The Bricks and Mortar of our Foundation for Faculty Development: Book-study within a self-study professional learning community

Abstract

This article examines the experiences of seven teacher educators who met monthly over one academic year to engage in a collaborative self-study focused on exploring the text, Developing a Pedagogy of Teacher Education: Understanding Teaching and Learning about Teaching. Through reflective discussion focused on relating the text to our practices, we enhanced understandings of ourselves, one another, our students, and our teacher education program. Description and analysis are provided through two frameworks. First, we detail our engagement in authentic conversations about our tensions, documenting how we negotiated the same six tensions as teacher educators and in learning about teaching teachers through collaborative self-study. Next, we illustrate how exemplifying the key characteristics of effective professional learning community groups supported our collaborative exploration. We also detail how we moved increasingly beyond book-study to focus on our context-specific needs and co-construct possibilities for the future. Implications of considerations in forming a collaborative self-study group are identified.

Keywords:

• teacher educators
• faculty development
• professional learning community
• collaborative self-study
• book-study
• tensions