Teacher Education Reflective Portfolio
The Big Picture
The purpose of the reflective portfolio is for you to develop and demonstrate your ability to
apply the research, reflection, and response cycle in your development as an effective teacher.
The portfolio process is designed to help you better understand yourself as a teacher and to
reflect on your growth.
Your reflective portfolio is a reflection of who you are and how you tell your story, and so will be
individual and unique to you. You will select the elements and decide how to organize and
present them, drawing on all aspects of your teacher education program at Lake Superior State
University, as well as work and volunteer experiences beyond the university.
It should be noted that a reflective portfolio is very different from what you might take to an
interview as a professional portfolio. A reflective portfolio is expected to document learning and
reflection over time, while a professional or interview portfolio is very concise collection of ‘best
piece’ elements. Just as resumes should be tailored to the specific jobs you are applying for,
interview portfolios should contain elements selected to best present the skills and results that
relate to a specific job; the interview portfolio is a tool for facilitating discussion of your ability
to promote learning on the part of the K-12 students with whom you will work. In contrast, your
reflective portfolio presents the total picture of how you are emerging as a beginning teacher,
and how you have developed and actualized your beliefs and priorities in/through your
experiences. In short, the reflective portfolio is a tool to help you reflect on and assess your own
learning
It is extremely important that the reflective portfolio (as well as other types of portfolios)
includes your own work, rather than resources and suggestions from others. The portfolio is a
demonstration of your work, not a resource file for future reference. A distinction can be made
between a portfolio and a folio, with the former being a carefully selected collection of personal
work and the latter being an extensive collection of resources from a variety of sources.
Initial Reflective Portfolio
As part of your application for the Teacher Education Program, you will submit an Initial
Reflective Portfolio, which will be reviewed by the faculty of the School of Education. Feedback,
observations and suggestions from the faculty will be shared with you upon your acceptance
into the program. You will complete and submit a second iteration of your reflective portfolio
as part of your student teaching application, and again received feedback and suggestions from
faculty review. Your final iteration of your reflective portfolio will be compiled and assessed as
part of the culminating activities of the student teaching experience.
October 2015
The basic framework of the Initial Portfolio is an opening statement, and at least three elements
or artifacts that connect to and expand on the opening statement. Each element or artifact
should have an introduction or reflection that explains why you chose it and the connection it
has with your opening statement. The major steps in developing your portfolio are deciding
what your opening statement will be, what elements you will include to support it, and how you
will choose to reflect on those elements. Different students will choose to include different types
of evidence, and will choose to organize and present their portfolios differently.
Opening Statement
The opening statement is often a teacher education candidate’s statement of educational
philosophy, although other approaches are certainly possible. You might choose to reflect on
your personal beliefs about the LSSU Teacher Education Program claims, to reflect on the
Michigan InTASC standards, or to describe your own metaphor of teaching and learning.
Supporting Elements and Introductions
Each element you include to support, expand, and/or document your opening statement must be
chosen for a reason, and that reason must be explained in a brief introduction to the element.
You should not leave it to the reviewer to figure out how each element support the opening
statement; rather, you should explicitly reflect on how each element supports the opening
statement. Take care that these introductions are reflective. It is not sufficient to state, “This
paper is here because it is on my favorite topic.” Rather, you should explain why the topic is a
favorite, how it supports the opening statement, and what you learned – or are learning from it
now – about yourself as a teacher, or the process of teaching and learning in general.
The supporting elements and artifacts you choose can come from university coursework, paid
employment, volunteer experience, or other settings. Examples include: summative field
experience reports from EDUC courses; pages from field experience log/notes; autobiographical
papers from sociology courses; research papers or projects from history or biology courses;
creative writing pieces from English courses; letters of testimony from field experience
cooperating teachers; lesson plans from methods courses, with reflective comments and
evidence of student learning.
If your statement of educational philosophy is not your opening statement, then it must be
included be one of your supporting elements and linked to your opening statement.
October 2015