Ruth Weeks

1. A story of documenting evidence
for teacher professional standards
Jennifer Rowley: jennifer.rowley@sydney.edu.au
Ruth Weeks: ruth.weeks@sydney.edu.au
SYDNEY
CONSERVATORIUM
OF MUSIC

2. Background
• Who? Faculty & Educational Designer/ePortfolio
coordinator partnership
• How? Pebble PAD
• Why? Introduction of graduate teacher
professional standards & and this created demand
for documentation/evidence of achievement
• When? 2009 – Planning (grant); 2010 – Trial &
student training; 2011 - Implementation

3. Professional Standards
• What were they?
• How could achievement be “proven”?
• What was the relationship between
professional standards and assessment
tasks?

4. Embedding into curriculum
Activities using
eportfolio

5. ePortfolio as “story” rather
than “storage”
• Evidence or artefacts required to
document achievement of professional
standards
• Boring ?
• Resulted from training, literature and
intellectual growth – the more we did it the
more we understood
• Having an „expert‟ at a critical time of
implementation

6. PebblePad
• PebblePad was a suitable platform as it is
more than an ePortfolio and cv tool – it‟s a
PLE that encourages and scaffolds the
process of reflective learning
• Centrally supported and „safe‟
• Opportunity for integration into other virtual
learning spaces

7. ePortfolios and teaching philosopy

9. Students‟ early comments on
PebblePad
• “Love the idea of online portfolios! Being able to chart progress
and add to it as you go while retaining useful past information
simply and effectively is an invaluable tool.” (2nd May 2010)
• “I agree that maintaining this information in an electronic form is
going to be useful, particularly when seeking employment. I think
that PebblePad is also going to be a good tool for establishing a CV
and updating it as required. I was concerned that PebblePad would
only be as useful as a personal record however, if we only use it in
the expectation that others will read it in the future it will be any easy
way to tell your own story in an informal way not always possible, or
appropriate, in job applications” (7th May 2010)

11. ePortfolios and CVs

12. ePortfolios and the Capstone experience

13. Synthesis of learning
Examples of students‟ work (with permission of students so
no names changed)
• https://eportfolio.sydney.edu.au/pebblepad
• Tara‟s story: used an assessment task from a composition
unit of study (2009) taught this to her class whilst on prac
(2010). She then filmed this and placed on Pebble PAD to
meet one professional standard (2011)
• Joyce‟s story: created a blog whilst on prac (2010) and
demonstrates the achievement of professional standards
(2011).

14. Going beyond
• Progressed well beyond original task
• Rich learning biographies
• Demonstrating development as a teacher
holistically
• Student engagement and student experience
Questions?