Education, Transition and e-Portfolios: Smoothing out the Bumps

Abstract

The term transition is traditionally used to indicate a single point in time facilitating change. By highlighting a number of issues particular to Initial Teacher Education — the lack of a singular point of change, the focus of that change, and the effect of e-portfolios on the process of change — this chapter argues that within the field of Education there is no longer one single transition point. Instead there are a number of ‘points of change’ which are ‘transitional’ (fluid in time) rather than ‘transition’ (fixed in time and place), and as such we should not be focusing on identifying a point of transition but reassessing the nature and the concept of transition — the re-alignment of the process.

Beginning teaching is indeed demanding for just about all beginners and is special for each beginner. While it may not approach a crisis for every new teacher, it is more or less transformative for all of them, and that is why the transition has to be recognised as an identity shift rather than as any rational policy-governed progression through the elements of a standard.

(McNally et al., 2008, p. 11)