For many years, there has been discussion and debate over the issue of bettering the training of foreign language instructors. The discussions’ participants center on the idea that, in addition to improving theoretical and practical training and mastering pedagogical skills, a key component of students’ professional training is the application of technologies and methods for future foreign language teachers’ professional and personal self-improvement and self-knowledge, which ought to be a major component of the pedagogical process. Based on an analysis of scientific and methodological literature on the problem under study and many years of experience teaching a foreign language in a higher educational institution, we came to the conclusion that one of the modern educational technologies is the development and justification of a portfolio. A portfolio reflects the practice-oriented nature of educational and future professional work and determines the possibilities of its use for self-improvement throughout a specialist’s life. It is well known that one of the intense technologies used in foreign pedagogy to instruct students in secondary and higher school is the portfolio (Satskaya, 1992).

As Sakhieva (2018) correctly points out, research on the challenges of creating and utilizing portfolios has been carried out in a number of ways in recent years. The works of Pinskaya and Zagvozdkin (2004) and Novikova, Prutchenkov, and Fedotova (2004) present foreign experience with portfolios in the educational process. Molchanova, Timchenko, and Tokareva (2010), as well as Novikova, Prutchenkov, Pinskaya, and Fedotova (2008), reflect the practical aspects of creating and utilizing portfolios in the context of general and secondary education, specifically in the process of implementing pre-profile training of students. Studies by Golub (2005), Knysh and Zagvozdkina (2017), Zvonnikova (2007), Pastukhova (2008), Churakov (2005), and Chernyavskaya (2008) take into account portfolios as a type of professional level diagnostics.

The research of Zelenko and Kalimullin (2018), Mogilevskaya (2009), Kolodkina (2008), Nikiforov (2007), Sakhieva (2018), and Tazutdinova (2010) focuses on the use of portfolios in future teachers’ professional training. The problem of using a portfolio to assess the competencies of students at a pedagogical university is revealed in the scientific works of Semenov (2008), Nikiforov (2007), and Shalashova (2008). The works of Golovanova (2015) and Asafova and Sakhieva (2013) present the design and implementation of a portfolio in the process of training educational psychologists. Kozhevnikova and Luferov (2017) explain the rationale and implementation of a portfolio in the process of training future foreign language teachers for pedagogical activity.

Therefore, it can be said that a portfolio was chosen as a personality-oriented technology since it can be used during both a student’s time at university and their future professional activity. The dynamics, individual accomplishments, and academic progress of students are reflected in the portfolio, which is the outcome of a pre-planned and specially organized individual selection of information materials. These materials are collected during the process of developing key and unique competencies in future foreign language teachers. However, since the concept of a portfolio and the strategy and tactics of its implementation in educational practice are taken into consideration in the context of transformative education to change the educational paradigm, understanding a portfolio solely as a means of monitoring and assessing skills, abilities, and competencies somewhat narrows the concept’s essence.

The concept of a portfolio is founded on an educational strategy system linked to a fresh comprehension of the objectives of developing a contemporary specialist. The creative process of planning, organizing, and ultimately designing and implementing the portfolio in collaboration with the educational process’s subjects, social partners, and potential employers—which leads to professional and personal development—is more important than the portfolio itself. In this context, it is important to stress that the process of creating a portfolio—as well as the skills, competencies, and practical creative activity experience that the student gains during the process and then continues to apply throughout life—is more significant than the outcome of the creative search. Accordingly, portfolio technology is a way for individuals to record, accumulate, and evaluate their individual educational outcomes in various activities (creative, social, communicative, and educational) throughout their training and professional work as their accomplishments improve (Novikova et al., 2004).

Practitioners have observed that the student’s portfolio aids in monitoring the process and efficacy of activities during professional and academic development in both quantitative and qualitative terms. This ultimately aligns with the philosophies, goals, and objectives of practice-oriented and personal learning.

In the process of training a foreign language teacher, the goals of developing and implementing a portfolio are to:

• cultivate a high level of academic motivation linked to specific accomplishments on a given topic, section, discipline, or module;
• establish substantive and organizational methods of action aimed at mastering the skills of goal-setting, planning, and organizing academic work, as well as monitoring, adjusting, and evaluating results;
• design a holistic pedagogical process and conditions for independent educational and cognitive activity based on self-knowledge, self-control, and self-correction;
• cultivate students’ reflective activity skills based on self-assessment and forming ideas about the future path of their personal and professional self-improvement.

The scientific literature distinguishes between several types of portfolios reflected in foreign practice:

• a document portfolio (working) or documentation portfolio, which displays works gathered over the study period;
• a process portfolio, which comprises all documents reflecting forms, means, methods, and approaches to all aspects of training, showing the outcomes of the student’s reflection on the learning process as a whole;
• a showcase portfolio, which summarizes various student activities and contains only the best independently completed works;
• an assessment portfolio, in which the student takes part in choosing the content, defending the standards for documenting and assessing the portfolio, and considering the resources presented (Novikova et al., 2004, pp. 234–237).

The outcomes of our content analysis of both local (Bataineh et al., 2007; Mansvelder-Longaryoux et al., 2007; Pantic & Wubbels, 2012; Hurst, 1998) and international (Luferov, 2017) scientific and methodological literature enabled us to develop our opinions about the use of “Portfolio” technology in the preparation of aspiring English teachers. This technology has seen widespread use in the following stages of master’s training for future experts: self-knowledge, self-affirmation, self-development, search for a purpose and meaning in life, and self-realization (Gluzman & Gluzman, 2022).

Thus, the portfolio is a cutting-edge, efficient tool that helps students develop motivation, cognitive interests, skills, and abilities as well as key competencies and, in the end, a unique creative approach to solving multipurpose educational and professional problems.