A complaint of, and about, professionals is that they often have no way of "accounting for the artful competence" (Schon, 1983: 19) displayed in their daily work. A portfolio approach to learning (Leslie, 2012) offers educational practitioners processes through which to both demonstrate professional competencies and continue to learn from their own work. This study uses observations, surveys and interviews with teacher-participants from a six-month project in a primary school in the UAE. It examines how the teachers begin to employ a portfolio approach in their own practice to transform the traditional portfolio into an experiential, lifelong learning process. Findings discuss how the teachers developed a greater sense of community, a range of associated skills, and allowed stakeholders including supervisors to play a much greater role in the skills development of the teachers.