Teaching portfolios are vehicles that empower professors to gain dominion over their professional lives. Teaching portfolios are vehicles to provide institutions of higher learning with the means to demonstrate that teaching is an institutional priority. Teaching portfolios are vehicles for individualizing faculty development. Most teaching portfolios incorporate a statement of the professor's philosophocal beliefs about teaching and learning.
Philosophical beliefs shape, sometimes in subtle ways, human behavior.
When professors reflect on how a particular reading, a specific teaching style, or a particular assignment relates to their philosophy of education, they are examining deeply held convictions. Therefore, much of the remainder of the portfolio details how professors put their beliefs into practice in and out of the classroom. Most important, much of the portfolio should be devoted to reflection on how behaviors are congruent with beliefs. Most portfolios also incorporate a plan for altering behaviors found to be incongruent with the professor's philosophical assumptions about teaching and learning. And the portfolio should incorporate a strategy to assess the appropriateness and success of the new behaviors.