During the past week, I have learned that there are different types of portfolios, created to serve difference purposes and audiences. Broadly, the two main types are presentation portfolios and working portfolios.
A presentation portfolio is a showcase of collected works. Most of the writing portfolios available to the public on the internet seem to be presentation portfolios. Many were created by freelance journalists who are marketing their skills with persuasive "hire me" messages. When I create a presentation portfolio, I plan to include samples of my best work, selected to impress a specific audience. While I may add brief descriptions of individual artifacts to explain why I included them in the portfolio, the main function of my presentation portfolio will be to attract prospective employers.
In contrast, the most important reason for maintaining a working portfolio is to enhance learning. Essentially, a working portfolio is a tangible manifestation of the abstract theories of constructivism. According to constructivism theory, "people construct their own understanding and knowledge of the world, through experiencing things and reflecting on those experiences" (from "Constructivism as a Paradigm for Teaching and Learning," one of many sources on the topic). Meaningful, long-term knowledge isn't acquired by passively listening to a lecture and parroting back what was said. As learners, we need to be actively involved, integrating new information in our own way. That's where the working portfolio comes in. Students can use portfolios as a tool for learning, reflecting on their own understanding of who they are, what they know, and where they see themselves heading. Teachers, mentors, and homeschooling parents—all of us who aspire to become "guides alongside"—can use working portfolios to examine personal and professional goals, reflect on the learning process, and evaluate the effectiveness of different approaches.
This blog, for example, is going to become part of the working portfolio for my Master of Arts in Professional Writing degree. It will supplement my accumulated writings with reflections on what I have learned in the program and what I have yet to learn. Already, it is helping me to assess my priorities and evaluate my experiences, both within the program and prior to my enrollment.
During my years as a home educator, I reflected continually on the learning process and the effectiveness of what I was doing (or not doing) with my children. Unfortunately, most of those reflections were in my head or in casual conversations with others, so I have no record of them. What I have are boxes full of "artifacts": newsletters, email messages, and physical evidence of my children's achievements; a record of daily activities, logged intermittently and in a superficial way; and annual written summaries. Looking back, I can see how the act of writing in a blog for a working portfolio would have enhanced what I was learning. By reflecting intentionally—purposefully, rather than haphazardly—I would have learned even more from my homeschooling experiences than I have learned without a portfolio. I would have been able to look back at a trail of blog entries to see what, when, and how I acquired knowledge. Better still, a working portfolio would have allowed others to journey with me, learning from my mistakes and experiences.
There are some potential drawbacks, though. When it comes to maintaining a digital working portfolio, I worry about the risk of lost opportunities for face-to-face interactions. The more time I spend on my computer maintaining a blog, the less time I have to visit with friends and family. If I had been required to maintain a working portfolio during the past ten years, would I have retreated from my family more often or declined invitations to attend homeschool group meetings? Is there a trade-off between using technology to foster "active learning" and being actively engaged in the real world? Would my time, or the time of other students, be better spent sitting around a table or chatting over a cup of coffee? I don't believe the choice between the two has to be an either-or decision necessarily, but I still wonder: can we find enough time to do both successfully?
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