The Language Teachers's Portfolio: A Guide for Professional Development is written for use by both preservice and inservice teachers. It links elements of educational practice and theory that students of education frequently find difficult to assimilate in language teaching. This text purposefully integrates material such as foundations of education, educational psychology, elements of planning and lesson preparation, reflective teaching, and classroom management issues into the reality of the language classroom. Thus, students of world language education are provided a holistic perspective of the challenges required to bring what may seem to be disjointed theoretical information into workable elements of classroom practice.
Teacher educators can utilize this text to guide students to use the portfolio as an assessment tool or a project for an instructional development class. The material in te text is designed so that students are able to rely on the text to guide them in preparing many elements of a portfolio, thus freeing educators to devote more classroom time to other topics. It is also useful for programs that have a portfolio as an exit requirement and for teachers who plan to use the portfolio to document their professional development.
