What is a portfolio?

A portfolio is an online, personally collection of selected items purposefully compiled to share one’s work, efforts, and progress.  In an ever challenging and competitive world a portfolio is part of your personal and professional branding. It may be linked to assessment and also provide long-term storage for your work and accomplishments. Creation of a portfolio requires some technology mastery to digitise artefacts and create the online resource. It also involves evaluation of personal beliefs, philosophies, and objectives and sharing these in clear, informative and productive ways.

Remember a portfolio should tell a story of you and your learning and professional journey.

Getting started with portfolios for psychology and counselling

Your portfolio was created and delivered to you via email with one one of the following templates:

A clear starting point for your personal portfolio development is the Home page, followed by the About Me page…and so on. Read more below….

Home page – Replace the image with one of your choice, add your name and a short paragraph about yourself

About Me – On this page you are invited to share more information about you. Think of each section on this this page as coming from the heart, head, hands and feet, like this:

  • Who am I? Share from the ‘heart‘ who you are, perhaps add something from your background and previous study experiences
  • What are my goals? Share from the ‘head‘ your study ambitions and professional goals
  • What have I done? Share from the ‘hands‘ what you have worked on in the past, perhaps including occupations and hobbies
  • Where am I going? Share from the ‘feet‘ where you are going to. This is the place to put hopes and dreams for your future career and where you want to be

Professional Identity – This page provides a simple template for each year of your program. You can adjust this template as needed in the future.

Reflections – This page is presented in blog style. Each post or reflection is captured as a point in time.

Watch the video below for more information about what a portfolio is to help you understand possibilities and expectations for personal portfolio development.

Why Create a Portfolio?

Today, a portfolio is a vital part of being a professional. Your employability is made clear through the evidence found on the portfolio that identifies skills and competencies. Your CV can be shared on the portfolio for ready access to future employers. A portfolio helps you connect with others in the profession, both locally and globally.

Watch the video below for deeper understanding of why portfolio creation is vital for learning and eventual professional employment.

What is Reflective Practice in a Portfolio?

Reflection is a helpful strategy in development as practitioners and especially with regard to reasoning processes. It involves describing, analysing and evaluating our thoughts, assumptions, beliefs, and actions. It includes:

  • Looking forward
  • Looking at what we are doing now
  • Looking back 

Critical reflection takes place in many areas of professional development and practice, including health care education, teaching, management, and research, as it encourages practitioners to gain insight into their own professionalism through their experiences.

The process of reflection increases competency and enhances professional growth leading to expanded employability.

A portfolio is an important space to reflect upon personal and professional identity with a goal of creating an online representation of the narratives around these.

Gibbs Reflective Cycle

The reflective cycle according to Gibbs (1998) is based on several stages, during which you are required to answer questions in order to go as deep as possible with your reflections.

The Reflective Cycle is a six-step structured process where you:

  • describe what happened
  • discuss feelings
  • evaluate and analyse the experience
  • draw conclusions and
  • develop an action plan if faced with the same situation in the future.

What?  So What?  Now What?  Model (Barrett)

What? Describe the experience; outline what happened that compelled you to think about and change your behavior (i.e. learn). The “what?” component of reflections may include the environmental factors, the conditions or background under which you have learned, the assumptions that you entered the situation with, a description of the experience itself, and the outcomes that occurred through the process. What did you do?

So What? Describe what difference it makes; outline what impact or meaning it has for you (or why it should matter to others). The “so what?” component of reflections may include relevancies to you as an individual, the degree of importance that this knowledge has to practices in the “real world”, how the experience has changed you, and the ways in which this experience relates to you as a professional in the field of education. So What? How is this learning important?

Now What? Describe what’s in store for the future now that you’ve learned from this experience; outline what you are going to do to continue your professional development in light of this learning. The “now what?” component of reflections may include looking for future learning opportunities related to the one under consideration, mistakes that you are now prepared to avoid, situations that you are now prepared to take advantage of, an assessment of things that you as of yet do NOT know how to do but would like to, etc. Now that you’ve done this, now what would you like to learn?

Watch the video below about reflective practice as part of portfolio development.

Barrett, H. (n.d.) Recipes for reflection. https://sites.google.com/site/reflection4learning/recipes-for-reflection

Gibbs, G. (1988) Learning by Doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods. Further Education Unit, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford. https://www.nicole-brown.co.uk/reflective-model-according-to-gibbs/