Frankie Stein’s E-Portfolio: A Creative Ethnography Unstitching a Teacher’s Body of Knowledge

• In Event: Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: Investigations of Teacher Education Program Design and Innovations

Abstract

This paper considers how an ePortfolio process addresses critiques that teacher education programs offer fragmented course experiences, instrumentalist approaches on “how to” and expert lectures on “what works” -- implying that learning to teach is about stitching together pieces of transmitted knowledge (Darling-Hammond, 2006). In contrast, we believe an ePortfolio process can create a self-renewing system that grows from both individual and programmatic assessment of student learning. Using ePortfolio entries of forty-five elementary student teachers and interviews with eight graduating student teachers, we have crafted five ethnographic fictions (Rinehart, 1998). These narratives show how an ePortfolio can create conditions for students to communicate reflective thinking, develop emergent understandings of learning and learners and create collective consciousness on becoming a teacher.

Authors

• Timothy F. Hopper, University of Victoria

• Katherine J. Sanford, University of Victoria

• Sarah Bonsor Kurki, University of Victoria