Benefits and Challenges of Creating a Teaching Portfolio 

What do I include in my portfolio?  

Each teaching portfolio will be unique as it is intended to reflect who you are as a person and professional educator. We encourage you to consider including the following sub-pages within your website: 

Home Page 

A brief bio and professional headshot: who are you in a nutshell? Provide a welcome message to introduce yourself as a teaching professional.  

A brief summary of your teaching experiences: what subjects and courses have you taught, and in which programs and institutions?  

Overview of how to navigate your website: In a paragraph or less, orient your readers to the contents of your digital portfolio and how it has been thoughtfully organized/structured  

Contact details: Your preferred points of contact and social media handles   

A link to download your resumé or Curriculum Vitae (CV): an up-to-date PDF copy  

Your Philosophy of Teaching Statement  

A written statement (usually 1 page, broken up into short paragraphs and headings) describing your core teaching/assessment values and illustrations of how these beliefs or principles translate to your pedagogical practices in the classroom. We encourage you to communicate your philosophy and how it connects with the domains of our Teaching Excellence Framework.  

Evidence/Artifacts of Professional Growth in Teaching   

In addition to the illustrative examples discussed in your Philosophy of Teaching Statement, we encourage you to curate other evidence/artifacts showing professional growth toward the aspirational goal of Teaching Excellence. These, too, can be mapped back to the domains of teaching outlined in our Teaching Excellence framework.  

Try to be selective and descriptive in terms of what you include and link to/attach, so that external readers can understand the significance of the evidence (and aren’t weighed down by the amount of evidence). The goal when curating is to be intentionally selective rather than exhaustive in terms of what you choose to include and why.  

Examples of evidence/artifacts to include in your teaching portfolio are provided under the Resource section below. Please note that this list is illustrative rather than exhaustive, inviting creative and decolonized artifacts. 

Blog or Vlog (optional)  

Blogs (either written, podcast, or video format) can be an engaging way to share updates about your teaching and engage like-minded peers in scholarly conversations about the pursuit of teaching excellence:  

• What are you experimenting with in your teaching?  

• What works well for you and why?  

• When reflecting on your teaching, what ‘burning questions’ are emerging as ‘problems from practice’ to explore as opportunities for ongoing professional learning?  

Advice for getting started with your teaching portfolio  

Start with what you have and gather as you go 

You might already have some components of a teaching portfolio (suggested contents above), and your next task might be to start digitizing. Or you may be newer to the teaching profession and will need to collect artifacts as you go. Either way, the most important thing is to start with what you have and collect/revise/refine as you go. Your teaching portfolio will never be finished or complete, it’s a reflection of a lifelong journey!  

Be authentic!  

Your teaching portfolio should be unique to you and should reflect your background, interests, passions, and experiences. No two teaching portfolios will look or feel the same and you don’t need to pretend you are the perfect educator! Be authentic, celebrate your successes, but also share your challenges and the knowledge and skills that you are working to develop.  

Be selective in what you choose to include and how you organize your content 

Your teaching portfolio doesn’t need to be exhaustive, but it should be an accurate, recent, and intentional curation of content which portrays a coherent narrative about who you are as a person/professional educator.   

Tell readers about the importance of the artifacts you’ve chosen to include 

Help your readers understand why you’ve selected to include key artifacts. Provide some context and explain how each artifact reflects or informs your philosophy of teaching and pedagogical practices.  

Be clear and organized 

the best portfolios are well-organized and easy to navigate between pages and back to your homepage.  

Stay up to date 

The best portfolios are living entities! Try your best to keep your portfolio current with recent updates on what you are teaching, how you are teaching, and what you are learning from your teaching.  

When publishing updates, request peer feedback 

When you are developing and revising your teaching portfolio, it can be useful to engage in self- and peer-assessment. We encourage you to work with your peers to facilitate rich dialogues about the quality of your teaching portfolio, to identify strengths, opportunities for improvement, and actionable next steps. Rubrics for assessing teaching portfolio quality (e.g., CTE, Boston College, n.d.) can be useful tools for guiding your review and feedback conversations.