Teaching Portfolio's vs. "Evidence of Teaching Effectiveness"

Just before the end of the year, I got an email from a former colleague of mine who is doing her first run on the job market. She asked if I had any input on the difference between a teaching portfolio and "evidence of teaching effectiveness." The latter phrase is commonly used on job ads these days as a required component of one's application, but it is often ambiguous as to what exactly should be included. Here's what I told her in my response:

When I was last on the job market, my teaching portfolio contained (1) my statement of teaching philosophy, (2) a brief summary of my student evaluations from the last several years, (3) two full sets of student evaluations from recent courses taught, (4) two full sample syllabi, and (5) two brief course proposals (with reading lists) for courses I was ready to teach but had never actually taught. When I was asked for evidence of teaching effectiveness, I usually included fewer materials -- the teaching statement, summary of evaluations, a single set of student evaluations, one sample syllabus, and sometimes one course proposal. If I could, I tailored these documents to the job ad. If I were expected to teach a course like Contemporary Moral Problems, for instance, then I'd be sure to include evaluations from that course, and if I were expected to teach a philosophy of technology course, then I'd slip in my course proposal for that class.

 

In my experience, asking for an entire teaching portfolio has become relatively rare. In my last job search, less than 15% of the jobs I applied for requested it. Requests for either "evidence of teaching effectiveness" or a specific list of teaching-related items appears to be the norm now. I suspect that this is because there are so many job applicants now that most committee members don't want to sift through a portfolio of 25-30 pages and have assumed that evidence of teaching effectiveness should be more focused and concise than a full portfolio. The institutions that requested full portfolios were, as you might expect, teaching focused schools, and I suspect that the portfolio was one of the weightiest parts of those application.

 

This, however, is only my impression of the difference, and I could be mistaken. Does anyone else have a take on the distinction between a teaching portfolio and "evidence of teaching effectiveness" who would like to weigh in?

Comments

[don't overthink this]

A teaching portfolio *is* evidence of teaching effectiveness.

[on the market]

I'm dramatically downsizing my portfolio, since I've heard from folks now that search committees just don't care about seeing all your syllabi, or sifting through full evaluation sets. For me, this means I'm summarizing all of the data, whether quantitative or written comments, and including just two full syllabi, plus of course a statement. And that is that.

If a Department really wants to see full, unaltered evals, then their language should say exactly that. Or so it seems to me. If they don't ask for that, then they shouldn't expect more; nor should they let biases of cherry picking figure into their assessment if they're not asking for the full set.

But I'd like to hear from Trevor and Marcus on this.

[Annie]

I would have thought that 'evidence of teaching excellence' means unaltered evaluations, awards, informal letters of support for students (if you opt to include that sort of thing), reports of teaching observation, etc. To my ear, a teaching statement and syllabi don't fit the bill.

[Grateful Job Hunter]

Thank you very much for this!