What should be the role of the portfolio in teacher education? As an exit requirement for teacher education programs, the «professional teacher portfolio» is increasingly being tied to the accountability and standards movement, as well as to evidence-based practices. Despite becoming an all-too-common feature of faculties of education worldwide, uses of the portfolio vary widely. Pre-service teachers (its intended beneficiaries) are often those most mystified by the portfolios use and value; is there really a benefit or have we created more empty rhetoric? The Emperors New Clothes? demystifies the portfolios use by mapping out some of the key thorny issues that have troubled portfolios in teacher education. It also identifies creative alternatives to the status quo on learning to become a professional educator.

Contents: Kathy Sanford/Teresa Strong-Wilson: The Emperor’s New Clothes? Issues and Alternatives in Uses of the Portfolio in Teacher Education Programs – Susan Wray: Supporting the Process of Creating a Teaching Portfolio – Deborah Berrill/Iain Hill/Katlynn MacDonald: Negotiating the Contested Terrain of the Initial Teaching Portfolio: Secret, Sacred, and Cover Stories – David Dillon: Toward a Pedagogy of Portfolio Development – Kathy Sanford/Tim Hopper/Paige Fisher: Changing Paradigms: Embracing Contemporary Learning Theories through E-portfolios – Nona Lyons/Carmel Halton: The Reflexive Portfolio: In Support of a New Scholarship of Assessment for Professional Learning – Anne Phelan/Vetta Vratulis: «Cry Freedom»: Portfolios as Public Spaces in Teacher Education – Hans Smits: Thinking about Portfolios as an Aesthetics of Vulnerability – Christina Rudd: Unwittingly Naked or Choosing Transparency? – Teresa Strong-Wilson/Amy Cole/Nasim Noroozi: More than Window Dressing: The Place of Photographs in Teacher Identity Construction – Avril Aitken: Finding «Stories of Identity» through Digital Self-portraits – Scott Gerrity/Tim Hopper/Kathy Sanford: Case Studies on Three Iterations of E-Portfolios: Exploring Complexity in Teacher Education in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.