A teaching portfolio or dossier is a document that provides an overview of your teaching approach and practices. Teaching portfolios are commonly requested by academic hiring committees, particularly for teaching-related positions, and can also be powerful tools for identifying and tracking your development as an educator. A good teaching portfolio can take some time to assemble, so it is helpful to start thinking about what you might include as you begin your teaching career.

Typically, a teaching portfolio allows you to represent three different spheres of your teaching:

1. Your beliefs about students, teaching, and learning;
2. Your teaching methods, responsibilities, and goals;
3. Evidence of your teaching effectiveness.

Writing a Teaching Philosophy

A teaching philosophy is the foundation of your teaching portfolio. In just one or two pages, it provides a narrative account of your beliefs and values as an educator, including descriptions of what ‘good teaching’ looks like to you and how you understand yourself in relation to your students. An effective philosophy should be an accurate representation of yourself as an educator, and should provide context for the rest of the portfolio.

Some questions you may ask yourself while thinking about how to articulate your teaching philosophy may include, as per the University of Calgary’s Taylor Institute guide:

• Beliefs: what do you think?
• Strategies: what do you do?
• Impact: what is the effect on self, learners, colleagues?
• Future goals: how will you improve?

There is no ‘right’ way to structure a teaching philosophy. Often, people will organize their philosophy around a metaphor or selection of key themes, while others will draw upon a critical moment as a teacher or learner that significantly shaped their approach to pedagogy. In all cases, the best teaching philosophies are those that are reflective and honest; the document should be

Demonstrating Evidence of Teaching Effectiveness

In addition to the teaching philosophy, a robust teaching portfolio contains a separate section that demonstrates evidence of your teaching effectiveness. Historically, a lot of emphasis has been put on summative (end-of-course) student evaluations, but there’s movement towards adopting a more holistic approach of demonstrating teaching effectiveness with different forms of evidence from students, peers, and self-reflection. Refer to the Evaluating Your Teaching chapter for ideas on how to collect this evidence.

Evidence can be quantitative or qualitative. In both cases, it is important that your evidence is well organized and easy for readers to interpret. For this reason, it is preferable to aggregate relevant information into tables rather than to include raw data.

Table 1. Example of Quantitative Student Feedback

When deciding what qualitative evidence to include in your portfolio, consider identifying general themes that emerge from feedback. Grouping comments into themes provides an organizational framework that will help the reader interpret them.

Table 2. Example of Qualitative Student Feedback

Many teaching assistants do not receive formal summative teaching evaluations. If this applies to you, you may consider alternative ways to obtain evidence of your teaching effectiveness. In consultation with the instructor, for example, you may administer your own evaluations at the end of a course. You may also arrange for a faculty member or peer to observe you in a lab or tutorial and write a letter that you can include in your portfolio. You can access templates or additional strategies for collecting feedback by contacting the MacPherson Institute.

Other Teaching Portfolio Sections

The teaching philosophy and evidence of teaching effectiveness are the two most significant sections of your teaching portfolio. A well-rounded portfolio will contain several additional sections that will contribute to the depth and breadth of the document. These include:

Teaching Experience: This section outlines all of your teaching experience, including TA positions, guest lecture opportunities, and sessional instructor work. This can be organized in table, and should include course name and code, the semester in which you taught, how many students you were responsible for, a list of your major responsibilities (e.g. marking, tutorials or labs, office hours), and, if you have taught at more than one institution, the name of each university.

Teaching Practices: While you may reference specific examples of teaching practices in your teaching philosophy, you may also wish to provide some additional detail in a separate section. Here, you can go into additional detail about pedagogical strategies or approaches you commonly use. For example, you may wish to include a brief paragraph about why you use inquiry-based learning or the Socratic method.

Teaching Development: Your teaching portfolio is an excellent place to highlight initiative you have taken to improve your own teaching. Examples may include courses or certificate programs (such as the Teaching and Learning Certificates of Completion Program), conferences, workshops, or similar opportunities. Rather than simply listing these examples, consider providing some additional detail about what you learned and how it shaped your teaching.

Contributions to Teaching and Learning: If you have participated in designing or delivering any workshops, seminars, or training opportunities (for example, facilitating part of a TA orientation session in your department), you can include short descriptions of those activities in this section.

Teaching Goals: While you do not necessarily need to have an entire section dedicated to your teaching goals, it is a good idea to include some indication of ways you want or plan to continue to develop your teaching practice. For example, if you only have TA experience, perhaps you wish to work as an instructor, or maybe you wish to incorporate more digital learning options in your course. Sharing your goals can help give the reader the impression that you are a motivated and dedicated educator.

putting your Teaching Portfolio together

Most teaching portfolios are created in a word processor and exported to a .pdf, although some individuals are increasingly turning towards digital portfolios. When going the traditional .pdf route, it is important that your portfolio have a cover page with your contact information and credentials and an accurate table of contents to help guide readers. This table of contents is particularly important for hiring committees that may be going through hundreds of portfolios; showing them exactly where they can find specific information is usually very appreciated.

Generally, teaching portfolios begin with the teaching philosophy, which provides a narrative thread throughout the entire portfolio. Following the philosophy, you can include your teaching experience, teaching practices, teaching development, and contributions to teaching and learning sections. You may also wish to add appendices at the end of the portfolio if you would like to include sample syllabi, assignments, or other documents that showcase your teaching approach and experience.

When formatting your portfolio, it is important that the final product looks professional. Ensure you use a consistent font and font size throughout and that you have edited the document for clarity and accuracy. Perhaps you can find a friend or colleague who would be willing to read it for errors and provide feedback on its overall presentation and content.

The MacPherson Institute provides teaching portfolio consultations upon request to all graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty. You can request a consultation here.