“Pretty Good Practices” for the Design of Teacher Portfolio Courses

In this chapter, the authors argue that although portfolios are a popular means of teacher evaluation, they, like any other assessment, must be properly implemented if they are to realize their full potential. Accordingly, they offer seven “pretty good practices” (Mishra, 2008) for designing portfolio courses: peer feedback, authentic audience, diverse resources, learning by doing, open access, confidential spaces, and self-pacing. These practices were developed from the authors’ extensive work helping teachers to develop portfolios that demonstrate their learning in their graduate studies, and they help students create portfolios that have value as both summative assessments and places for formative growth. In the spirit of “pretty good practices,” however, the authors invite others to modify these practices for other contexts or to carry out research that would help refine and improve them.