© 2000 by Oxford University Press
Articles |
Piloting portfolios: using portfolios in pre-service teacher education
Teacher educator in modern languages. She is co-author of Tasks for Teacher Education (Harlow: Addison Wesley Longman 1998), a resource book for teachers on independent learning, Bronnenboek Engels voor het Studiehuis (Zutphen: Thieme 1998), and a workbook for learners, Media Dossier Engels (Loenen a/d Vecht: Edumedia 1999). She has an MA in Applied Linguistics from the University of Lancaster. Her current interests are portfolios in teaching and teacher education, applications to education of Multiple Intelligence Theory, and independent learning in secondary schools. Email: <rosie.tanner{at}wxs.nl>
PhD student in Educational Science. She has a degree and a teacher's qualification in French from the University of Utrecht. She is particularly interested in second language acquisition in adult learners. She is currently researching into the learning processes of pre-service teachers, and the role of the portfolio in those processes.
Associate Professor at the ICLON. His research interests focus on teachers' knowledge bases and on the methodology involved in discovering them. He is currently researching into teachers' professional identity, the construction of knowledge by (student) teachers, and the authentic assessment of teachers.
Professor of Education and Director of the ICLON. His main interests concern research into teacher cognition and teacher assessment.
In this article, we recount our experiences with using portfolios as an instrument for professional development during a one-year pre-service teacher education course for language graduates. After sketching the context of our work we describe why and how we are working with portfolios. We illustrate our belief that portfolios can (a) demonstrate a trainee's learning process over time, (b) illustrate an individual's development, (c) show the complexity of a teacher's life, and (d) stimulate reflection. We describe how we give feedback on portfolios, and how we make recommendations for strengthening our trainees' reflective skills.