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Instructions for compiling a teaching portfolio

How to write a teaching portfolio you need if you apply for a teaching position at the Uniarts Helsinki.

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A teaching portfolio is a document that helps you monitor your skills, knowledge, and development as a teacher. You can use a portfolio to share your views and your expertise within your community or in recruitment processes.  

In a portfolio, you can describe the significance of your artistic or academic work for your teaching, reflect upon your development as an artist-teacher, describe and justify your teaching-related choices, and reflect upon your ideas, experiences, and development as a teacher.

General advice

  • The portfolio should be 5-10 pages long. It can also include 5-10 pages of appropriate and justified appendices.
  • In your portfolio, you will describe your views, achievements, and areas of development as a teacher, and assess and reflect upon your teaching. Write using the first person (‘I’).
  • If you refer to ideas someone else has presented, add the appropriate references.
  • If you have taught for a long time, focus on the present and the last 5 to 10 years.
  • In the appendices, you can list and document your teaching experience, pedagogic studies, and samples of student feedback.

Portfolio’s structure

Your cover should include the following: name and date, contact details, and the position for which the portfolio is intended.

Write about your views on the areas introduced by the following headings.

The questions under the headings are intended to support your writing process. You do not need to answer them all. If you do not have experience in an area mentioned below, you can write about your ideas or plans concerning it instead.

Add a table of contents, page numbers, and a list of appendices to your portfolio.

1. My approach to teaching and learning

  • What are you like as a teacher and/or supervisor?
  • What is important for you in teaching and learning? Why? What pedagogical thinking steers your teaching and your actions?
  • How has your thinking or your approach to teaching developed? Who or what has influenced it? How has your artistic or academic work influenced your teaching?
  • How is your approach reflected in your teaching, your supervisory work and your development? Give concrete examples of how your pedagogical thinking or approach to teaching has supported your students’ learning or results.
  • How does your teaching reflect ideas of sustainable development? What ethical choices have you made

2. Teaching and supervision experience

Teaching experience

  • Describe your teaching experience at universities (universities of applied sciences or other universities) and other educational institutions. What were your roles and responsibilities in your previous positions? Were you in charge of a course, or did you attend individual teaching sessions?
  • Have you had any other teaching jobs – national or international – in your field? For example, have you worked at workshops or training courses for your networks or at professional events?
  • How has your experience promoted your teaching skills or your development?
  • Have you collaborated with your colleagues? If yes, describe your collaboration.

Experience supervising thesis writing or writing of other assignments

  • Describe your experience and role as a thesis supervisor at universities (bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees).
  • If you have supervised other student projects or assignments, describe your role and responsibilities as a supervisor.
  • What supervisory methods or approaches do you use?
  • Leadership experience (for example, as head of department, head of degree programme, head of faculty, or head of another educational unit)
  • Describe your experience and role as a leader; for example, as head of department, head of degree programme, or as a teacher-in-charge of an educational unit.
  • How have your supported other teachers in their work or their development?

3. Development and reformation of teaching

  • Describe how you have developed your teaching. How have you developed your teaching practices with regard to courses, study units, subjects, or degree programmes? If you still lack experience in teaching development, reflect upon your development potential; what ideas do you have about teaching development or what will your contribution to teaching development be?
  • How have you developed a course, a study unit, or your teaching in general? You can review your development history for teaching design, implementation, or evaluation. What measures do you use to validate and evaluate your development? How have your development measures supported your students’ learning?
  • Have you contributed to the development of your subject, to your degree programme, or to curriculum planning? What were your roles, responsibilities, and inputs for development? How would you assess the development work and its results?
  • Have you created, revised, or updated learning material? Have you used digital platforms, software, or equipment that support students’ learning or your teaching?
  • What kind of feedback have you received from students? How have you used it to develop your teaching? Have you received feedback from others, such as peers or your supervisor?
  • Have you received other recognition for your work as a teacher? For example, have you received diplomas, certificates of honour, awards, or grants for teaching development?

4. Development as a teacher

  • Describe and reflect upon how you have developed your teaching skills and knowledge or how you have improved as a teacher.
  • Have you attended pedagogical training? How would you reflect upon your participation and learning during it? How do you use – in your own teaching – what you learned? You can list any pedagogical training courses you have attended in the appendices.
  • Have you developed your teaching skills and knowledge in any other ways? How do you maintain and develop your teaching skills and knowledge?
  • How has your artistic or academic work supported your development? What is the proportion of artistic or academic work in your teaching?
  • How do you follow research and literature related to teaching in your field? Have you researched your teaching? How has this research developed you?
  • What strengths and development areas do you recognise for yourself?

Appendices

Add the appendices to the end of your portfolio. Number them so that you can refer to them in your portfolio. Choose the appendices with care; the maximum number of pages for the appendices is 10.

The appendices can include the following:

  • a list of your teaching experience (e.g., courses and related degree programmes, student numbers, the courses’ number of credits, year, educational institution)
  • a list of your supervisory experience (e.g., names of the supervisees, titles of theses or project works, year)
  • samples of student feedback or other teaching-related feedback (e.g., excerpts of qualitative feedback, numerical feedback, or a summaries of feedback). For group teaching, mention the number of students and how many of them gave feedback.
  • samples of course plans, learning materials, and assessment tasks you have developed or to which you refer in your portfolio.