European Portfolio for Student - Teachers of Languages (EPOSTL) and Insights from Student - Teachers’ Feedback

Abstract

This study focuses on some issues: first it gives a general view on portfolios: their usage, form and content and then it focuses on a specific portfolio which is the European Portfolio for Student Teachers of Languages (EPOSTL). This article gives some information about the teaching practice in “Aleksander Xhuvani” University in Elbasan, Albania and then it describes the implementation of EPOSTL in this university. It tries to highlight how EPOSTL helped most of the student-teachers who used it, and it tries to share the experience that the student-teachers and the researchers had while working with EPOSTL and how do student-teachers view the EPOSTL based on their feedback. Through interviews and two questionnaires, one at the beginning of initial teacher education and one after the teaching practice the authors try to answer the following questions: How beneficial is EPOSTL (illustrated with examples, ideas from student-teachers)? How independent do student-teachers feel while working with it? In which ways do student-teachers feel more confident? What is the role of the teachers and mentors regarding EPOSTL? Is there any change in the relation between student-teachers and their mentors resulting from the use of EPOSTL? How is EPOSTL helping the student-teachers change the way they evaluate and self-evaluate? Student-teachers of “A. Xhuvani” University, Elbasan, Albania, have been using EPOSTL for a few years and they bring some interesting and useful insights. EPOSTL is the basic source of training for student-teachers and their feedback helps to draw conclusions concerning the benefits and ways of using it in the future.

DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2015.v4n3p71