The artifacts and rationales
Other
The Artifacts and Rationales
The purpose of this exercise is to help you synthesize a rationale, or written reasoning, to support artifact selection for any particular artifact that you would like to present in your professional portfolio. An artifact provides “tangible evidence, such as professional work samples, videos, letters, student products, or certificates that indicates achievement of a goal or the attainment of knowledge and skills.” Your rationale will discuss the evidence in written form and essentially answer the question, “What is this artifact and why is it important?”
Through this exercise, you will become more familiar with the patterns of rationales and the basic questions that rationales answer. To get an initial understanding of the format of a rationale, please read the various models titled “SAMPLE RATIONALE PAGE” throughout Chapter 4 of How to Develop a Professional Portfolio, 6th ed. Each sample rationale page is based on a specific “Teaching Scenario” section above the SAMPLE RATIONALE PAGE. Use both of these sections and their relationships as guides when creating your own rationales, based on your own specific artifacts.
Please use the following instructions as your guide to complete TWO rationales that correspond to TWO artifacts that you will use in your professional portfolio. Use pp. 17-18 of How to Develop a Professional Portfolio, 6th Ed. for further reference.
Selecting Artifacts and Writing Rationales (Complete these steps for two portfolio artifacts.)
- Select an artifact that you believe showcases your professional development in your specific area of study. The artifact can be a work sample, video, letter, student product, article, essay, research paper, certificate, or any other documentation or assignment that you feel can “prove” an area of your professional development.
- Describe the artifact and the experience involved in obtaining it. This explanation should be brief and written for an audience that may know very little or nothing about you and your specific work experiences. Be sure to include a description of the artifact itself.
- Make a list of the learning outcomes and standards (see Exercise 2), skills, competencies, understandings, etc. that you gained through the experience of obtaining this artifact. Answer the question, “How did this experience positively aid my professional development?” Keep in mind that your experience may help you master one particular outcome/standard or many different outcomes/standards at once.
- Match the artifact to one specific self-developed learning outcome or standard. Think about the most important benefit of this experience. Use that benefit to isolate and select the self-developed learning outcome or standard that fits best. Next, explain why you chose this standard. Remember, you should only choose ONE self-developed learning outcome or standard to file your artifact under.
- Explain how you can use what you learned from the artifact to guide your future teaching experiences. If necessary, include areas in which you feel you need improvement and how you will address these weaknesses in the future. This section is usually, but not necessarily, included at the end of the rationale.
- Compile all of your notes and writings from steps 1-5 and write a 1-2 paragraph summary that will become the body of your rationale. You do not have to follow the exact order of steps 1-5 when writing your rationale. Think of your specific artifact and use the various “Teaching Scenario” and “SAMPLE RATIONALE PAGE” sections as a guide. Next, organize your rationale in the way that works best for you.
- Create a heading, including a title (name of the artifact), date, and location, or other context of the experience (e.g. course number if completed while in school). The title should be simple and clearly define your artifact. Be sure to use the date when the experienced occurred, not the date the rationale is written.
Repeat this process with another artifact. You need to submit two artifacts with their corresponding rationales to complete this assignment.
