Portfolio Use in the Teacher Hiring Process

Perceptions Regarding the Efficacy and Use of Professional Portfolios in the Employment of Teachers

Deering, T., Hardy, S., Jones, S., & Whitworth, J. (2011). Perceptions Regarding the Efficacy and Use of Professional Portfolios in the Employment of Teachers. International Journal of ePortfolio, 1(1), 95-106.

In recent years, portfolios have been increasingly promoted as essential tools for employment and career advancement as advancements in technology have turned to digital or electronic portfolios.  Electronic portfolios are more efficient, flexible, and convenient.  Previous studies found that school administrators felt that portfolios provided a more comprehensive understanding of teaching abilities.
 
This study explores the perceptions of school administrators and teacher educators on the use of portfolios for hiring new teachers.  The authors focused on three questions:

1. What are the perceptions of school administrators and teacher educators regarding the value and use of portfolios in the employment of teachers? 
2. What are the perceptions of school administrators and teacher educators regarding the quality and accuracy of teaching portfolios in documenting applicants’ teaching skills?
3. What are the perceptions of school administrators and teacher educators regarding the problems and barriers in the use of teaching portfolios in the hiring process?

While electronic portfolios (ePortfolios) are currently required in many teacher education programs for use in the employment process, it is unclear if school administrators value their use in making hiring decisions. 

To answer the questions, a survey instrument was developed consisting of twenty-one items including ranking, rating, multiple choice, and short answer questions and concluding with one open-ended response item allowing further comments or observations. 

A total of 988 teacher educators and 624 school administrators were identified in Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, Missouri, and Illinois through websites, attendance lists from professional conferences, and state education agencies.  An email request was sent with an explanation of the study and a link to the online survey.  A follow-up email was sent approximately one month later.  Of the 988 requests sent to teacher educators, 127 participants responded.  Of the 624 school administrators, 41 responded.

One of the first interesting results is that 50.5% of teacher educators believe their graduates are using digital portfolios in the hiring process while only 17.5% of school administrators report them being used.  The authors noted some possible reasons for teacher candidates still presenting paper-based portfolios:

• Teacher preparation programs use ePortfolios for other purposes and don’t stress them as employment tools.
• Teacher candidates may not feel as comfortable using digital portfolios in job interviews.

The results also found that the majority of schools do not require portfolios as part of the hiring process and very few gave preference to hiring candidates with portfolios.  While teacher educators and school administrators agreed that portfolios are given some weight in hiring decisions, they are not given as much consideration as several other factors. 

There was some agreement that portfolios can “accurately reflect a teacher candidate’s teaching ability and skills” and both groups agreed on the “quality of portfolios in terms of their appearance, format, and technical components” (99).  Portfolios were rated as well-organized, creative, and interesting, but the respondents didn’t believe that they present an accurate reflection of teaching skills.

In regards to the hiring process, portfolios were ranked seventh in importance by teacher educators and eighth by school administrators.  This shows that portfolios are considered useful, but not as useful as direct observation, responses to interview questions, actual experience, reputation, information from previous employers and other direct sources. 

While school administrators found definite value in using portfolios to make hiring decisions, they do not believe that they give accurate information on teaching ability (100).  One of the perceived barriers of using portfolios in the hiring process is a lack of time for review and in regards to this barrier, some administrators remarked that electronic portfolios would be preferred.

Recommendations from the authors of this study:

1. Teacher applicants should reduce the amount of time it takes school administrators to view portfolios.
2. Various forms of portfolios should be produced for different purposes rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.
3. The focus should be accurate documentation, not “bells and whistles” of style.
4. School administrators should be more involved in the design and development of portfolios in teacher education programs.
5. To increase the value of portfolios as employment tools, education programs should focus on how to use the portfolio and not just the development process.  Portfolios should be integrated in the hiring process rather than existing as a stand-alone component.
6. More wide-spread use of ePortfolios as opposed to paper-based portfolios would alleviate several barriers such as the time factor, flexibility, convenience, and even the criticism of “sameness” among formats. 

Digital Footprints

Madden, Fox, Smith and Vitak. Digital Footprints. Washington DC: Pew Internet & American Life Project, December 16, 2007.
http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2007/Digital-Footprints.aspx

My previous blog was about research from 2010 that frequently referenced a prior project on digital footprints in 2007, so here is a summary on that article.

The age of Web 2.0 changed the nature of personal information online as basic contact information moved toward photos, videos, and blogs voluntarily posted on the Internet.  At the time of this study, Internet users were becoming more aware of their digital footprint, but few monitored their online presence.  In fact, only 3% said they made self-searching a regular habit. 

The authors divided online adults into four categories based on their level of concern about online information:

• Confident Creatives-  17% say they actively upload content, but do not worry about the availability of their information online.  They take steps to limit their personal information.

• Concerned and Careful-  21% are concerned about their personal information available online and proactively take steps to limit their online data.

• Worried by the Wayside-  18% do not actively limit their online information even though they are anxious about how much is available.

• Unfazed and Inactive-  43% do not worry about their personal information online nor take steps to limit the content that can be found about them. 

Basic information used to be limited to contact information such as a phone number and mailing address, but blogs and social networking sites have expanded online information to include photos, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, affiliations, videos, descriptions of daily life activities, and much more.  Being “findable and knowable” online is now considered an asset (4). 

At the time of this study, public personae were no more likely than other Internet users to create a social networking profile.  As of December 1, 2007, the top three social networking sites in the U.S. according to traffic rankings were MySpace (No. 3 overall), Facebook (No. 5,) and LinkedIn (No. 34).  It’s safe to assume that these rankings have changed dramatically over the last few years and a comparison would be very interesting. 

The idea wasn’t receiving a lot of attention yet, but here’s what the authors had to say about online information used in the job search:  As professional and personal information about job candidates, service providers and other prospective co-workers becomes increasingly accessible online, employers and others who may influence a decision to hire someone have started to turn to the Web as part of the reference-checking process. However, the potential for candidate research goes both ways; prospective employees can also find out more about places where they are interviewing for jobs, who their co-workers might be, and what praise or complaints former employees may have shared online (26).

The authors acknowledge that few Internet users were routinely managing their digital identity at the time of this study, but it was not an urgent need for them.  The Internet’s role in our lives continues to change and many are learning through experience.  In the future, will we be more forgiving of embarrassing content online?  Will we be less trusting of information online?   

Here’s a short glossary of terms that appeared in this research:

• Passive Digital Footprint: Personal data made accessible online with no deliberate intervention from an individual (3).
• Active Digital Footprint: Personal data made accessible online through deliberate posting or sharing of information by the user (4).
• Public Personae: Adult internet users who have jobs that require self-presentation or self-marketing online (8).
• “First degree” personal information includes material about you that you knowingly provide (18). 
• “Second degree” personal information is material about you that may not be connected to your real name or is provided by someone else, with or without your knowledge (18).

Reputation Management and Social Media

Madden, Mary, and Aaron Smith. Reputation Management and Social Media How People Monitor Their Identity and Search for Others Online. Washington DC: Pew Internet & American Life Project, May 26, 2010. 
http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Reputation-Management.aspx

In the realm of online reputation management, users want to have control over their information, but they often take the easier or faster route when managing their profiles and other content.  This generally means accepting the default privacy settings or skimming the “terms of service” agreement without much regard.  Why are users so quick to accept the default?  It is the assumption of “privacy through obscurity.”
 
So how much information is really out there?  Forty-four percent of employed Internet users say that details about their employer are posted online, 42% say that a photo of them is available, 33% say that their birthdate is available, 12% that their cell phone number is available, 10% that a video of them is available, and a large segment of the population was uncertain about what information was available about them online.  Yet seven in ten online adults have searched online for information about other people (34).

As online reputation management becomes more complex, it seems that Internet users are less worried about the amount of information available about them, but online reputation matters; 44% of online adults have searched for information about someone whose services or advice they seek in a professional capacity (36).  People are now more likely to work for an employer with policies about their online presentation while co-workers and business competitors can also monitor each other.

Twenty-seven percent of employed Internet users work for an employer that has policies about how they present themselves online (12).  This includes content they can post in blogs or other websites and what information they can share about themselves. 

Only 12% of Internet users post information about themselves as a marketing strategy for their job.  This is called “public personae” and the group is more active in monitoring search results connected to their names, receive a higher ranking in search results, are bigger users of social media, and are more likely to request the removal of content that others post about them (13). 

On a positive note, online reputation monitoring via search engines has increased.  Here’s a summary from this research:

57% of adult internet users now use search engines to find information about themselves online and…

• They take steps to limit the amount of personal information available
• They change privacy settings - 71% of social networking users ages 18-29 have changed the privacy settings on their profile to limit what they share with others online.
• They delete unwanted comments 
• They remove their name from photos

Social networking users are making changes too…

• 65% of adult social networking users have changed the privacy settings
• 56% have “unfriended” contacts in their network
• 52% have kept some people from seeing certain updates
• 36% have deleted comments that others have made on their profile
• 30% have removed their name from tagged photos 

Of greater concern to my own topic, it is now likely that your Facebook profile may get more traffic than your resume, professional accomplishments, or biography.  Could the development of an electronic portfolio compete for traffic and allow Internet users to create professional online reputations?

Online Reputation in a Connected World

“Data Privacy Day,” Microsoft Privacy, accessed March 5, 2010, http://www.microsoft.com/dataprivacyday.

“Data Privacy Day,” Microsoft Privacy, accessed March 5, 2010, http://download.microsoft.com/download/C/D/2/CD233E13-A600-482F-9C97-545BB4AE93B1/DPD_Online%20Reputation%20Research_overview.doc.

This study was conducted for and presented during the Data Privacy Day 2011 to examine the expanding role of personal and professional online reputations including the use of such information in hiring and recruiting practices. 

It is acknowledged that people are increasingly using Internet technologies to share content for purposes related to friendship, dating, and even careers, but how significant is the role of online reputations in hiring practices?

This report was commissioned by Microsoft and Cross-Tab conducted research in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States between December 10 and 23, 2009.  They interviewed approximately 275 recruiters, human resources professionals, and hiring managers and approximately 330 consumers in each country. 

Highlights from this study show that recruiters and HR professionals are checking online sources to learn about potential candidates and some companies have made online screening a formal requirement in their hiring process.   In the United States, 70% of the surveyed recruiters say they have rejected candidates due to online information while only 7% of consumers think online date affects their job search.

That statistic is only the beginning of the discrepancies between recruiters and consumers in the United States.  Only 15% of U.S. consumers surveyed think it is very appropriate for employers to review photo and video sharing sites while 59% percent of recruiters and HR professionals surveyed check these sites.
 
The study concludes that the use of online reputations in hiring decisions will increase dramatically over the next five years.  A major concern is type of information now available online.  Information about family, political or religious affiliations, financial situations, and other topics have been restricted from traditional hiring practices, but now, recruiters can anonymously collect such information online and this survey found that it is already happening.  More research is needed to understand the legality of collecting information about online reputations. 

Consumers surveyed tend to underestimate the impact of their online reputation and the extent to which recruiters are viewing online information.  While most consumers are managing their online reputation to some extent, between 30% and 35% don’t believe that online reputation impact their personal or professional lives.

It’s not all bad because positive online reputations make a difference too.  Among the U.S. recruiters, 85% said that a positive online reputation influences their hiring decisions to some extent and nearly half said that a strong online reputation influences their decisions to a great extent.

I believe that electronic portfolios could be the key to building a strong online reputation…

Microsoft provides some great resources through their research.  Check out their website to learn more.  http://www.microsoft.com/dataprivacyday