A guide to the professional development portfolio

Abstract

The Professional Development Portfolio (2001) reflects the Faculty's solid commitment to critical self-reflection as a central theme in the formation of prospective teachers. The portfolio goes beyond factual accounts of incidents, occurrences and feelings. In fact, the PDP aims at helping student teachers reinvent their pedagogies, as they critically analyse their attitudes, values, knowledge and actions. A guide to the Professional Development Portfolio constitutes the natural development from the publication of the Professional Development Portfolio. It provides student teachers and tutors with a road map to a successful guidance in the area of reflective teaching. The guide is specifically designed to help tutors maximise the dialogical experience that is expected to unfold during PDP-centred tutorial sessions. It reinforces the fact that self-reflection is primarily a social process and not simply a private undertaking. Infact, it should be the general practice of the Faculty of Education to encourage students to reflect in a group context. I believe that self-reflection is at the root of change in the education process. Genuine self-reflection challenges bureaucratisation and transforms the act of teaching into pedagogy of creativity. Genuine self-reflection implies risk-taking, discovery, surprise and democracy. Three years of tutorial-assisted experience in reflective writing will lead eventually to the formation of a critical mass of teachers who consider self-reflection as second nature.