Everyone who teaches deliberates about how to support students' constructivist processes and encounters the recurring question: "How can I maximize opportunities for learning and growth?" Portfolios provide a complex, multidimensional, and dynamic framework for assessment of professional development and support development of metacognitive strategies, student empowerment, and responsive program practice. Portfolio development is described as a cooperative process occurring throughout graduate training. It is related to professional training objectives for the programs discussed. Stakeholder, activities, and historical dimensions are described and related to various programs. The portfolios developed at these schools demonstrate that this type of assessment offers a flexible and personalized yet systematic means for assessing students' professional development and achievement of competence in requisite skills and concepts. In professions that emphasize interpersonal competence and acquisition of complex concepts, skills, attitudes and values, portfolios offer a valuable means for assessment. (Author/EMK)