Whatever your choice of portfolio format, this protocol can guide you as you reflect on where you are now in your professional development and where you want to go next. The List and Look tool walks you through a set of steps that help you identify your needs and interests, and match them with the 12 Competency Areas, Performance Areas, Topics, and Contexts in the CA ECE Competencies, giving you a great starting place for your journey.
Jumpstart your portfolio journey by comparing your current level of expertise with the knowledge and skills identified for each of the California ECE Competencies. Download the CA ECE Competencies and follow the steps below.
It is really important to keep in mind that you may be at more advanced levels in some Competencies and less advanced levels in others, regardless of your job title. So be sure to read through all of the Contexts.
Download the California Early Childhood Educator (ECE) Competencies
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Choose a place to begin your portfolio by matching your interests with the ECE Competencies. What areas of early care and education interest you most? In which areas would you like to learn more and grow your skills? Be as specific as you can. Use the List and Look tool to get you started. List the Competencies that best match the answers to these questions above. Now, choose one competency to begin your journey.
Narrow your focus by selecting a Performance Area in the competency you have chosen. You can find the Performance Areas on the right-hand side of the Introduction page for each competency in the CA ECE Competencies. View an example.
For instance, the competency called Family and Community Engagement has three Performance Areas:
Each Performance Area in every Competency has multiple Topics that further define the knowledge and skills needed by early childhood educators. Read through the Topics in your areas of interest.
Here is an example of the Topics in the Learning Environments and Curriculum Competency:
Performance Area 2: Environments, Schedules, and Routines
Topics:
As you look at the CA ECE Competencies, you will notice that there are four Contexts that describe knowledge and skills from entry to advanced levels in every Topic:
Do you see yourself as you read through the Contexts? Which Context best describes you in a particular Competency, Performance Area, and Topic?
Once you determine your level of expertise and your direction for further learning, the protocol further guides you in moving from interest to action and on to documentation, reflection, and connection. These are the essentials for developing a professional portfolio.
Questions are the product of observation and curiosity. They represent our wonderings about the "why" and "how" of the things we experience. Asking good questions is a skill that, like any skill, must be practiced.
Framing questions is the act of making what you observe conscious, and then putting words on your wonderings — identifying the "whys" you want to explore. CompSAT offers several Framing Questions for each competency, which can provide you with a good starting place. One of the goals of CompSAT is to model good question-posing so that you can strengthen your skills.
Framing your questions opens the door to investigation. What actions can you take to learn more about, and come to better understand, the things that stir your curiosity? Let children be your guides. Watch how they explore, mess about, tirelessly experiment, and deduce. Now, take it a step further. Record what you observe. Study your observations. Interpret what you see. Begin a dialogue with your colleagues. Decide on a course of action — small steps. Record what happens. Reflect on the process. Now, you have something to put into a portfolio!
When you have come full circle — observation, inquiry, action, reflection, revision, and back to observation — it's time to tell the story. Prompts can help you get started. Prompts are statements that provoke your thinking and provide direction for your portfolio segment. They can help you organize the story you want to tell about your experiences and your progress. Here are two examples:
"The most important thing I’ve learned through this investigation is…"
"My thinking about [this topic] have changed [in this way]."
Once you have selected or developed your prompts, tell your story by writing your responses to each of them. Fill in as much detail as you can. Make detailed notes to guide your work. Portfolios are all about sharing your stories in compelling ways. Writing brief but complete stories will be a huge help to you as you think about how to represent your thinking, your work, your reflections, and your learning in each portfolio segment.
Use the stories you develop from your prompts to guide you in selecting documentation that provides evidence of your growth and learning. Choose your artifacts carefully — photos, artwork, word samples, and others. They are the evidence that validate your claims of competence with regard to knowledge, skills, dispositions, and accomplishments. Here is a list of possible sources of documentation for you to consider. You may have others to add.
Keep these tips in mind while you are putting your portfolio entries together:
Reflection is not just the heart of CompSAT. Reflection is the foundation of portfolios. Reflections set portfolios apart from scrapbooks and other types of collections! Here is another place in portfolio development where prompts can be helpful. Some reflective prompts for you to to consider are:
The ECE Competencies are criteria by which you can assess yourself, and the quality of your work as an early childhood educator. The CompSAT Portfolio helps you connect your work with the expectations for performance identified in the ECE Competencies.
Demonstrating your competence goes well beyond collecting artifacts and telling stories. True competence is shown in how well your actions convey sound ECE practices, and by how well you articulate what you know and believe about development and learning, yours and children's. Professionals in any field are able to provide sound arguments that clearly explain, and sometimes defend, their practices, philosophies, and theoretical perspectives.
Your professional arguments (also called rationales), in which you connect your actions to the ECE knowledge base, are an essential component of your portfolio. Here is a definition from the University of Florida:
When you write a rationale statement, begin with a brief summary of the activities you have documented. Include the specific Competency, Performance Area/s, and Topic/s your work addresses. Provide a context (for instance, things you have read, courses you have taken, videos you have seen) for understanding the importance of the activity and how it contributes to your professional knowledge and practice.
Think about these questions as you develop your rationale. You can apply them to any Competency.
Explore the CompSAT Competency module that corresponds to the California ECE Competency.
Click on any of the Competencies below to explore a wealth of information, videos, and activities.
© Copyright 2011-2013 California Department of Education. All rights reserved. Electronic edition 2011, and 2013. Print edition 2012 ISBN:978-0-8011-1719-0. The ECE CompSAT project was produced by Fresno State University for the California Department of Education in 2013.
