Digital Portfolio and Professional Development of Language Teachers

A professional portfolio is an evolving collection of carefully selected or composed professional thoughts, goals, and experiences that are threaded with reflection and self-assessment (Evans, 1995: 1). This paper intends to illustrate a successful effort of a group of English language teachers in becoming technology-proficient in their teaching while creating their teacher e-portfolios. In addition to exploiting their knowledge on computer technology and technical requirements of developing their teacher e-portfolio, such effort also contributes to language teacher professional development. This research looks at how the teachers documented, organized, created and shared information and materials in designing their teacher e-portfolio. Findings from content analysis, reflections and interviews indicate that all teachers agreed that the e-portfolio indeed contributed to their professional development. This is confirmed by the responses given by the participants whereby they felt that their professional development has improved after developing the e-portfolio. (C) 2012 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the LSP 2012 Committee, Language Academy, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia