'Even if No-One Looked at It, It Was Important for My Own Development': Pre-Service Teacher Perceptions of Professional Portfolios (Report‪)‬

Introduction In past decades, there has been a shift from portfolio use for assessing student learning to evaluating the professional development of both pre-service and in-service teachers. Studies have shown that the use of portfolios has rapidly expanded and continues to increase as a tool for capturing the complexities of teachers' work and learning in authentic settings (Gellman, 1993; Grant & Huebner, 1998). One reason for this shift is the potential for the professional portfolio to provide teachers with opportunities for thoughtful reflective dialogue. In this study, Wolf and Dietz's (1998) definition of professional portfolios is adopted. The professional portfolio is defined as a personalised, dynamic and interactive collection of teachers' work that emphasises ownership, self-evaluation, accomplishments and progress. The portfolio allows both practising and pre-service teachers to plan, monitor and reflect, to uncover concerns, to engage in discourse, to collaborate and to improve on their teaching (Cushman, 1999; Johnson, 1999). This definition differs from that of showcasing portfolios, where practitioners demonstrate their performance against a standard or set of standards. As they develop their classroom management skills, content pedagogy, command of the subject matter, student-specific pedagogy and professional responsibilities, practising and pre-service teachers may well become better thinkers and educators through constructing their portfolios (Barrett, 2000).