Practitioner Auto-Ethnography: Developing an Evidence-Based Tertiary Teaching Portfolio

Portfolios are widely used to document and assess professional development in tertiary teaching. This paper examines a self-reflective approach to critically evaluating practice and developing an evidence-based teaching portfolio through an emergent, evolving continuum of initial, life-story biography, evocative auto-ethnography and, finally, analytical auto-ethnography. This learning journey of a work-integrated-learning (WIL) academic supervisor highlights the development of an effective 'reflective practitioner' through a cyclical experiential learning process of 'learning through reflection on doing'. An holistic flexible approach to teaching and supervision is presented, that advocates student centered course design and facilitates strategies to engage and enhance students' learning. Effective leadership and mentoring utilizing coaching strategies and the development of intuitive good practice through peer feedback aim to improve the quality of tertiary teaching practice in WIL, and result in better scaffolding of student learning outcomes, enhanced self-efficacy and employability and a breadth and depth of graduate attributes.