Search

Initially this chapter focuses on three issues that emerge from our reading of the chapters in the Handbook's second section. These issues include the relationship between the individual and the collective in the process and position of outcomes, the content of the knowledge produced, and the ways to, and the consequences for, that knowledge production. We consider the ways individual and collective aspects of self-study work merge and differentiate, the need for integrity and trustworthiness in this work, and strategies that allow expression in various forms. We explore the ways that professional knowledge relates to the pedagogy of teacher education and assert that understanding this pedagogy supports teacher educators in experiencing the satisfaction necessary to maintain the motivation and commitment they need to do their work. We argue that knowledge content needs to be broad and deep to complement the complexity and richness of teaching. We propose a framework that can be used to formulate, evaluate, and develop work in self-study. To do that we look beyond the technicist reductionism from the perspective of "knowing how to" toward a "being some-one who" perspective. We examine the moral dimension of knowledge that includes vulnerability in teaching, the integrity and trustworthiness necessary to do the work, and suggest the need for a language to address this dimension. We investigate the political dimension because the issues and dilemmas that simply appear to have moral ramifications may hide questions about power and interests. We suggest that we need to look at teacher knowledge more broadly and remember that relationships in educational settings are not without emotional currents and that emotions are a central part of teaching. We Offer ways to bring these dimensions together that will keep the passion in teaching and support the development of professional knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A complex exploration of many influences goes into understanding the role of humanistic research methods in self-study. To begin, two historical developments must be considered. Early examples of self-study appeared in the transformation of humanistic practices as they entered into mainstream education Offer much of the last century. Offerlapping this transformation, the expansion of qualitative research methods, initiated in the 1980s, brought along its own humanistic concerns. Together, they formed an awareness of the self 's importance in the research process. With this foundation, the self-study of teacher education practices came onto the scene in the 1990s bringing with it other influences including the recognized value of reflective teaching and the impetus felt by many classroom teachers of all stripes to study their own teaching practices as a source of empower-ment. This chapter sorts through these multiple influences toward the creation of a coherent picture of how humanistic research and the self-study of teaching and teacher education practices are interconnected. One thread interwOffen throughout this chapter is the need for teacher educators to be honest with themselves. The essential humanistic self-study question is: Is my teaching consistent with what I expect of the teachers I am educating? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The self-study of teacher education practices has found its place on the teacher education landscape as a principled, scholarly practice that has begun to shift understandings about the nature and significance of teacher educators' work and what counts as acceptable academic scholarship. Self-study scholars have brought their individual career histories and commitments to teacher education to bear on their academic roles within the context of the university and, in so doing, have taken up a challenge to shift status quo perspectives on the role and status of teacher education in the academy. Through individual and collective action self-study scholars have responded to criticisms levied against the place of teacher education in the academy, dilemmas presented by the nature of their work and roles, and challenges facing them in their professional and academic work. In this chapter we focus on the tenure system in North American universities and the role it plays in monitoring, mediating, and moderating the individual and collective practice of teacher educators. We Offer a framework for reconsidering the norms of academic convention and the socializing forces that gOffern teacher educators' work in the academy and a vision of what such a reorientation might mean in practice. We then draw on this framework to explore how the self-study of teacher education scholarship and practice, as a genre, has positioned itself to challenge the status quo of academic convention for schools, departments, and faculties of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Francçoise Self-study research is situated within the discourses of the social construction of knowledge, reflective practice and action for social change. The strong presence of collaboration in the practice of self-study of teacher education is a natural response to this ethical and theoretical location. Collaborative agencyis the term that best expressed the way we saw educators using collaboration to make a difference to the outcomes and understanding at all stages of self-study research. We subdivided the many examples into three types of action: (1) Establishing the conditions of research; (2) Creating educational knowledge; and, (3) Recreating teacher education. This chapter explores the discourse of collaboration in self-study from three interconnected vantage points: Section 1invites readers to share our process as we prepared to critically review the literature; Section 2includes an overview of the public discourse of self-study; and, Section 3concludes with our assessment of key collaboration related questions that are emerging in the self-study of teacher education community. The chapter begins with anecdotes that situate and personalize the presence of collaboration in self-study research, and is enriched throughout by the words of current self-study researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter addresses the issue of professional knowledge and social justice. It is presented in dialogic form, as a conversation in four voices. The conversation is nterspersed with four case studies, each one written by one of the authors. The case studies illuminate, exemplify and resist the arguments within the conversation about self-study, social justice, and epistemology. The paper is divided into four broad sections. The first, "Social Justice and Self-Study," looks directly at the links between social justice and self-study. It begins by considering the resistances and difficulties inherent in addressing social justice issues, and continues by seeking a definition for social justice. The second, "What Kind of Knowledge?", looks directly at the nature of knowledge that is gained in self-study that is rooted in a concern for social justice. From a starting point of knowing ourselves as tellers of stories, it goes on to address ways of telling and listening to stories across divisive social boundaries and hierarchies. The third section, "Professional Knowledge" introduces the idea of "little stories and grand narrative," exploring ways in which professional knowledge might be understood as "little stories" countering, disrupting, critical of and contributing to "grand narratives" of educational knowledge. The fourth section addresses the urgent and difficult question, "Why is There so Little Self-Study on Social Justice Issues?" [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter examines the development of professional knowledge in multi-cultural teacher education by prOffiding examples of quality self-studies that speak to the need to prepare teachers for diverse student populations. The chapter begins with a description of the persistent challenge of White, middle-class, English-speaking females learning to teach for diversity and then describes the process of transformation, through which this challenge can be addressed. Transformation is the continuous evolution of one's own understanding and perspectives in order to meet more effectively the needs of all students. It is generally marked by a disruption of values or cultural beliefs through critical reflection with the goal of more socially just teaching. The chapter proffides analyses of self-studies that show how teacher educators studied their role in transforming preservice teachers' beliefs, attitudes, and assumptions regarding culture, race, sexuality, etc. In the process, the teacher educators also recognized their own beliefs and assumptions that impacted their ability to prepare effective teachers. The studies reveal many insights, some relevant primarily to the practitioner, but many others that speak to the improvement of the preparation of teachers in general. The chapter concludes with ideas about how these types of studies prOffide incentive for more careful attention to and research about the preparation of teacher educators who prepare teachers for diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter explores the relationships among practitioner inquiry, knowledge, and the cultures of universities. The chapter uses the term, "practitioner inquiry," as a kind of conceptual umbrella to overview a number of di3ering forms of practitioner-based study of teaching, teacher education, and related issues. The chapter has three major parts. The first examines the discourse and terminology of practitioner inquiry, suggesting that the language used to describe it has been widely appropriated for many different contexts. The chapter argues, however, that it is not language alone that differentiates particular kinds of inquiry, nor is it ideological, political, or historical traditions alone. Rather, in order to understand the range and variation of practitioner inquiry, particular practitioner inquiry initiatives and their operating assumptions about how inquiry is related to knowledge, practice, and change must be examined. The chapter offers three different inquiry-knowledge-practice relationships as a way to sort these out. The second section of the chapter discusses the features and assumptions that most variants of practitioner inquiry share and that divide practitioner inquiry from many traditional forms of educational research. The chapter identifies the most common critiques of practitioner inquiry, particularly in relation to issues of epistemology, methodology, and politics. The final section considers the role of practitioner inquiry in the university. This section of the chapter draws on the authors' own experiences working with teacher research and other inquiry communities within the contexts of large research universities Offer a period of more than 15 years. It explores the ethical, political, and practical dilemmas and contradictions that are created when teacher research and its underlying premises are taken seriously Offer a long period of time and within the culture of the university. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Race and social class are pivotal in structuring inequity in the educational system, defining the content of o3cial knowledge, establishing pedagogical policies and practices, and shaping relational dynamics in educational contexts. The question arises: Do race and social class have substantive relevance for teacher practice and the process of self-study in education? The purpose of this chapter is to explore the significance of race and social class meanings in educators' practical and intersubjective experiences, and to examine the contributions of self-study theory and research to understanding race and social class in educators' pedagogical, curricular, and programmatic endeavors. A critical social-constructivist perspective is presented to examine teachers' attitudes and expectations. It is grounded in the normalization of inequity and derived from historical, racial and social class meanings that have become internal to the self-as-educator in local practice. This chapter addresses the unique contributions that self-study's research paradigm and foundational principles make to investigating and reframing beliefs, assumptions and practices, and analyzes the knowledge produced from educators' disciplined self-study inquiries on race and social class. Recommendations from these inquiries are presented with implications for educators' personal and professional growth, for transformations in the foundational knowledge-base in teacher education, and for institutional change in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this chapter we explore the ideas of knowledge and narrative in self-studies. Questions of how narrative self-studies allow insight into participant knowledge are addressed. Two sets of assumptions guide the exploration: first, a distinction between teacher knowledge and knowledge for teachers; and, second, a notion of narrative inquiry. We first distinguish between a view of knowledge as something teachers possess and a view of knowledge as coming from experience and as learned and expressed in practice. We then distinguish between knowledge as a state of mind and knowledge as a narrative, historical, phenomenon embedded in a teacher's actions in classroom studies. Working with these distinctions, we review self-studies of the living of teacher knowledge in practice. We conceptualize a range of self-studies of teacher knowledge as narrative by imagining studies positioned along a continuum between the personal and the social. We position studies along a personal-social continuum with studies emphasizing the personal to studies emphasizing the social. For each study we show why it is a self-study of narrative teacher knowledge. In the next section we link each of the self-studies to professional knowledge. Finally we outline what we see as the potential and risks of self-study in narrative teacher knowledge. We argue that self-knowledge is, in the end, not important but stress that as means it is all important. Self-study is important not for what it shows about the self but because of its potential to reveal knowledge of the educational landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter begins with an analysis of the gains of self-study research at the personal, institutional and collective levels and illustrates these with a variety of examples. They show that self-study has - at the personal level - the potential to imprOffe individual teacher educators' practices, but that - at an institutional level - it can also lead to program reform and - at the collective level - to the identification of issues important to the international community of teacher educators. Next, in response to the question of where the sudden outburst of self-studies comes from, relations are explored between self-study, developments in teacher education, and the context in which teacher education takes place. On the basis of this exploration, four dimensions are formulated on which developments in teacher education run parallel with the nature of self-studies. These four dimensions also help clarify risks and possible flaws embedded in self-study research. This leads to a number of guidelines for quality in this research. Finally, the chapter ends with a discussion of the possible position of self-study within future reform of teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter explores the relationship between professional knowledge and teacher education and the ways self-study research might strengthen that relationship. To do this, using a cartography metaphor, a series of questions are asked and answered with the Offerarching question of, "What counts as knowledge in the research on the self-study of teaching practices?" Topics in this chapter include: a discussion about the nature of knowledge; a review of the professional knowledge base as it relates to teacher education including political, moral, and ethical issues; and, an examination of how self-study can-should influence these considerations. In the last section of the chapter, the third space is explored as a place where alternative perspectives can challenge the traditional framework for approaching research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I argue in this chapter that the voices in self-study research are integral to creating and exploring a new landscape in teacher education that is able to bridge long-standing gaps. These voices are heterophonic and polyphonous, authoritative and authentic. They highlight dissonance and living contradictions within teacher education contexts. In doing so, they are creating a discourse that is responsive to the contexts teachers and teacher educators find themselves in. This is the new discourse of the new landscape in teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter examines the nature of self-study in terms of teaching, learning and research and begins to build an understanding of the influence of purpose, participants and contexts in shaping learning of teaching and teaching about teaching. By exploring learning through contexts and approaches to self-study, the purpose and value for practitioners in these situations is highlighted. These contexts include the sites in which teacher education occurs (universities and schools) and the situations in which teachers and teacher educators place themselves to better understand the complex world of teaching and learning. It also involves understandings of approaches to teaching and teacher education that can only be examined by practitioners researching their own practice and making explicit the purpose for such study. The chapter concludes with a synthesis of the issues considered being illustrated in action through a case-study of learning through self-study. The case-study is designed to highlight how self-study can lead practitioners to develop insightful understandings of practice that also lead to meaningful changes in practice and, of illustrating how such learning might be conveyed and understood by others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]