Portefólios reflexivos: potencialidades e limitações no contexto de uma oficina de formação

Ongoing training provides, at least at a theoretical level, essential moments for each teacher to feel supported in the constant search for higher quality teaching. But what is it like to conceive and prepare a training course with this purpose? In this paper we narrate the ideographic process of configuring and intentionalizing the use of the reflective portfolio in the framework of the creation of an ongoing training in workshop mode. Considered from the start as an instrument of epistemological questioning, the portfolio assumes a double dynamic: (1) as a structure that is being designed, with intrinsic potentialities and limitations; and (2) when proposed to teachers as an evaluation instrument to be used in the training workshop, it enables the (self)observation of the trainer, shedding light on (his/her) uncertainties, the unknown and the complexity of pedagogical work. The autobiographical methodology, based on the narrative literature’ review on portfolios, is used to describe the challenges concerning the conjectured configurations to the final structure, in a dynamic of reflection for action. Autobiographical writing emerges here as: (1) a process of selfunderstanding for the consolidation of the object of research - portfolio use in a training context; and (2) as a research method on the researcher that records self-discovery and selfawareness. We conclude that, even in a mediated manner, the portfolio requires the systematic integration of reflection favouring the metacognition of the teaching action, serving as a methodological and ethical reference to help decide how we should act in unpredictable situations.