Eportfolio post tagging for student-teacher development

ABSTRACT

This paper introduces an innovative practice: post tagging as a way to enhance the use of ePortfolios in foreign language teacher education programs. The ePortfolio system is a WordPress multi-author blog, and a student-teacher’s ePortfolio is a page comprised of the posts they have written. Tags are keywords for a post. In this innovation, ePortfolio post tags are matched with content learning areas in the teacher education program. When student-teachers tag a post, they first choose a relevant content area from the teacher education curriculum, e.g. Methods, and then select an appropriate tag or keyword from that area, e.g. Focus on form. Tagging has the following benefits. First, it can encourage student-teachers to reconcile pedagogical concepts from their teacher education program with their professional goals, teaching practice, and teaching beliefs. Second, tags can be used as a means to understand the types of pedagogical concepts that student-teachers deem important. Lastly, tagging can inform the teacher educators about how to improve their programs. On the other hand, using tags to match one’s reflective writing with pedagogical concepts does not come naturally to student-teachers and needs to be carefully introduced. The paper concludes by presenting some guidelines for using ePortfolios with tagging.

KEYWORDS:

• English teacher development
• eportfolios
• post tagging
• reflective practice
• sociocultural teacher education
• WordPress mutli-author blogs for education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the MEXT Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C) [20K02845].

Notes on contributors

James M. Hall

James M. Hall has been involved in English teacher education in Japan for almost 20 years. His research interests are in reflective practice, mentoring, and ICT in language teacher education.