24 Roles and Responsibilities in Review

Chairs and roles with similar responsibilities are uniquely positioned to support educators in preparing and maintaining their teaching portfolios. In addition, individuals in these roles can often be tasked with conducting summative reviews of teaching portfolios for tenure, permanence, and promotion. Balancing support with critical evaluation requires transparency and integrity, particularly given the caution against relying solely on student evaluations of teaching data at McMaster and beyond (Grignon et al., 2019).

Alternatively, a peer or external reviewer may engage in formative or summative reviews of a colleague’s teaching portfolio. In this context, the reviewer may or may not have been involved in supporting the colleague in preparing their portfolio for this stage of review.

As a reviewer, it is important to consider the differences between the requirements for tenure- and teaching-stream faculty in McMaster’s processes for tenure, permanence, and promotion. Whereas the teaching portfolio does not go beyond the departmental level during tenure and promotion processes for tenure-stream faculty, it has a wider audience (i.e., external reviewers) and a much greater weight in permanence and promotion processes for teaching-stream faculty. Consequently, the teaching portfolio is far more significant for teaching-stream faculty as it allows them to demonstrate their professional excellence to a much greater degree.

The following sections suggest ideas for supporting a faculty member’s teaching portfolio development and informing a fair approach to completing a portfolio review.