final
level. In fact competencies have no final level. All you can do is
measure how far you have progressed in your mastery of the competencies
from time to time.
What do you have to be able to
do then as a teacher? What are the competencies belonging to this profession?
A teacher needs to develop a broad
range of competencies; here are some examples of these competencies:
-
You must know one or two school subjects
well enough to be regarded as an expert; pupils should have confidence
that they can turn to you for advice about how to progress further.
-
You must be able to facilitate
learning in others. This means that you have to be able to create situations
in which this can happen. This is different from simply ‘teaching’. It
is about making sure that pupils learn. How can you make sure this happens?
That isn’t so easy.
-
You need to understand children
and young people to deal effectively with young learners.
-
You need to be able to deal with a
group,
so that it doesn’t get out of control; make sure that pupils work together
properly and don’t bully each other and so on.
-
You need to be able to discuss
your profession and your approach to education knowledgeably with
outsiders, for example with parents and colleagues. You must be able to
explain what you do and its relevance to society.
-
Teaching is not a solo activity. You
are part of the school organisation. This means that you need to be able
to cooperate with others.
-
You will need to continue learning
throughout your life. You must be able to examine a situation you are involved
in and improve it. This is called working at your professional development.
Integrative assessment
Pupils or students are always influenced
by what is demanded of them in testing and assessment. This means that
you can direct learning through the manner of testing. In order
to ensure that students at EFA work at the development of competencies
instead of just learning from books for exams, a system of integrative
assessments has been introduced. These assessments take place at three
moments during your studies. At the end of the first year you will be assessed
to see if you are qualified to enter the
higher years of study. At the end of the third year there will be an
assessment to see if you are qualified to go
on your final teaching placement; in other words you will be assessed
to find out whether you are ready to function as a teacher in training
in a school. At the end of the fourth year, finally, you will be assessed
to see if you are qualified to start teaching.
This means that you are ready to start functioning independently as a teacher
in a school.
An integrative assessment covers
the whole range of your progress in all the competencies combined. In principle
this will involve everything you have learnt in the preceding phase of
your studies. When you are tested separately on all the different elements
of knowledge and skills you have acquired this doesn’t show how well you
can deal with the complex whole of teaching. You can only demonstrate
this in a situation in which you need to combine all the knowledge
and skills you have acquired in separate modules. The main idea in an integrative
assessment is for you to demonstrate your level in the various competencies,
by means of the evidence you have collected in your portfolio.
The competencies section in the
portfolio
The starting page of the competencies
section in the portfolio gives an overview of the competency areas or domains:
every qualified starting teacher from EFA will have worked on the competency
domains of Pedagogical and Methodological Skills, Working in a School Organisation
and Professional Development. Within each of these three competency domains
a number of different competencies are defined. The idea is that you regularly
(once every teaching period will be enough for most students) record your
progress in relation to each competency.
At the beginning of your studies
you will try to define your starting level for each competency. It may
be that in certain areas you are already very competent. For example you
may have learnt a lot about working in a team from your holiday job; or
you may have been involved in the organisation of school trips and have
therefore gained insight into working with groups of young people. A number
of other competencies will probably be quite new for you. Later in the
year you will describe your progress in the competencies and give a chronological
overview of your development, demonstrating (hopefully) that you have become
increasingly competent. You will need to do this by referring to specific
products and process reports by means of hyperlinks. Sometimes it may be
sufficient to copy a part of a process report to a competency definition.
Your mentor will look at your progress regularly. You can discuss your
strengths and weaknesses with your mentor and decide which competencies
need special attention.
[ Back
to top ]
7. Presentations
Content and purpose
As described earlier the portfolio
is a tool for making your development visible. All your collected
products and process reports form the 'evidence' which you can use
to demonstrate to others what you have learnt, what you already know and
can do and what you still need to know and be able to do. However, you
will need to edit this material first to make it meaningful and manageable.
You can’t just say "Look, here is my portfolio; it contains thirty products
and process reports and learning reports; look at, listen to and read them
if you want to know how far I have progressed with the competencies". You
need to explain how far you have progressed and to show evidence
to back up your assertions. In other words you need to make a
self-evaluation
or strengths and weaknesses analysis and to present this in a professional
manner to one or more assessors. The material
for this presentation will be kept in the Presentations section of the
portfolio.
When to make a presentation.
You may have to make a number of
presentations of your learning process during the year, for example as
a basis for discussion with your mentor or fellow students. But the most
important one is at the end of the year. During the final presentation
you will have to prove that you have developed sufficiently in certain
competency domains to qualify for entry to
the higher years of study.
How should you proceed?
Start by collecting as much
material as possible from your portfolio for your strengths and weaknesses
analysis. Determine first which competencies you want to discuss and then
analyse
the material you have collected in relation to this;
-
what are my weak points,
-
where have I grown,
-
what has remained weak,
-
what has improved,
-
what do I still need to work at in
order to progress?
Write down your answers to these questions
and collect, as evidence, short fragments from your products and your reports
and of course all the feedback you have received from tutors and fellow
students. Make a well-structured account out of all this. On the basis
of this analysis or self evaluation you need to be able to say exactly
where you now stand. And when you have established this, ask yourself what
you are aiming for, where do you want to end up? In other words: you must
also make new learning aims for next year. Finally in your report you need
to pay attention to the question of how you stand in relation to the teaching
profession.
In short, your presentation at the
end of the foundation year consists of:
-
A self-evaluation
with references (hyperlinks) to products,
process
reports and competencies.
-
Personal learning aims for the
higher years based on your self-evaluation;
-
Your vision on teaching and
how you feel about becoming a teacher.
When you have finished this self-evaluation
you are ready to prepare for the presentation
itself. This means asking questions like: ‘what will I say and what will
I show (selection) and in what form will I present this (presentation)?’.
Now your presentation skills are important. You should of course
remember the ICT and multimedia tools which are
at your disposal, for example Power Point, hyperlinks, sheets, the white-board
and so on. Don’t forget above all to pay attention to the clarity
of your explanation and body language! Your account will be stronger
if you choose a suitable form and present it convincingly.
[ Back
to top ]
8. Overviews
This component of the portfolio is
intended for overviews. For example you may want to include an overview
of your results to date and the modules you have followed, or perhaps an
overview of the learning aims you have formulated for yourself. Eventually
we hope that you will be able to generate these overviews from a database.
In the future you will make a contract for every learning
practice or module which you follow, including your learning aims,
the feedback you received and your marks. All this information will be
included in a database. Both students and tutors will be able to consult
this database to gain information and overviews pertaining to students’
progress.
This aspect of the portfolio has
not yet been implemented. Of course you can still include your own overview
of your results from the first year in your presentation at the end of
the year.
[ Back
to top ]
9. Links
This part of the portfolio includes
a number of fixed links, for example to the:
You can also include other links which
you think visitors to your portfolio will find interesting. For example
you can include a link to a site with pictures and photos from a certain
historical period or a link to a site with information about science work
in schools. As well as the exact URL (the Internet address of a site) you
can also include a brief description of what to look for in the site.
[ Back
to top ]
10. Tools
There are seven portfolio tools. Here
we will give a short description of each of these tools. There are special
User guides to some of the portfolio tools. Consult the Portfolio
Info site for more information.
Tools:
-
Select color and language
This tool allows you to change
the color of the menu bar and the language (English or Dutch).
-
Authorisations
With this tool you can grant other
people access to your portfolio. The opening page of your portfolio is
always accessible to all EFA tutors and staff, but all other parts can
be screened off. You can decide for each folder in your portfolio who has
access to it. For example you could make the Products section open to everyone,
the Competencies section only accessible to your mentor and the Presentations
section only visible to your fellow students. Of course, nobody else but
you can write or change anything in your portfolio. Visitors can only read
what is written there.
-
Administration
This tool is for checking whether
your name is included in the way you would like in the portfolio; you might
want to change your first name. Your email address is included as a standard
feature and you can also include a second email address. This is also where
you can change your password.
-
Contracts
This option is not yet in operation.
-
Learning cycle
The EFA learning cycle is an instrument
which can help you in your studies (see Process
Reports). You can copy and paste the diagrams which you find here into
your own portfolio.
-
Competency scale
You can show your progress towards
mastery of a particular competency in a visual manner by means of a competency
scale. On a 100-point scale you can show how far you think you have progressed
at the present time. The programme remembers all the information it receives
and you will be able to ask for an overview of this. You can ask for an
overview of all the levels which you have registered for a particular competency,
for example 'Working with others'. You can also ask for an overview of
your level on all the competency scales on a particular date, for example
at the end of the Foundation Year. These overviews are made available as
a bar chart, so you can then copy and paste them into your portfolio.
-
Competency administration
This is where you will find an
overview of all the competencies for your programme of studies. This may
not yet be filled in when you first work with your portfolio; in that case
the competencies for your programme have not yet been completed and you
should ask your mentor what to fill in here. You can also add your own
competencies in this section. An example: in the competencies for your
programme you might find that there is nothing about 'enthusiasm for working
with children' while you feel that this is an important competency. Moreover
this is one of your strong points and you want to include it in your portfolio.
In this case you can add this under 'My own Competencies'. The competency
scale also works for competencies which you have added yourself (try it
out!). Subsequently you collect evidence for this competency just like
all the others. (see Competencies)
Appendix: Used terms
Term (linked to text) |
Definition |
Portfolio |
A collection of products and process
reports produced during your studies, by means of which you can show
your development in regard to the competency
requirements for your subject in preparation for your presentation. |
Product |
The physical result of an activity (report, recording, essay etc.)
which you are including in your portfolio. A product may result from a
module or an activity outside your studies but it must always (be shown
to) contribute to your development in the curriculum competencies.
Tutors and mentors will advise you about which products to include in your
portfolio. |
Learning Practice (LP) |
A learning environment of at least 4 credits combining elements of
your subject of study (e.g., Maths) and your profession (teaching). In
an LP you work towards specific products
on the basis of individually-formulated learning aims, supported where
possible by ICT. |
Process
Report |
A report attached to each product in your portfolio,
in which you become conscious of and describe what you have learnt while
working at the product (see also learning
process). One report may also refer to all products for one module. |
Presentation |
At the end of the foundation year you will analyse your learning
process during the year by referring to your portfolio
and you will present this analysis in a presentation. |
Learning
Process |
The (mostly unconscious) process of learning which you go through whenever
you undertake any new activity (whether part of your studies or not). |
Progress Report |
This is like a process report; but
here you describe what you have learnt throughout a whole period. |
Competency |
The ability to deal with a complex professional situation: to find
fitting and creative solutions for situations you will meet in your profession. |
Qualified to enter Higher Years |
When you have gained your Foundation Year certificate, you are qualified
to enter the higher years and to start on the second year programme. |
Qualified for Final Placement |
After three and a half years of study, if all goes well, you will be
qualified to go on your final placement: the 'teacher in training' placement. |
Qualified to start Teaching |
Qualified to function independently as a starting teacher and to develop
further as a professional. |
Assessor |
An assessor is someone who assesses your mastery of the competencies
during an Integrative Assessment. Assessors may be tutors from the Department
or externals. An assessor never assesses his or her own mentor students. |
Digital |
Digital in this context means that your portfolio is made on the computer. |
Internet |
The entire system of electronic communication between computers throughout
the world through cables and phone lines. |
Web Site |
A page with text and/or graphics and/or sound which can be accessed
through the Internet. |
World Wide Web |
The network of websites which can be accessed world-wide through the
Internet. |
ICT or IT |
Information and Communication Technology |
Format or Template |
A fixed structure or form which can be filled in. |
Hyperlink |
A link between two points in a text. If you click on a hyperlink (usually
a word, phrase or symbol which is specially marked) this will take you
to the linked point in the text. |
Self Evaluation |
This literally means assessing yourself: seeing how far you have progressed.
In the context of your curriculum portfolio
it refers to the text in which you assess your progress in the various
competency domains by referring to the relevant 'evidence' in your portfolio. |
Reflection |
This is the process of looking back on an experience with the aim of
learning as much as possible from it: realising what happened and drawing
conclusions from this for the future. |
Integrative Assessment |
This is the assessment procedure in which the self-evaluation
of your progress in the competencies is
assessed objectively by others. Moreover your ability to act in a 'critical
situation' is also tested on-the-spot. The assessment is integrative in
the sense that it involves not only each competency separately but also
your ability to apply different competencies simultaneously, as you will
have to do when carrying out your profession. |
[ Back to top ]
![](rainban.gif)