This Digest is intended to help teacher candidates systematically gauge their progress toward the teaching profession by developing a portfolio. Portfolios are one way to assess teacher candidates, and they are a major requirement for experienced teachers seeking board certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. The contents of a portfolio depend on what it is intended to demonstrate to whom. Written work and products might come from many different sources. What keeps the portfolio from being merely a scrapbook is the reflection the teacher candidate undertakes about what each artifact demonstrates about his or her educational philosophy. The Digest also discusses the four stages of portfolio development: (1) collection of materials and artifacts; (2) reflection on the collected materials; (3) reduction to select the artifacts that demonstrate mastery; and (4) display of the selected artifacts to demonstrate mastery and permit review. Portfolio development is not a scavenger hunt that results in the creation of a scrapbook, but a responsive and purposeful activity that engages reflective capacities of preservice teachers. (SLD)