Advantages of coordinated school health portfolios: documenting and showcasing achievements

Thirteen school district teams from Michigan and Indiana participated in the Michiana Coordinated School Health Leadership Institute with the intent of Coordinated School Health Program (CSHP) implementation. The purpose of this study was to determine if portfolios served as an effective approach for documenting teams' accomplishments and health programming efforts.

Data were gathered through a combined survey/interview process and portfolio analysis. The survey was developed by the Institute's core team of experts and designed to assess the Institute's goals and objectives. Interviews elicited greater detail pertaining to survey questions. Content analysis yielded a detailed and descriptive summary of each team's portfolio.

Portfolios proved useful for providing rich descriptions and artifacts documenting each team's process and progress toward achieving CSHP. They were not limited to the 12 required Michiana categories and contained additional items related to other aspects of health programming. Portfolios also served as a record-keeping and CSHP marketing tool.

This study demonstrates the advantages of portfolios for documenting the process of CSHP development and implementation and teams' health programming efforts. The portfolios provided evidence of team achievements related to Institute goals and objectives-those that included greater documentation were indicative of fuller implementation. Teams with portfolios that used both categorical and scrapbook formats provided richer portrayals of successes to a broader variety of audiences.