REFLECTION ON THE USE OF E-PORTFOLIOS DURING TEACHING PRACTICUM AT A UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY IN SOUTH AFRICA Paseka Patric Mollo, Ratokelo Willie Thabane, & Brigitte Lenong Department of Educational and Professional Studies, Faculty of Humanities Central University of Technology, Free State Bloemfontein 9300 (South Africa) Abstract During teaching practicum student teachers are expected to acquire major pedagogical skills that have to do with classroom management; organisation; self-criticism; leadership; teaching; testing and assessing between themselves. Evidence of all activities of a student-teacher during teaching practicum is usually contained in a portfolio of evidence which is submitted to the faculty at the end of the program. At the Central University of Technology, this portfolio has always been paper-based. The aim of this project is to reflect on the use of e-portfolios during teaching practicum as a replacement for paper-based portfolios. The project used Participatory Action Research (PAR) as a research methodology. Workshops, interviews, and observations were used as data-gathering instruments. Internal stakeholders took part in the project and included student teachers and lecturers, and the e-learning center at the Central University of Technology. This report provided an overview of the entire project, including the planning phase results. Thematic analysis arrived at teacher training institutions must adopt e-portfolios as a reflective tool to enhance students learning. Keywords: Teaching practicum, e-portfolio, pedagogical skills, self-criticism, reflection. 1. Introduction To comply with the prescripts of the Policy on the Minimum Requirements for Teacher Education Qualifications (MRTEQ), teacher education institutions in South Africa must send student teachers for work-integrated learning (WIL) as part of practical learning. Practical learning comprises learning from practice and learning in practice. In education, WIL is referred to as teaching practicum or teaching practice (TP). Teaching Practice forms part of learning in practice. It involves teaching in an authentic and simulated classroom environment (Department of Higher Education and Training, 2015). First, TP includes aspects of learning from the practice of teaching in the form of observations and reflecting on lessons taught by others, as well as learning in the practice of teaching which involves preparing lessons, teaching, and reflecting on lessons presented by oneself (Van Wyk, 2017). During this period student teachers who are registered full-time for a Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.), according to MRTEQ, are to spend a minimum of 20 weeks and a maximum of 32 weeks in a formally supervised and assessed school-based practices over the four-year duration of their degree (DHET,2015). Student teachers at the Central University of Technology normally go on teaching practice, at schools, for a period of two or three weeks depending on their year of study. For the 1 st year of study, it is two weeks of observations. In the 2 nd year of study, student-teachers go for six weeks of co-teaching and the six weeks are divided into three weeks in the first semester and three weeks in the second semester. The 3 rd year follows the same arrangement as the 2 nd year. In their 4 th year of study, student-teachers go for six weeks of the actual teaching and lecturers visit their respective schools to evaluate them. Evidence of all activities of a student-teacher during teaching practicum is usually contained in a portfolio of evidence which is submitted to the faculty after each TP period. Portfolios have been broadly recognized and applied to develop prospective teachers’ reflection competencies in the last two decades (Carl & Strydom, 2017). It is a media that facilitate student-teacher’s reflections on their knowledge building and complex realities in their teaching practices (Van Wyk, 2017). They are given guidelines within which reflections about their knowledge and teaching practices are scaffolded. It is also a means to measure student teachers’ readiness to teach (Wray, 2007). Shulman (1998, 37), an early proponent of educational portfolios, defines the teacher’s working portfolio as a “ structured documentary history of a set of coached or mentored acts of teaching, substantiated by a sample of student https://doi.org/10.36315/2022v1end013 Education and New Developments 2022 59