Repertoires of practice: Re-framing teaching portfolios

Deborah P. Berrill
*
, Emily Addison
School of Education, Trent University, 1600 West Bank Drive, Peterborough, ON, Canada K9H 4Z4
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 22 July 2009
Received in revised form
2 January 2010
Accepted 10 February 2010
Keywords:
Teaching portfolio
Pre-service teacher education
Repertoires of practice
Reection
Portfolio purposes
a b s t r a c t
Teaching portfolios have been widely used in pre-service teacher education programs for approximately
two decades and often constitute exit requirements and/or function as a requirement for entry to the
teaching profession. Yet much has been written about teacher candidate confusion as to whether the
portfolio's purpose is to document their learning and their identity formation as teachers or to serve as
evidence of their teaching competence. This paper applies a sociocultural historical lens to this issue,
exploring the possible role of teaching portfolios as an effective tool both for the negotiation of identity
and for the demonstration of teaching competence. Through examining the perceptions of teachers who
are in their rst ve years of teaching, we seek to re-frame the above issues in relation to repertoires of
practice, a sociocultural historical phrase referring to shared competencies within a given community.
We conclude that this re-framing enables novice teachers to understand competencies as the repertoires
of the teaching profession and that they can enact these repertoires, or competencies, through a range of
different practices. Through this re-framing, the purposes of the teaching portfolio may be more
apparent and less contradictory.
2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Upon rst introduction, the novice may perceive the teaching
portfolio to be a benign collection of artifacts, a repository where
one periodically inserts content that appears important to one's
teaching e a scrapbook of sorts. Yet, the purpose of the teaching
portfolio becomes increasingly muddied as pre-service teacher
candidates become more involved in creating and using their
teaching portfolios: is the portfolio a compendiumof materials that
speaks to the candidate's learning and identity construction or is it
a documentation of the candidate's competence e a gatekeeper for
program exit and/or entry into the profession? The situation is not
so different for classroom teachers who are required to create
teaching portfolios for appraisal or additional credentialing
purposes in that they too are left questioning whether the portfolio
is a mechanismfor reection and improvement of teaching practice
or evidence of teaching expertise.
Although there can be multiple purposes for portfolios, the
research literature speaks to two main frameworks associated with
educational portfolios e constructivist learning portfolios and
positivist assessment portfolios. In a learning portfolio, self-
reection is a critical part of the process of creating the portfolio,
the learner has a signicant control of what is included and of
evaluation, and the portfolio emphasizes growth and learning. In
contrast, assessment portfolios emphasize evidence of
achievement of externally imposed outcomes and in the case of
teaching portfolios these outcomes are evidence of teaching
competencies. A number of scholars contend that the purpose of
a portfolio signicantly inuences the type of entries one includes;
thus, having clarity of purpose is very important, and particularly so
for novice teachers.
Teaching portfolios have increasingly moved to include both
purposes. This has become problematic for many teacher candi-
dates: Should they be documenting learning and professional
identity formation or providing evidence of teaching competence?
When candidates perceive that demonstration of imposed
competencies is the most important factor for program completion
or entry to the profession, they often lose sight of deeper issues
related to formation of their teaching identities and of ways that
they enact their beliefs through their teaching practices.
This paper applies a sociocultural historical lens to examine how
this problem of contradictory purposes can be ameliorated.
Through examining the perceptions of teachers who are in their
rst ve years of teaching, we seek to show how the teaching
portfolio can be an effective tool for re-framing teaching compe-
tencies as teaching repertoires, providing a clearer understanding
for teacher candidates of how teaching repertoires become part of
one's teaching identity.
The rationale for teaching portfolios. Teaching portfolios were
rst used in the 1980s, prompted in part by the 1986 release in the
United States of A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century and
the creation of the National Board Certication process whereby
* Corresponding author. Tel.: 1 705 748 1011x6171; fax: 1 705 748 1144.
E-mail address: dberrill@trentu.a (D.P. Berrill).
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Teaching and Teacher Education
j ournal homepage: www. el sevi er. com/ l ocat e/ t at e
0742-051X/$ e see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.tate.2010.02.005
Teaching and Teacher Education 26 (2010) 1178e1185
classroom teachers could seek master teacher recognition. In the
early 1990s, two works were promoted anew as a key to increase
improvement of teaching practice and teacher professionalism
through reection: Dewey's (1933) How we think: A restatement of
the relation of reective thinking to the educative process and Schn's
(1983) The Reective Practitioner. In the mid-1990s, there was strong
advocacy for the development of portfolios in teacher education
with the portfolio seen both as supporting the development of
a professional habit of reection and as a concrete representation of
the process of reection (Borko, Michalec, Timmons, & Siddle, 1997;
Loughran & Corrigan, 1995; Lyons, 1998; Wade & Yarborough,
1996). The relatively quick uptake of portfolios may have been
due in part to the ways in which portfolios were perceived as
vehicles that could demonstrate the complexity of teaching and
provide authentic evidence of reection and teacher practice.
However, within a very short time period, those seeking more
nuanced and authentic methods of teacher appraisal and cre-
dentialing recognized the benets offered by teaching portfolios.
By 2000, teaching portfolios had become commonplace in the U.S.
in teacher education programs, in the process of granting an initial
teaching license, in teacher recertication, and in National Board
certication (Zeichner & Wray, 2001, p. 613).
The call for acknowledgement of complexity in teaching has
been reiterated in recent teacher credentialing literature, particu-
larly with regards to alternative teacher credentialing routes and
the need for credentialing that goes beyond test scores to include
multiple data sources (Pecheone & Chung, 2006). Thus, the initial
impetus for teaching portfolios, namely the improvement of
teaching practice and professionalism, has become subsumed
under the equally important issue of teacher credentialing. This
shift has resulted in confusion on the part of both teacher educators
and teacher candidates regarding how to construct portfolio
entries, accompanied by the recognition that confusion of portfolio
purpose can put authors in a position of vulnerability (Burroughs,
2001; Snyder, Lippincott, & Bower, 1998; Wray, 2008; van
Tartwijk, van Rijswijk, Tuithof, & Driessen, 2008).
This paper reports a study of over 350 teachers in their rst ve
years of teaching who created a teaching portfolio as part of their B.
Ed. program requirements. Using sociocultural historical theory,
a new way of framing teaching competencies e as teaching
repertoires e is proposed. This framework may provide a less
contested and more clearly understood relation between compe-
tencies and identity.
1. Multiple and contradictory purposes of teaching portfolios
Since its inception, a tension has existed regarding the purpose of
the teaching portfolio. While some identify its primary purpose as
promoting teacher reection and growth (Farr Darling, 2001;
Mansvelder-Longaroux, Beijaard, & Verloop, 2007), others perceive
portfolios as a tool for assessing teacher competencies and effec-
tiveness (Burroughs, 2001; Tillema & Smith, 2007). This tension was
noted over a decade ago (Snyder, Lippincott, & Bower, 1998) and
remains problematic today (van Tartwijk et al., 2008; Tillema &
Smith, 2007; Wray, 2008). Although the binary of reection and
growth versus assessment of externally imposed criteria seems to be
the central tension in use of teaching portfolios, research over the
past decade has identied a number of additional issues regarding
both the symbolic and physical construction of portfolios. These
include: (a) conict in purpose and audience (Borko et al., 1997;
Hallman, 2007; Tillema & Smith, 2007; Wray, 2008; Zeichner &
Wray, 2001); (b) lack of support in constructing portfolios (Angel,
2008; Farr Darling, 2001; Wray, 2007); (c) lack of teacher owner-
ship over their ownportfolios (Barrett, 2007; Berrill &Whalen, 2007;
Stuart & Thurlow, 2000; Zeichner & Wray, 2001) and (d) lack of
shared appraisal criteria (Burroughs, 2001; Cochran-Smith, 2005;
Darling-Hammond & Snyder, 2000; Tillema & Smith, 2007).
A number of scholars have put forward the convincing argu-
ment that purpose determines the type of portfolio to be created
(Wray, 2008, p. 37) and that portfolio design and the nature of
portfolio assessment signicantly inuence the way candidates
think about and reect on their teaching (Pecheone & Chung,
2006, p. 31). In many jurisdictions, pre-service teaching portfolios
are assessed either for credentialing purposes or as a program or
course assignment. Yet, assessment of the portfolio may be at cross
purposes with a learning portfolio for it is unclear whether the
reective entries are for teacher candidate purposes, such as
improvement of practice, or for the purpose of satisfying external
criteria. Wray (2008) reminds us that teacher candidates may be
vulnerable if they create entries related to the improvement in their
practice (learning portfolios) when their portfolios are assessed for
purposes of demonstrating mastery. Others indicate that learning
versus demonstration of mastery purposes are not necessarily
contradictory, noting that developing a portfolio for credentialing
purposes can have profound benecial and career-altering
(learning) impact on individuals (Pecheone & Chung, 2006, p. 31).
Context, support, and feedback during portfolio construction seem
to signicantly impact the degree to which this is true.
Even with shared understanding regarding the purpose of the
portfolio, Tillema and Smith (2007) found that the lack of explicit
and shared portfolio appraisal criteria in pre-service teacher
education often results in normative and judgmental evaluations
reecting the personal perceptions of individual assessors leading
to a wide variation in assessment both within and across insti-
tutions. Like others, Tillema and Smith argue that criteria such as
evidence of quality improvement or continuous development
would reconcile the teacher educator's dilemma of being both an
assessor and a mentor of learning (Tillema & Smith, 2007, p. 455).
From this perspective, if purposes and criteria are explicit and
shared between and across teacher candidates and teacher
educators, it may be possible that a portfolio could have more
than one purpose and still be an instrument for meaningful
teacher reection on practice, the original rationale for teaching
portfolios.
Issues related to multiple portfolio purposes are exacerbated by
two additional factors: The need for support in construction of the
portfolio (Angel, 2008; Farr Darling, 2001; Imhof & Picard, 2009;
Wray, 2008) and the need of authors to feel ownership of the
portfolio (Barrett, 2007; Berrill & Whalen, 2007; Zeichner &
Wray, 2001).
2. Theoretical framework: sociocultural historical theory
Sociocultural historical theory seeks to understand learning as
social participation (Gutierrez &Rogoff, 2003; Lave &Wenger, 1991;
Vygotsky, 1978; Wenger, 1998). Using this lens, we frame pre-
service teacher education as the preparation of novices for entry
into a community of practice e that of the teaching profession. Our
perspective is informed by Lave and Wenger's (1991) theory of
legitimate peripheral participation as a lens for exploring and
understanding the dynamic landscape of community membership,
of belonging in the community. Lave and Wenger (1991) describe
this as follows:
Peripherality suggests that there may be multiple, varied, more-
or less-engaged and inclusive ways of being located in the elds
of participation dened by a community. . Furthermore,
legitimate peripherality is a complex notion, implicated in social
structures involving relations of power. . [Legitimate periph-
erality] can itself be a source of power or powerlessness, in
D.P. Berrill, E. Addison / Teaching and Teacher Education 26 (2010) 1178e1185 1179
affording or preventing articulation and interchange among
communities of practice. (pp. 35e36.)
Thus, we are interested in exploring the construct of teacher
candidates as new members in the community of practice of the
teaching profession and in their movement from a position of
legitimate peripheral participation early in their pre-service
programs to fuller participation by the time of entry into the
profession. Wenger (1998) sheds further light on this process in his
exploration of identity construction through participation in
a community of practice. Our interest is in teacher candidates'
construction of their personaleprofessional identities as members
of the teaching profession and of the role of the teaching portfolio
as a tool of mediation of their identity negotiation.
Like other contemporary identity theorists, Wenger constructs
identity as uid while also distinguishing the sociocultural framing
of identity as one that acknowledges the profound connection
between identity and practice (Wenger, 1998, p. 149). He further
characterizes identity as negotiated experience, community
membership, learning trajectory, a nexus of multimembership, and
belonging dened globally but experienced locally (pp. 149e150).
An identity, then, is a layering of events of participation and
reication by which our experience and its social interpretation
inform each other. As we encounter our effects on the world and
develop our relations with others, these layers build upon each
together to produce our identity as a very complex interweaving
of participative experience and reicative projections. Bringing
the two together through the negotiation of meaning, we
construct who we are. In the same way that meaning exists in its
negotiation, identity exists enot as an object in and of itself ebut
in the constant work of negotiating the self. It is in this cascading
interplay of participationandreicationthat our experience of life
becomes one of identity.. (Wenger, 1998, p. 151.)
From this perspective, teacher candidates negotiate their
professional identities through the meaning of their participation
in the community of teaching practice. Part of the complexity of
this particular process is that teacher candidates have already been
full participants in schooling as students and the landscape already
holds a certain familiarity to them. However, as students they were
members of a different community with very different practices e
those of the student community. As members of the community of
teacher practitioners, they must take on different repertoires,
different engagement, different enterprises.
Repertoires of practice. Sociocultural theorists would argue that
having a shared repertoire of practice is what denes a community
of practice. Wenger contends that the expected repertoires of the
community of practice translate into dimensions of competence
which become dimensions of identity in that community (Wenger,
1998, p. 153). Wenger explains this further, as follows:
When we come in contact with new practices, we venture into
unfamiliar territory. The boundaries of our communities mani-
fest as a lack of competence. . We do not quite know how to
engage with others. We do not understand the subtleties of the
enterprise as the community has dened it. . Our non-
membership shapes our identities through our confrontation
with the unfamiliar. In sum, membership in a community of
practice translates into an identity as a form of competence.
(Wenger, 1998, p. 153.)
Teacher candidates are introduced to repertoires of the teaching
profession both through their university course work and their
school placement experiences. According to sociocultural theory,
their teaching identities are negotiated through a process of
participation in teaching as well as reection on that experience
(the reication of that participation) and as such, will be constantly
renegotiated.
The teaching portfolio as a tool for mediating identity nego-
tiation. By focusing on repertoires of teaching practice, the pre-
service teaching portfolio can serve as a tool of mediation and
negotiation during entry into the teaching profession, and hence as
a tool of identity construction within this community of practice.
Through the teaching portfolio, teacher candidates are able to reify
their practice by making it visible and consciously reecting on it in
relation to expected repertoires of the profession. The reective
comments expected in teaching portfolios are articulations of
identity in practice and negotiations of the repertoires of the
community.
This study explores the extent to which the teaching portfolio is
perceived to be helpful in constructing a professional teaching
identity. From a sociocultural historical perspective, this identity
construction involves gaining understanding of and facility with
the repertoires, or competencies, of the professional teaching
community.
3. Context
This study is situated within a social constructivist paradigm
which calls for the creation of meaning and understanding through
examining the complexities of various voices and perspectives
(Guba & Lincoln, 2005). The paper thus draws from a rich source of
participant voices, having solicited the perspectives of all graduates
in the past ve years froma School of Education in Ontario, Canada.
This population was chosen so that we could explore perceptions
after the immediacy and intensity of recent portfolio completion
had passed and when graduates had become fuller participants in
the professional community of practice.
4. Program context
The B.Ed. program that is the site of the study is a one-year
postgraduate program with an enrolment of approximately
300e350 per year, including both elementary school and secondary
school teacher candidates. Entrance into the program is highly
competitive, requiring both an experience prole and an academic
prole, and with a consistent ratio of approximately nine applica-
tions for every person accepted. Over the duration of the program,
teacher candidates spend a minimum of 71 days in school place-
ment where they are mentored and evaluated by an experienced
teacher. Teacher candidates meet with their faculty supervisors
(university instructors) in practicum groups of 12e15 for 2 h
weekly. While teacher candidates are on placement, faculty
supervisors observe the candidates teach and in a 10-week
extended placement, the candidates return to the university each
month to meet with their practicum group and faculty supervisor.
5. Portfolio context
Although portfolios are not required in Ontario for credentialing
purposes, they are an integral component of this B.Ed. program and
are assessed as part of the practicum course, accounting for 50% of
the nal mark in the course. There are explicit criteria and
a common marking rubric for the portfolio (Appendix A). During
the time period of the study, the portfolio was described in the
University Calendar as follows:
All candidates will prepare a Professional Teaching Portfolio
based on expected teaching competencies, aligned with the
Ontario College of Teachers' Standards of Practice for the Teaching
Profession and the Ethical Standards for the Teaching Profession.
D.P. Berrill, E. Addison / Teaching and Teacher Education 26 (2010) 1178e1185 1180
The Professional Teaching Portfolio will be developed over the
course of the program, incorporating material from courses and
from practicum experiences. As well as documenting the
candidates' professional practice and the relation of research
and theory to practice, the portfolios will include the candidates'
reections on their own teaching beliefs and practices as well as
on-going professional learning plans. (University Calendar,
2006, pp. 87e88.)
Support andguidance inportfoliopreparationis offeredtoteacher
candidates throughfacultysupervisors, other instructors, workshops,
and an online portfolio maker website (www.portfoliomaker.ca).
That said, there is variation in the way in which faculty supervisors
inform and guide teacher candidates regarding the development of
their portfolio and it is apparent in meetings that faculty hold
differing views regarding the purpose of the portfolio.
There are seven sections/categories that must be included in the
portfolio: professional development; planning; classroom
management; assessment and evaluation; special needs; curric-
ulum areas of special interest; and extra-curricular contributions.
These sections reect different repertoires of practice e most of
which, we would argue, are recognizable to teachers worldwide.
They were chosen as an organizer for the portfolio instead of
existing College of Teachers standards of practice for they represent
the very fundamentals of teaching and are not prone to shifting, as
may be true for politically articulated standards of practice. In
addition to the seven required sections, candidates are encouraged
to include additional sections that reect particular values, skills
and talents not represented by the above. The candidates receive
a three-ring white binder, one inch thick, with section dividers and
sheet protectors and are encouraged to have pages be double
sided, enabling two-page design considerations such as showing
samples of student work accompanied by commentary and
reections on the work.
Although some instructors begin talking about the portfolio
early in the B.Ed. program and some course assignments are
structured so that they can serve as portfolio entries, most
instructors do not address the portfolio until much later in the year.
Since the portfolio is an assignment for only one course, most
instructors do not see themselves as having a role to play in sup-
porting teacher candidates in constructing their portfolios. Hence,
for many candidates, portfolio construction does not begin in
earnest until just before it is due at the end of the program.
6. Methodology
Results reported in this paper draw upon a set of questions that
were part of a larger ve-year program review. The target pop-
ulation was composed of all B.Ed. graduates fromthe last ve years,
including graduates from the spring preceding late autumn data
collection of the study. Potential respondents were invited by letter
via email and through the postal system to participate in an online
survey, and participants directly accessed the online survey
through a website address. Thus, no identifying features such as
email address were included and each individual was given
a randomly generated numeric code. Of the 1372 graduates from
the B.Ed. program in the last ve years, 367 (27%) participated in
the study. Statistical analysis showed this sample to be highly
representative of the larger population with regards to teaching
division (elementary or secondary school), gender, teaching
subject, and year of graduation. Analysis also showed no differences
in responses across any of the demographic populations.
The larger questionnaire for the ve-year program review
included graduates' perceptions of program helpfulness in
preparing them for the teaching profession. Sections included
questions on the program overall, program content, course
delivery, the practicum, and the teaching portfolio. Three questions
solicited participants' perceptions regarding the portfolio,
including both a 6-point likert-type question (strongly agree;
agree; neither agree nor disagree; disagree; strongly disagree; not
applicable) and open-ended items. The questions were as follows:
1. To what degree do you agree/disagree with the following
statements: The professional portfolio (the process or product)
helped me.
a. construct my identity as a teacher.
b. get a job.
c. in teacher performance appraisal
d. in career development.
2. In what ways did the portfolio categories help or constrain you
in constructing your identity as a teacher? (Some categories
include professional development, planning, classroom
management, assessment and evaluation, special needs,
curriculum areas of special interest, co-curricular contribu-
tions.) Please elaborate.
3. Any other comments on the professional teaching portfolio
that could be helpful for us. Please elaborate.
Participants also had other opportunities to write about the
teaching portfolio when responding to open-ended questions, such
as asking participants to identify what they felt were the particular
strengths of the program, what they would like to see more of, and
what they would like to see less of. Consistent with sociocultural
constructivism, the questionnaire purposefully did not dene the
term identity, but rather allowed participants to dene identity
themselves through the language they used and the examples they
included. During coding, responses with common language use
about the construct of identity were clumped, and showed
a strongly shared construction of the concept.
Short answer responses were analyzed using a grounded and
context-specic approach. Following Creswell's (2005) principle of
constant comparative data analysis, we worked inductively, from
specic to broad data analysis 'grounding' the categories in the
data (p. 406), and rened themes by returning to data repeatedly.
To prevent being inuenced by the results of the quantitative data,
the short answer responses were analyzed prior to examining the
close-ended data. The researchers and a research assistant inde-
pendently read all responses, identifying broad themes as well as
specic categories within the themes. After the initial coding was
completed, the categories were discussed until consensus was
reached regarding both the themes and categories. Using the new
themes and categories, researchers then independently re-coded
the responses to ensure consensus.
The close-ended question was examined using descriptive
statistics (i.e., frequencies and comparisons of variables) and
independent t-tests were conducted to identify whether there were
signicant differences. Close-ended and short answer ndings
were then compared to identify points of resonation, reecting the
mixed-method nature of the data (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2007).
7. Results and discussion
Results are reported using the nal synthesis between the
quantitative and the qualitative data. It is important to remember
that these quotations are from teachers who graduated from their
B.Ed. program between one and ve years prior to this survey.
No differences across groups. We entered this study not
knowing if there might be differences across subgroups in response
to creating a portfolio and, thus, to our questions. For instance,
teacher educators often write about perceived cultural differences
D.P. Berrill, E. Addison / Teaching and Teacher Education 26 (2010) 1178e1185 1181
between people planning to teach elementary school and those
planning to teach secondary school. Similarly, females are often
constructed differently from males regarding their engagement
with writing or with assembling what can be perceived as
a scrapbook type of compendium. And, likewise, secondary school
science teacher candidates are often constructed differently than
those in the arts and humanities.
Analysis across gender, program division, and teaching area
resulted in no signicant difference. For instance, Fig. 1 highlights
the striking consistency in response regarding portfolio helpfulness
in identity construction.
Approximately 56% of survey participants agreed or strongly
agreed that the portfolio process or product helped them construct
their identity as a teacher; approximately 24% neither agreed nor
disagreed; and approximately 20% disagreed or strongly disagreed.
These consistencies across all groups give the data strong reliability.
The portfolio as an effective tool in the construction of teacher
identity. The majority of respondents found the portfolio to be
a powerful tool in supporting the construction of their teacher
identity. This included repeated comments such as how portfolios
supported the development of philosophies of teaching, the artic-
ulation of beliefs, and the making visible and dening personal
strengths and weaknesses.
I think all [sections of the portfolio] were helpful. [.]If I had to
pick, I'd say special interest and special needs are areas that
get a lot of attention so, I really focused on building them up.
With the demands of diverse learners and interest in teacher
identity, these areas highlight my dedication to special needs
and social justice (as my area of special interest). These areas
have helped me construct my teacher identity.
It forced me to put my thoughts and feelings on paper, thus
making it easy to speak to each of my belief categories. I believe
that this will be a great value in an interviewsetting when I will
need to keep my answers quick and concise. It provided me with
a great deal of time for reection on my teaching experiences
and beliefs.
I think the categories were very helpful in helping me identify
different aspects of educational practice, different strategies for
each, and evaluation and articulation of my own strategies for
each topic. It also helped me identify my areas of weakness, my
educational needs, and develop strategies for improvement.
That said, the quantitative results show that approximately one-
fth of teacher candidates disagreed or strongly disagreed that
the portfolio was helpful in constructing their identity as a teacher.
The qualitative responses gave us deeper understanding regarding
the complexities involved and greater insight into why some
people felt that the portfolio was not helpful.
One of the perceived obstacles to portfolios supporting identity
construction was the portfolio categories themselves e what we
contend are the repertoires of practice of the teaching profession.
I think the categories should have been more suggestion than
requirement because my identity doesn't necessarily t into the
tiny boxes we were allowed to express ourselves in. A lot of it
was uff and took a lot of time, but then was removed from my
portfolio immediately because I would never present it in an
interview.
The portfolio was forced and the specic requirements for each
section made me feel like I better write the correct response
rather than how I really felt. My portfolio does not reect who I
am as a teacher.
It didn't help me. I simply rushed to put something together that
regurgitated all that I had been told about teaching throughout
the year. It is not an authentic assessment .there are too many
RULES on what the nal product should look like . success
looks different to all of us.
Responses such as those above indicate that some candidates
either had not recognized the categories as representing the
repertoires of practice and expected competencies of the teaching
community that are intertwined with teacher identity or else they
recognized them as such but did not understand that they could
demonstrate their ability to enact these repertoires in a range of
ways, which would, in turn, articulate their teacher identity in
personally meaningful ways. It is interesting that even after one to
ve years of classroom practice, some respondents still did not see
this connection.
In contrast, other participants indicated that the categories were
not a problem, but rather that the format of the portfoliowas the issue.
It would be much better to provide a format, rather than just
doing an abstract sort of thing by looking at other people's
portfolios. Reminded me of the sort of thing the junior grades do
(making a title page, using colours etc)..
I mostly felt that the format was constrictive. Although I liked
the portfolio, the evaluation (and rigid expected structure),
limited my ability to create a portfolio that reected my orga-
nizational style or my personality.
Fig. 1. Comparison of graduates' responses regarding their agreement with the statement that the professional portfolio helped construct their identity as a teacher. Note:1. Agree
includes both strongly agree and agree responses. 2. Neither includes neither agree nor disagree response. 3. Disagree includes both disagree and strongly disagree responses.
D.P. Berrill, E. Addison / Teaching and Teacher Education 26 (2010) 1178e1185 1182
In addition to the study data, our lengthy experience supporting
teacher candidates in portfolio construction indicates to us that for
many candidates, the format of the portfolio entries as well as the
content is perceived as reecting their identity. In portfolio studios,
issues of format continually arise with teacher candidates
wondering, for instance, if they have to use colored font when, as
one candidate recently put it, they do not consider themselves to be
rainbow people. Similarly, candidates struggle with whether they
need to use extended prose if they prefer bulleted points; or if they
have to use graphics when they are more linear thinkers them-
selves. The collaborative nature of the studios and the openness of
those community conversations help dispel myths about the
portfolios as having to adhere to a singular format. However, not all
candidates attend these studios and few course instructors attend,
and they are the ones who assess the portfolios.
Other responses indicatedfurther complexities. For some, feelings
that the portfolio was not helpful in identity construction seem to
merge with issues regarding the lack of clarity of the purpose of the
portfolio, the lack of support provided to candidates during the
construction process, the amount of work involved in constructing
the portfolio, and the lack of valuing of the portfolio by some
instructors. The comments belowreect some of these complexities.
There should be a more thorough explanation of what the
portfolio is at the start of the year and more encouragement
placed on gathering student work and photos from the start.
I was never clear on the nal outcome, which resulted in some
very incohesive thinking and a decided struggle to complete.
Had I been clear from the outset, I would have kept better
records..
These comments drew our attention to the fact that in con-
structing a teaching portfolio, candidates are being asked to
complete two challenging tasks: the development and articulation
of beliefs on a wide range of new repertoires; and the creation of
formal reections, a process that many teacher candidates have not
have previously experienced. Each of these tasks can be difcult
enough to create discomfort and frustration for some individuals.
As respondents explained:
Wewere not yet teachers but wewere expectedtohave this wealth
of experience that shaped us as educators. Some of it seemed
supercial. However, some of the categories helped to focus you on
what was important as a beginning teacher, [such as] a positive
classroom environment and classroom management techniques.
Some of the categories such as professional development were
practical in being laid out for me, but the rest I found hard to put
down on paper at this point because I did not yet fully under-
stand who I am as a teacher because we had up until then
always been partnered with an experienced teacher. You really
know great things to write about yourself mostly once you have
truly taught on your own and know what you did or didn't do to
get yourself ready for that experience or how you handled it.
Until a teacher has had a year or two in the profession, I think it
is very difcult to complete the portfolio in a way that repre-
sents you as a teacher.
One aspect that stood out was the emotionally vested nature of
some of the negative responses with respondents using language
such as ridiculous, waste of time, the assessment is a joke, and
this was a nearly futile exercise. Although this perception rep-
resented a limited number of respondents, we feel that it is
important to recognize the deeply felt emotion as a call for
necessary change if we truly wish to support all teacher candidates
in creating rich and complex portraits of themselves as teachers.
While the results above demonstrate that some teacher candi-
dates struggled with the process of constructing a portfolio, the
comments below reect the positive perceptions of the majority of
the respondents, who found the portfolio helpful in negotiating
their teacher identities. The quotations below speak to the help-
fulness of having the categories articulated..
I felt the categories of my portfolio helped me to think critically
about my teacher identity. It helped to showcase who I was as
a teacher and what unique skills and talents I could bring to
a teaching position. I did not nd it constraining at all. However,
it was a lot of work initially.
It helped to understand the individual categories in order to
integrate them into single identity as to what kind of teacher I
wanted to be.
The next quotations indicate respondents' understanding that it
is possible to use the categories to demonstrate how they enact the
expected competencies inways that reect their beliefs. And, that it
is the culmination of the portfolio as a whole e their beliefs and
practices across a range of repertoires e that represents one's
identity as a teacher.
Having to write a belief statement for each section was bene-
cial. Each statement served as a reference point from which I
could compare my reections on my practicum and in-class
experiences. In this way, belief statements helped me realize
that I needed to move beyond traditional elementary education
if I was to nd fulllment in this part of my identity.
I think the portfolio is an important consolidation of learning
and denitely helped me organize my ideas and identity as
a teacher. It made me think specically about each of the above
mentioned categories and reect on what worked best for me as
a teacher so far.
The last quotation is interesting in the tag, so far, that appears
at the end. This classroom teacher understands both the uidity of
identity and the notion that one's practices within given repertoires
will continue to change. This underscores the recognition that there
is more than one way to enact expected repertoires of practice and
is in contrast to those who found the portfolio categories to be
constraining, perceiving that they had to give the correct response
if they were going to successfully demonstrate their competence.
Many respondents seemed to understand the portfolio cate-
gories as repertoires of practice in the teaching profession; that
these repertoires are intertwined with teacher identity; and that
the repertoires can be enacted in a variety of ways that reect the
personal beliefs of the individual. However, without explicit artic-
ulation of the idea of expected repertoires of practice, many novices
do not understand that their teaching identity is enacted day in and
day out in the way in which they perform expected repertoires. The
ramications of this go beyond the portfolio, potentially impacting
teaching practice, career development, and the roles that these
teachers play in their teaching communities.
8. Summary
Several major ndings have emerged from this study with
regard to how this sociocultural tool is perceived by recent B.Ed.
graduates.
8.1. Perception of the categories of the portfolio as being
either constraining or enabling
There was contradictory response regarding the helpfulness of
portfolio categories, with the majority of teacher candidates feeling
D.P. Berrill, E. Addison / Teaching and Teacher Education 26 (2010) 1178e1185 1183
that the categories supported their understanding of expectations
of the teaching profession and the construction of their teaching
identity. Many felt that the categories enabled them to think about
their identity in practice and negotiate their positioning in relation
to expected repertoires and competencies. As one respondent
indicated, [The categories] helped to prepare my beginning
thinking, initially compartmentalized, for grasping the complex-
ities of The [College of Teachers'] Standards of Practice.
However, others felt constrained by the categories, not recog-
nizing the following: that the teaching profession has certain
repertoires of practice that are expected of all members of the
community; that individual teachers can enact these repertoires in
a variety of ways; that the teaching portfolio can be used to convey
their distinctive ways of enacting competencies with regards to
expected repertoires.
The difculty that some candidates had in understanding the
portfolio categories as representing repertoires of teaching prac-
tices is a call to us as teacher educators about the need to be more
explicit about the repertoires of the teaching profession. Responses
from this study reinforce the need to articulate this early in our
initial teacher preparation programs so that teacher candidates
understand that teachers are part of a community of practitioners
who enact a shared repertoire of practices on a daily basis. With
early conversation about these repertoires and their relationship to
the categories of the portfolio, candidates can keep better records
and gather students work and photos from the start as respon-
dents indicated. Shifting our own repertoires of practice in this way
as teacher educators will help us be more effective, for enabling us
to more strongly support our candidates in framing content and
experiences in their initial teacher preparation programs from
a perspective of learning the repertoires of practice of the teaching
profession.
8.2. Portfolio format reects teacher identity
Responses often blurred distinctions between portfolio cate-
gories and the expected content with the physical format of
presentation, saying things like, The content required was a bit
unclear .but it looks impressive! We suggest that the portfolio is
seen by many to be a signier, both in its physicality and content.
Thus, for many teacher candidates, the portfolio is an object in
which their identity is as deeply invested in its physicality as its
content. From the use of colour font versus black font, italics and
large font versus bold and smaller font to the use of tables or
graphic organizers or bullets or photographs; each aspect is
perceived as representing the identity of the portfolio creator. This
is probably as true for the viewer as for the creator and should
become part of the conversation about teaching portfolios.
8.3. Greater clarity and support is needed regarding purpose,
assessment and preparation of the portfolio
Findings here, with teachers of up to ve years' classroom
experience, reinforce results from other studies regarding the need
to nd better ways to articulate the purpose(s) of teaching port-
folios and support teacher candidates in construction of their
portfolios. The variability across faculty regarding these issues is
mentioned in other studies and probably needs to be accepted as
a statement of fact. Therefore, ideally the re-framing of the portfolio
would also involve re-framing of courses by faculty, emphasizing
how the courses they teach help teacher candidates learn specic
repertoires of the profession and the theoretical bases for those
repertoires. Explicit articulation by faculty of these connections in
their own courses would greatly clarify the types of entries that
might emerge from their courses as well as the purpose of those
entries.
9. Conclusion
According to sociocultural theory, identity and competence are
not exclusive but rather uidly interdependent. Our challenge is not
only to help our teacher candidates understand this, but also to
support them in nding ways to think about their repertoires of
practice/their enactment of competencies, in ways that are helpful
to them in terms of their growth as teachers and their ability to
demonstrate their competencies to others.
The teaching portfolio has been shown to be an effective
instrument in this regard. However, as teacher educators, we can
more effectively support the use of this tool and better enable it to
serve its multiple purposes. As stated in the literature and rein-
forced in this study, the purposes of the portfolio need to be explicit
and shared ebut, we would suggest, through a different lens. Given
the innate challenges associated with developing a portfolio,
novices must have support in understanding (i) how the categories
represent the repertoires of the community of practice they are
entering; (ii) how those repertoires reect teaching competencies;
(iii) how these repertoires can be performed in different ways; and
(iv) how the way in which they enact those repertoires is linked
inextricably with their identity.
By re-framing the portfolio in terms of the shared repertoires of
the teaching profession, portfolios may, in fact, be able to serve the
dual purposes of enabling reection on practice for learning
purposes and for credentialing purposes. This would shift present
constructions of portfolios as serving either one or the other
purpose and instead maintain that portfolios can serve both, as
long as the portfolio creator understands that expected teaching
repertoires are part of the teaching profession and that these
repertoires can be enacted in multiple ways. Teacher educators who
embrace this framework might also become more consistent in
their support of portfolio construction, recognizing that in their
pre-service courses, they are teaching theory or practice about one
or more of these repertoires of practice. Faculty then may also be
more willing to work with teacher candidates in identifying entries
that would make visible the connection between their courses and
particular expected repertoires of teaching practice.
By recognizing the construction of the teaching portfolio as an
act of negotiating identity in a new community of practice, teacher
educators can more strongly support teacher candidates in truly
making the portfolio their own. Similarly, teacher candidates might
more deeply understand and articulate their beliefs and compe-
tencies regarding the expected repertoires of practice in the
teaching profession and therefore, their teaching identities.
Appendix. Supplementary material
Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in
the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.tate.2010.02.005.
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