From a manual portfolio to an ePortfolio : a way to assist student teachers of languages to become reflective practitioners

Abstract

Over the past years, in many educational institutions worldwide, there has been a growing interest in language teacher professional development. Several studies show that when teachers reflect, they enhance the repertoire of pedagogical knowledge. The STeP ePortfolio can be an excellent tool to assist language teachers in enhancing their professional development from the early days of their teaching course by helping them to reflect critically, to improve their teaching qualities and pedagogies and to be able to be autonomous learners. The objectives of the ePortfolio developed and created by the Faculty of Education of University of Malta include enhancing teachers’ professional development, enabling easy access to personal teaching records anywhere via the Internet, organizing teachers’ work efficiently, encouraging student teachers to personalize their own data and share their professional knowledge and competences with trusted partners. To enhance competence and improve professional development, student teachers must reflect critically on both the theory and practice regarding teaching. Reflection is, in fact, a critical questioning of one’s own practice. Student teachers can be helped and encouraged to initiate self-assessment and reflection by developing an ePortfolio as part of their teacher trainer course. In the absence of self-assessing skills, the ePortfolio helps provide students with guidelines for self-assessment by incorporating examples of self-reflection and guidelines regarding the preparation of reflective writing and prompt feedback. It is also an important individual growth experience, offering student teachers the chance to collaborate with mentors and other colleagues.