Chapters 7: Professional Portfolios in ECE 1

Summarizing Developing and Presenting a Professional Portfolio in Early Childhood Education

Chapter 7

Janie N. Schutte

EED 255

March, 28, 2017

Chapter 7: Writing Your Reflective Narrative

Reflective narratives focus on self-reflection through personal events or experiences. In

the case of an early educators portfolio, reflective narratives will be used to explain the selection

of specific evidence or documents. These reflections show a teachers thought process for the

following NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children) standards:

Promoting child development and learning

Building family and community relationships
Observing, documenting and assessing to support young children and families
Using developmentally effective approaches to connect with children and families
 Chapter 7: Professional Portfolios in ECE 2

Using content knowledge to build meaningful curriculum

Becoming a professional

For example, a teacher may select the 5th standard, using content knowledge to build

meaningful curriculum, for a self-reflection about a lesson. Reflective narratives are not captions,

they are personal, detailed perceptions. In the self-reflection for meaningful curriculum, the

teacher can include such details as what abilities were demonstrated, what worked well in the

lesson, which standards aligned in the lesson and more. If an educator is unsure if they have met

the standards in a reflective narrative, they can look at the indicators for the standard to

determine if it was met or not.

A reflective narrative will be included with other artifacts, such as a lesson plan. These

self-reflections extend the early educators philosophy. This provides teachers with the

opportunity to select artifacts for inclusion in your portfolio that will infuse your personal beliefs

and values with your understand of theory and practice, (Wiltz, Daniels, Skelley, Cawley,

Watson-Thompson 2012).
Reflective narratives should be based on personal growth, and are not summaries or

captions. Some questions an educator can reflect on when writing the narrative are:

What is the artifact?

How does the artifact connect to NAEYC Standard (number and letter) and

InTASC Standard (number and letter)?

How does the artifact contribute to my learning?
In what way does this artifact have a positive impact on student learning?
Where does this artifact t within the core cluster of instructional activities

(Judging prior learning and background knowledge, Planning instruction,

Teaching, Assessing, Analyzing, and Reecting)?

 Chapter 7: Professional Portfolios in ECE 3

Early educators must make sure that not all reflective narratives sound the same, and the

responses to the reflective questions vary. There isnt a limit to the length of a reflective

narrative, however, it is recommended to keep it to at least one page.

Personal Reflection
Chapter 7
This chapter was helpful as Im putting together my online portfolio. I know how to add

captions or summaries, but I had not thought much about reflective narratives. I have some

reflective summaries from lesson plans I created in the past. Ill make sure to look through my

past early education coursework for more self-reflection pieces. I can incorporate any reflective

narratives that I have in to my website then. The questions for personal reflection really got me

thinking. I might need to re-work some of my personal narratives, before I add them to my

website. As Ive learned from the past couple chapters, we are continually growing as educators.

I might see something now that I hadnt before, reflecting on a prior piece of early education

course work. Im looking forward to working on my website more, and incorporating my

reflective narratives.
 Chapter 7: Professional Portfolios in ECE 4

References

Textbook Reference: Developing and Presenting a Professional Portfolio

Wiltz, N.W., Daniels, J., Skelley, H. A., Cawley, H.S., & Watson-Thompson, O. (2013).

Developing and presenting a professional portfolio in early childhood education. Boston:

Pearson