Increasing Professional Self-Understanding: Self-Study Research by Teachers with the Help of Biography, Core Reflection and Dialogue

Abstract

There is growing interest in self-study methods being used by teachers and teacher educators to improve their own practice. The focus of these self-studies seems to be more on acting than on understanding, and here we focus on a group of teachers who explore their professional identities. Teachers participating in a Master’s degree study were asked to formulate critical moments in their development in which they felt their values were challenged and they were faced with a dilemma connected to these challenges. They then used different self-study research methods to dig deeper into their reports. This article focuses on exploring the normative dilemmas that teachers face in their daily practice and how their self-understanding is influenced by studying these dilemmas. We found that participating teachers faced two main dilemmas between external guidance and self-regulation, and between self-consciousness and relatedness. We also found that the effects of self-study research are connected to a deeper understanding of how things work and that finding core values such as trust, connectedness, and creating space can generate a breakthrough in the two main dilemmas.

Keywords::

• professional identity
• self-study
• normative dilemmas

Self-study by teachers and teacher educators to research and improve their own practice has developed rapidly in recent years (e.g., Loughran, Hamilton, LaBoskey, & Russell, 2004; Lunenberg & Hamilton, 2008). Self-study is often considered the study of one’s own practice by the systematic exploration of what is happening, what participants think about their own practice, and what they want to change in their practice. In this way, self-study is part of the action research tradition in education. Self-study in this tradition is seen as an effective way to study and change one’s own teaching practice (Loughran et al., 2004).

Self-study is the study of self (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009) in the act of practicing, a moral commitment to improving practice: “Self study is used in relation to teaching and researching practice in order to better understand oneself [in the various roles assumed]; teaching; learning; and the development of knowledge about these” (Bullough & Pinnegar, 2004, p. 316). We see self-study as a specific form of action research and agree with Pinnegar and Hamilton (2009) that in self-study “it is not the self but the self and the other in practice that is most of interest” (p. 12). “[The] self seeks to explore the gap between who I am and who I would like to be in my practice and studies that self and the others involved as the self takes action to reduce or alter that gap” (p. 12).

One of the problems in teaching is that teachers tend to act before they even have an understanding of how things work or how things have developed (Oosterheert & Vermunt, 2001). As Kelchtermans and Hamilton (2004) state, we should “look beyond the technicist reductionism from the perspective of ‘knowing how to’ toward a ‘being some-one who’ perspective…, the moral dimension of knowledge that includes vulnerability in teaching, and the integrity and trustworthiness necessary to do the work” (p. 785). Day (2000, p. 113) formulates the same focus: “It is the creation and sustenance of the moral and professional purposes of teachers that should provide the main agenda for their continuing professional development.” Thus we focus on self-study research as a form of narrative research of one’s own professional self-understanding (Kelchtermans & Hamilton, 2004; Korthagen, 2004).

Focusing on self-study research as understanding one’s own practice and one’s self-concept means that teachers look critically at their professional values (Kunneman, 2005), work toward a better self-understanding (Kelchtermans, 2005), and have a moral purpose (Fullan, 2001). Our post-modern society demands this value-driven professionalism not only in teaching but also in all professions where professionals deal with clients. For professionals in social work, for example, this concept:

should do justice to the central role of moral and existential insights at the side of workers and the importance and necessity of normative forms of professionalization… Moral and existential values play a decisive role at the level of moral judgments and existential insights at the side of their clients. It involves not only notions of rights and responsibilities but also questions of self-respect and self-doubt, trust and mistrust, and hope or despair. (Kunneman, 2005, p. 193)

Thus teachers are here studied as value-driven professionals.

Meaningful stories (van den Berg & Vandenberghe, 1995; van der Harst, van den Berg, & Fortuin-van der Spek, 2007) reflect the important moral and existential issues that teachers face. This type of deep reflection helps teachers to become aware of their professional self-understanding (Lunenberg & Hamilton, 2008). Concepts and methods are mentioned in the literature, but examples of these moral and existential notions and discussions of how teachers benefit from studying these are rare (Korthagen, 2004).

In this article we focus on a group of teachers who, as part of their Master’s degree study of learning and innovation, explore their professional identities. The students were asked to formulate critical moments in their development as teachers, moments in which they experienced their values and motives being threatened, and faced a dilemma connected with these threats. Their reports reveal narratively how they act, speak, and think in these dilemmas. They are stimulated as part of their Master’s degree study to use different self-study research methods, such as biographies, core reflection, and Socratic dialogue, to dig deeper into their reports. These methods are intended to help them find ways to deal with their dilemmas and to generate a turning point.

Review of Literature About Moral Dilemmas in Teaching

Professional identity is one’s professional self-concept based on attributes, beliefs, values, motives, and experiences (Ibarra, 1999; Taylor, 1989). Knowledge about professional identity is constructed by analyzing narratives in which professionals express their desires, their fears, their hopes, and their dreams. Such narratives offer insight into the process of professional identity construction (Slay & Smith, 2011). In order to underline the notion of process in identity construction, we prefer to use terms that accord with the view of self-understanding described by Kelchtermans and Hamilton (2004).

In the tradition of narrative research into one’s self-understanding, the keystone is the idea that knowledge about one’s professional self can only be created by telling stories around critical incidents in one’s professional biography (Ricoeur, 1985, 1990). There does not exist a direct way of understanding the self of a person; there is only the indirect route of telling life stories and stories rooted in the cultural tradition in which one grew up that raises self-consciousness and self-reflection. Ricoeur’s concept of narrative identity helps us to find a more effective way to stimulate the self-reflection of professionals in education through the telling of stories around incidents in professional practice. Other characters (actors) also play an important role in these stories of professionals. By a process of dialogic exploration of these stories, the professional self of the teacher becomes clearer and appears as the culmination of an ongoing process of interaction and of moral, existential decisions the teacher has taken.

Here we use a broad concept of teacher knowledge and focus on, “a deeper understanding of the moral dilemmas, of the tension between individual normative beliefs about good teaching and the possibly different views from others (parents, colleagues) as well as the development of a ‘moral language’” (Kelchtermans & Hamilton, 2004, pp. 795–796). According to Korthagen and Kessels (1999), two types of knowledge are possible in the practice of teaching (see also Kunneman, 2005). The episteme type of knowledge refers to general concepts that are applicable to a wide variety of situations to solve a specific problem. The phronesis type of knowledge is practical and intuitive in nature, situation-specific, and related to the context: “Therefore, teachers' own descriptions are at the heart of their moral judgment” (Tirri & Husu, 2002, p. 66). The phronesis type of knowledge helps the teacher to pick out the important moral and existential features in a situation. It is the capacity to use personal values, knowledge, and understandings in a situation as standards to deal with existential dilemmas and with personal motives and dreams of professionals.

The moral base of the teaching profession was a popular theme in educational research in the 1990s (e.g., Sockett, 1993) and in the 2000s (e.g., Kelchtermans, 2009; Nussbaum, 2001, 2010; Tirri & Husu, 2002). The moral dimension can be defined as “an active process of constructing understandings and meanings relating to social interactions” (Tirri & Husu, 2002, p. 65). “The self is formed and maintained in relationship to others” (Bullough & Pinnegar, 2004, p. 340; see also Buber, 1947). So the first level of reading is: In what social context does the moral dilemma appear?

In the context of primary education, the values and motives of teachers, parents, and children are in a constant dialogue with each other and teachers need to consider the normative standards of the teaching profession (Tirri & Husu, 2002). The concept of task perception, as used by Kelchtermans (2009, p. 262), implies the value-driven choices and moral considerations that teachers face (Dewey, 1963; Nussbaum, 2001, 2010).

These considerations result in dilemmas in teaching which, for example, are analyzed by Tirri and Husu (2002, p. 67) with two central concepts of care and responsibility. After studying 30 reports of teachers, they concluded that “most of the ethical conflicts called for the teachers to protect their pupils from further harm” (p. 77). Central concepts for Kelchtermans (2005, 2009) are commitment, vulnerability, integrity, trustworthiness, and dispensing justice. Kunneman (2005) talks about normative professionalization as a strategy for “development of fruitful connections” between two poles:

On the one hand the organizational norms for professional competence and adequate support, reflecting and specifying the dominant moral matrix; on the other hand the moral commitments of workers to deliver forms of help and support which are experienced by their clients as adequate and really helpful… Normative professionalization is based then on the development of reflexive connections between cognitive insights, organizational norms and moral and existential values on the level of practical work processes. (p. 195)

So the second level of reading is: What actual normative and existential dilemmas do the teachers face?

Based on this theoretical framework, we ask ourselves: Which moral and existential dilemmas are a starting point for professional self-study research by teachers, which values clash with each other, and what is the effect on the participating teachers? This main question we want to explore at a deeper level with the help of two further questions:

• Which dilemmas are a starting point for professional self-study research undertaken by six teachers and which values clash with these dilemmas?

• What are the effects on the self-understanding of the participating six teachers?

Method

The study is focused on exploring the moral and existential dilemmas that teachers face when they carry out self-study research. The study is mainly descriptive: What are the normative dilemmas that teachers face in their daily practice and in what way is their self-understanding influenced by studying these dilemmas?

Context of the Research

A group of 30 teachers participated between September 2009 and July 2011 in a Master’s degree study of Learning and Innovation. The Master’s degree study is a two-year, part-time course. Students come to the institute every Thursday in the first year and every other Thursday in the second year, and are expected to spend another day every week on preparation work, reading articles and writing papers.

The first year of the Master’s degree study consists of three periods. In the first period students study literature in an extensive way; in the second period they focus on the improvement of their own work as a teacher by carrying out an individual action research project; and in the third period they carry out a self-study focusing on their moral and existential values. In each period they write a research report. This study focuses on the third type of research, the self-study. In the program of the third period, three approaches are offered for the self-study. Methods for teachers to study their own professional identities are the biographical method, core reflection, and the Socratic dialogue.

The biographical approach (Kelchtermans, 1993, 2009, p. 260; Kelchtermans & Hamilton, 2004, pp. 804–806) can be characterized by five general features: narrative, constructivist, contextualistic, interactionist, and dynamic. Narrative refers to the fact that people tend to present their life experiences in a narrative form. Events and incidents are transformed into stories, anecdotes, images, and metaphors. Those stories are told, retold, and adapted. Teachers organize their professional experiences into a biographical story. Thus this approach is constructivist. Teachers actively construct their career experiences into a story that is meaningful for them. These stories are always contextualized and refer to particular experiences. The context implies also an interactionist stance. Human behavior always results from meaningful interaction with the environment (social, cultural, material, and institutional). The dynamic aspect emphasizes the temporal dimension and the developmental dynamic. The teacher’s current thinking, acting, and imagining constitute one moment in a continuous process of assigning meaning to the perceived and experienced reality.

The core reflection approach (Korthagen, 2004) is described as a way to develop a teacher’s professional identity by, “approaching the person as being someone important, who has within him a great potential for change, who has the capacity to be a change agent, etc.” (p. 84). Important are people’s personal qualities, including creativity, trust, care, courage, sensitivity, decisiveness, spontaneity, commitment, and flexibility (Tickle, 1999). These core qualities are sources of stability for teachers, through which they maintain a sense of purpose in their work. Formulating their core qualities:

helps teachers to find and give meaning to their own existence. For teachers, we can think of motives such as creating greater acceptance of differences between people, creating feelings of self-worth in children, and so forth. Teachers are not always equally aware of this in themselves. (Korthagen, 2004, p. 85)

Strengths (core qualities) are always potentially present; they are fundamental to teachers and are related to their identity.

The Socratic dialogue approach (Kessels, 2001; Knezic, Wubbels, Elbers, & Hajer, 2010) is not focused on finding solutions for problems, criticizing, or giving advice, but on exploration, enquiry, and research as to how and where personal motives and values clash with actual behavior and decision-making in daily practice. The Socratic dialogue is about asking oneself fundamental, not pragmatic, questions, and searching for concrete and specific examples connected to those fundamental questions in daily practice. It does not seek to prejudge and abandon routines and patterns, or search for new insights or behavior. A Socratic dialogue is focused on:

answering a fundamental question on the basis of a real-life example or incident with the purpose of achieving new insights… and… serves the purpose of self-scrutiny of preconceptions about teaching and thus possibly leads to conceptual changes in teachers and makes them apply new concepts in their teaching. (Knezic et al., 2010, p. 1105)

A Socratic dialogue often takes place in a group but an individual teacher can also have a dialogue with, for example, important others from the literature.

Participants

The participants in the research are six teachers out of a group of 30 who participated in a Master’s degree study of Learning and Innovation. These are teachers who in general work in primary schools in the Netherlands, have between 5 and 10 years of experience as a teacher, and have started to play an innovative role in the renewal and development of the school organization, curriculum, and vision.

Instruments

For our enquiry, we used the teachers’ written self-study research reports as data. From each of the three research approaches, two well-written examples were selected. Both researchers reviewed all 30 self-study reports; only a limited number of these were suitable for use as data. The reports we finally selected were those that started with a clear dilemma, were explicit about the focus of the self-study, and used one of the three methods explicitly and systematically. Moreover, they were written clearly and described the point of return and the effect, so they could be used as examples of how certain teachers dealt with the dilemmas they were facing. The reports considered here are not representative of the entire group of 30 teachers.

One of the researchers composed a two-page document in which the most relevant parts of the self-study were summarized. The summary was then checked by the other researcher to ensure that no crucial information was missing. These summaries have the form of a vignette, a short description in which the core of a research project is summarized (Harinck, 2009). These vignettes show the dilemma the teacher was facing and which values were playing a role in the dilemma. It is not intended that they should represent the full picture; the vignettes were used for in-depth analysis.

Analyzing Data

The research reports were used as data. The reports describe the participants’ growing professional self-understanding in the context of pedagogical–didactical dilemmas in social interactions. Two researchers independently analyzed the six vignettes from the selected participating teachers and formulated what they saw as the dilemmas faced by the students in their self-studies. In the sections where the students reported turning points, the consequences and recommendations of the self-study were also analyzed independently by the two researchers. These were used to formulate the turning points that the students experienced, the effects of the study on the teachers’ self-understanding, and the core values (Kessels, 2006; van Loon, 1996) crucial for dealing with the dilemmas and intended actions.

The researchers then came together to exchange the identified dilemmas, values, and effects. They discussed differences and easily reached agreement. This text was then reported back to the six Master’s students whose papers were used in the research to ask whether the vignette, formulated dilemma, and effect were seen by them as appropriate.

Results

In this section we first present the vignettes of the six participating teachers; then we describe the dilemmas the six teachers faced and analyze the effects each had on the teachers dealing with these dilemmas.

Vignettes of the Participating Teachers

The vignettes in this section show which dilemma the teacher was facing, which values were playing a role, what turning points the teachers experienced, the effects on the teachers’ self-understanding, which core values were crucial for dealing with the dilemmas and the intended actions. The first two vignettes are from teachers who used the narrative biographical method, teachers 3 and 4 used core reflection as a method for self-study, and teachers 5 and 6 used the Socratic dialogue as a method for self-study.

Teacher 1

This teacher wrote a biography with critical moments and critical persons to explore “the kind of connectedness I have experienced, for example, as a pupil, and also to find out which connectedness I experience as a teacher with my pupils and colleagues.” Her biography as a pupil shows that she felt very vulnerable in her relationship toward others and that:

my strategy to feel safe was to do my best, to work hard, to show diligence, to be disciplined, to give one’s best. As long as I did my best and didn’t stand out too much, it went well. There were people I connected with well, but there were not many.

As a teacher, she points out:

I also build on discipline, dedication and diligence. I combine this with being goal-orientated, directive, clear and focused. I work from a rational perspective. I am so focused at creating discipline and diligence that I lose the focus and almost forget to connect with my pupils. Looking at my core qualities I am very busy asking myself how things ought to be.

However, there also seemed to be a positive relationship with pupils, although she is less aware of this. While the descriptions in the biography are sometimes vivid and show pleasure and the photos in her report show a positive attitude, her focus seemed to be on her struggle to motivate pupils and stay in control.

The main dilemma this teacher shows in this vignette is, on the one hand, the focus on diligence and giving one’s best and, on the other, the need to feel connectedness with pupils. More generally, this can be formulated as a dilemma between dedication to the task and relatedness to others.

For teacher 1 a different perspective occurred when she was writing about pupils. She realized:

it was hardly ever in a positive way. It seems to be that my connectedness mainly exists in conflicts with them… I strive to do well and expect the same from my pupils… As a teacher I rely on diligence, discipline and dedication but forget to see the positive side of my pupils. I have to abandon the focus on the rational side of teaching and on what I suppose ought to be done.

Connectedness is a link with the higher and bigger entities. Expectations of myself and others play an important role and I have the courage to look at them and take them seriously. Connectedness is like a string around your heart: the feeling of meaning something and to be allowed to be there because your heart is connected with the heart of the other. Being connected with others makes you vulnerable. To make myself vulnerable is important and my strategy of protecting myself is a burden. I can develop connectedness with my pupils by trying to project oneself into them and learn to see their perspective.

The core value in the story of teacher 1 is clearly connectedness.

Teacher 2

This teacher wrote a biography about his time in primary school, secondary school, the army, higher education, and work. The biography shows that during primary and secondary school and the first years of higher education, he experienced demotivation and emptiness:

In primary education I saw myself as an average pupil with not a lot of faith in the teachers. I did not have a lot of friends during that time. In secondary education we were never asked what we thought and felt. It was always about the things I could not or did not want to do. It was always about what we had to do.

He remembers one teacher who made the effort to prepare him well for his exams. This was a teacher who saw in every pupil a potentially good pupil.

After school he spent some time in the army, a period which is described as mainly consisting of a struggle with hierarchy: “My opinion is and was that you have to appreciate people for what they do and not for the amount of stripes they have on their shoulder.” He experienced no challenges in higher education, but “I found out at the same moment that I was not able to take the initiative to change my own situation.”

The main concern or struggle this teacher shows in his vignette is the feeling of being ignored, not seen by teachers, not being taken seriously most of the time, and the consciousness of not being able to take initiative for change as well as the need to be stimulated by teachers who saw the potential in him. In general, this can be formulated as a dilemma between the experience of demotivation of the self and the need to be recognized by others.

For teacher 2 the different perspective was the trust he received from his mentor at the teacher education institute who stimulated him to look for a job at a school with all kinds of new educational ideas and motives. Also, the inspiration he received from the head of this school was an enormous help in his development: “At that school for the first time in my life I had to go to the limit.”

Freedom can only take place in restraint. I want to go from the word freedom towards words as trust and responsibility. So my main theme is not anymore freedom but gaining faith/trust. I know now that I want to have the feeling to be meaningful towards myself and towards others.

Thus the core value in the story of teacher 2 is trust.

Teacher 3

The story of this teacher shows that in her professional behavior she did not succeed in fulfilling the different roles she has in school, as a teacher and as a co-ordinator, with the same qualities. Through core reflection she finds that in her role as a teacher, she focuses on creating more space for pupils to make their own decisions/create more self-responsibility. But in her role as a co-ordinator and in her role as an innovator, she is mainly directive: “If I am given a task, I want the end result to be clear and good… If someone else is not willing to go along with this, then I take over and make sure that the end result is good.” This attitude does not always result in the involvement of colleagues whom she wants to encourage. In her role as an innovator, she wrote that “I also face the culture of the organisation in which colleagues tend to wait for initiatives from the top.”

This teacher uses two metaphors to typify the search in her professional self-study, the metaphors of water and of the saw. The metaphor of the river, which finds its own way, she uses to typify the search for patterns, qualities, and blind spots, and also to typify her new way of behaving, namely “to move with the other.” The metaphor of the saw, which she took from a Buddhist parable, she uses to state that, in all her ways of trying to make everybody active, “I forgot to sharpen my own saw, to strengthen my own core qualities, to use my core qualities to change my patterns.”

The main dilemma this teacher shows in her vignette is that over the years she has developed a certain way of directing the behavior of pupils and colleagues. The theme in her story is the tension between stirring, taking initiative and being directive, and delegating and giving responsibility. She wants to learn to “move with the other” in her role as coordinator and innovator in the same way that she does with the pupils in her role as teacher. More generally, this can be formulated as a dilemma between initiation on one hand and autonomy on the other hand.

Teacher 3 had a talk about her basic attitude in approaching her colleagues. This conversation made her realize that it is possible for her to work intensively with colleagues and still retain her autonomy. Her struggle was to find a good balance between her motive to control the situation and the intention to be engaged with the team. “I want their capacities and responsibilities to be addressed by the children and colleagues. What is really important for me is autonomy, self-direction and working from the relationship.” The core value in the story of teacher 3 is taken to be openness.

Teacher 4

The story of this teacher shows that she experienced her professional self-study as a search to strengthen the autonomy of the professionals: “I see and experience ‘autonomy’ as a core value and I would like my pupils, colleagues and management to do the same: to increase the space and area to act in an autonomous way.” Her dilemma is that she herself wants that space in her professional acting, but she is not always able to create it because she is quite dominant in her presence and has a tendency to take up a lot of space. “It must be possible to make explicit what you want, but at the same time to choose not to dominate others.” Through core reflection, she developed a better understanding of what it takes from her and her colleagues to give space to each other: deep respect and the recognition of freedom (deep autonomy) of each participant. By using the method of core quadrants filled in by pupils, colleagues, and herself, she became aware of her qualities, pitfalls, challenges, and allergies. The metaphor she uses for herself is the satellite dish that picks up signals and sends them out again. She is going to try to pick up signals accurately and understand them.

The main concern this teacher shows in this vignette is giving space. This created a dilemma for her because, on the one hand, she wanted to become more sensitive to the qualities of her colleagues and give them space to use their qualities to improve what is bothering them. On the other hand, she also discovered that her motive and presence are quickly experienced as diminishing the space for others. In more general terms, this can be formulated as a dilemma between presence and autonomy.

Teacher 4’s talk with colleagues resulted in her becoming aware of the fact that having an ambition to strengthen the autonomy of all participants is considered by others to be more restraining than stimulating. It made her think about autonomy as a concept and about the question of how in daily acting she can create space by challenging pupils and colleagues to create, for example, their own room for maneuver and take their own initiative:

Freedom and respect are important for every person in their own learning process… I want children and colleagues to find out who they are… I want to create space for everybody to have their own daily experiences and to create space for everybody’s learning process… My role is to be a coach, to be a link for others… I am the owner of the process to create freedom for each other and to see that everybody respects each other. It is possible to show what you really want and at the same time to stop dominating the other. By letting the other loose based on respect.

The core value in the story of teacher 4 is to give space.

Teacher 5

The story from this teacher shows that her main concern was the way the development of children is discussed in the team of teachers, namely, that “pupils with a name and a history are reduced to pupils with an IQ of 90.” The actual pedagogical practice of colleagues discussing the results of the children is focused on their results and not on how they develop as learners and grow as people. She experienced this practice as conflicting with her principles and the pedagogical principles of the school. She had a clear ambition, which is to face and take care of the specific learning needs of every child and to create thoroughly structured care in her classes. She feels this is congruent with the ambition of the school, which is formulated as “to do justice to every child and create good education for all children.”

She asked herself, “Where is the child which should be central in our attention? I feel inside that it is simmering and that I seethe with anger and indignation.” At first she finds it difficult to understand and accept that her colleagues are talking about pupils in this way. The gap between her colleagues and her own way of thinking is so great that it stops her from interacting with them. The dilemma for this teacher is how to deal with the lack of respect among colleagues in their discussions about the development of children, and at the same time to be true to the ideal to do justice to every child. On the one hand, this teacher felt indignant at the lack of real dialogue among colleagues, while on the other she was strongly relating to the children. In more general terms, this can be formulated as a dilemma between being upset about the lack of real dialogue among colleagues and being connected with the children in the school.

Through a Socratic conversation, colleagues dared to face the discrepancy between their actual way of acting toward the pupils and their motives and values about good teaching in which every child counts. A specific and concrete case was used to explore this discrepancy in depth and to search for ways to make the motives visible in their unruly practice. The result of the Socratic dialogue was that the teachers were willing to stand up again for their ambition that “children within the school are allowed to be who they are.”

For teacher 5 the Socratic dialogue was crucial. She was aware of the contradiction in the ways children were discussed by teachers in meetings, but she had not found a method to discuss this with her colleagues. She used the Socratic dialogue and by this means made the choice to explore a situation in which making a real choice for a teacher was important and a solution was not very obvious. The highlight of the dialogue was the question, “Are we taking this child seriously?”, and the insight that everyone thought that the child could be how he/she wanted to be, that parents can help children think, and that teachers cannot do everything:

Through a good story or an inspiring idea it is possible to find out how things work for you, what direction you want to go in and what is important for you to do. It is important to create space in my school for reflection and durable dialogue. My own self-study research has given me new insights and has resulted in new behaviour.

One example of this new behavior is that the teacher made more explicit in her dialogues with her team what motives are behind the measures she proposes. The core value in the story of teacher 5 is real dialogue.

Teacher 6

The story of this teacher shows that she was searching for an answer to the question, “What personal thoughts make autonomy important and why do I find autonomy so important for good education?” She used the Socratic dialogue to enter into a dialogue with influential and leading thinkers such as Steiner, Stevens, and Korthagen to find an answer for the question, “Do I find it necessary that a child always experiences autonomy in education?”

She explored what these authors think about autonomy and why they find autonomy so important, and she compared their vision of autonomy with the pedagogical goals they strive for. She discovered that there are different perspectives toward autonomy – toward the lesson content and toward developing the whole human being.

This insight she connected to her experiences with two pupils. In one case, she gave autonomy to the child and in the other she did not. Using the different perspectives, she concluded that:

I sometimes ask too much from children when I give them autonomy towards their behaviour (Steiner) and that sometimes it is appropriate to give autonomy and trust because children have to learn according to the lesson content to make their own choices. (Stevens/Korthagen)

The main dilemma this teacher exhibits in this vignette is giving autonomy on the one hand versus the need for a framework to learn on the other. She realized that a child cannot develop alone and that as a teacher you must supervise a child in that development. You teach a child to think and you make sure that the child experiences autonomy during this learning:

I should have faith that children are able to shape their own development and that I can make my faith stronger if I enter a deep conversation with children, or if I discover the children’s qualities and make them explicit. On the other hand I think it is necessary to offer children a framework within which they can function autonomously.

In general terms, this can be formulated as the dilemma between autonomy and guidance.

Teacher 6 experienced a different perspective by reading the ideas of philosophers and important writers: “I came out of my own circle and could expand my view on how to deal with autonomy in my educational practice.”

Through this professional self-study the things I have already in my head found a place in my heart. They became something of my own. I know now what I really find important in education for the children. Because I know now what I am striving for, i.e., to help children to learn more about themselves, and the only way they can do that is by themselves. I can deliberately make my choices and I can underpin these choices towards myself and towards others. That gives me self-confidence in what I do.

So the core value in the story of teacher 6 is trust.

Dilemmas

The summary in Table 1 shows that these six teachers seem to face different dilemmas.

Table 1 Dilemmas teachers face in their self-study.

	On the one hand…	But on the other hand…
Teacher 1	Focus on diligence and to give one’s bestDedication to the task	Desire to be connected in the relationshipRelatedness to others
Teacher 2	Being ignored/not taken seriouslyDemotivation of oneself	Need for stimulation and taking initiativeRecognition by others
Teacher 3	Being directive and taking overInitiation	Giving responsibility and move with the otherAutonomy
Teacher 4	Being dominant and taking up a lot of spacePresence	Create space for pupils and colleaguesAutonomy
Teacher 5	Being upset about the dialogue among colleaguesIndignation about a lack of real dialogue	Taking care of every child and their learning needsConnection to others
Teacher 6	The need to offer a framework for learningGuidance	Trust in children to make their own choicesAutonomy

Table 1 shows that one of the main dilemmas teachers seem to face is that between initiation, presence, and guidance on the one hand, and the motive to have responsibility, autonomy, and space for one’s own choices on the other hand. This dilemma appears in the vignettes of teachers 3, 4, and 6. The first three values can in our view be summarized as externalguidance, while the other three values can be summarized as self-regulation. So this dilemma can be formulated as a dilemma between external guidance and self-regulation.

The second dilemma demonstrated by these professional self-studies is between having a focus on dedication, motivation, and justice for every child versus the need to connect, to be taken seriously, and to have a commitment from colleagues. This dilemma is shown in the vignettes of teachers 1, 2, and 5.

It seems that being dedicated to one’s task, being ignored, and being upset all have to do with becoming self-conscious about that which is difficult in acting as a professional, while respect for children, recognition by others, and connection to others have to do with keeping up a good relationship with others. So this dilemma can be formulated as one between self-consciousness and relatedness.

Effect According to the Participants

These teachers faced dilemmas and they formulated their dilemmas by writing a narrative in which they looked at their biography and at what was happening in their actual situation in education. Using different methods to deepen insights and dig deeper into their dilemmas sometimes gave these teachers a totally different perspective and helped them to make clear which core values were crucial for dealing with the dilemmas which confront them.

So these methods helped the participants to deal with the discrepancies they faced in such a way that they came to a deeper level of learning and were able to connect with their core values (Table 2).

Table 2 Discrepancies, methods used, and effects in terms of core values.

Teacher	Discrepancy	Method used	Core value
1	Dedication – relatedness	Narrative	Connectedness
2	Demotivation – relatedness	Narrative	Trust
3	Initiation – autonomy	Core reflection	Openness
4	Presence – autonomy	Core reflection	Give space
5	Indignation – relatedness	Socratic dialogue	Real dialogue
6	Guidance – autonomy	Socratic dialogue	Trust

Conclusions and Discussion

In this article, our research question was “Which moral and existential dilemmas are a starting point for professional self-study research by teachers, which values clash with each other and what is the effect on the participating teachers?” We explored this main question at a deeper level with the help of two more questions:

• Which dilemmas are a starting point for professional self-study research by six teachers and which values clash in these dilemmas?

• What are the effects on the self-understanding of the participating six teachers?

In an answer to our first research question, we found that participating teachers faced two main dilemmas: between external guidance and self-regulation, and between self-consciousness and relatedness.

As two dimensions in the process of self-understanding, moral and existential notions are explicitly recognizable in the vignettes. The existential dimension is especially recognizable where the teacher experienced distance and alienation in cooperation with colleagues or in the relationship with a class or group of pupils. The moral dimension is especially recognizable where important values of the teachers clashed with procedures, beliefs, and ways of working that made acting based on these values difficult or impossible.

In the literature we identified moral dilemmas for teachers such as care and responsibility, commitment, vulnerability, integrity, trustworthiness, dispensing justice, and delivering forms of help and support that are experienced by their clients as adequate and helpful. What our research adds to existing knowledge concerning moral considerations is the focus on the core dilemmas that teachers face in their value-driven choices: guidance versus self-regulation, and self-awareness versus relatedness.

In an answer to our second research question, we have to bear in mind the results of earlier research; most normative conflicts “are not solved” (Tirri & Husu, 2002, p. 78). This is consistent with the results of our research, which shows that the effects of self-study research are connected to a deeper understanding of how things work, and that finding core values such as trust, connectedness, and creating space can lead to a breakthrough in the dilemmas.

What further strikes us about the effects we reported is that for most teachers (see teachers 3, 4, 5, and 6) a new perspective was created through a conversation they had with others, such as colleagues or influential and leading thinkers. This makes it clear that researching one’s own professional identity is not an isolated activity that people undertake on their own, but a highly interactive and dialogic exercise that teachers undertake in interaction with others. This is consistent with the literature about collaborative learning in self-study: “Self study research transcends the individual through collaborative, questioning, dialogic and action-oriented processes…. and interaction with others is deeply bound to constituent elements of self-study research – learning, action and knowledge creation” (Bodone, Gudjónsdóttir, & Dalmau, 2004, pp. 746–747). Another way of creating a new perspective involved reflecting on one’s own behavior (teacher 1) and trying things out in a different and new challenging context (teacher 2).

In the literature about teacher learning (e.g., Koster, Dengerink, Korthagen, & Lunenberg, 2008), six categories of professional development activities are described: learning by doing (non-intentional), applying or experimenting (intentional), reflecting on work experiences, learning without interaction (for example, reading books or articles), learning through interaction, and learning outside of work. Out of these six learning activities, our research shows that self-study research for the six participating teachers was mainly learning through interaction and dialogue. Books, reading articles, or learning in a non-intentional way is not the way self-study research is undertaken by them. Because the reports we used in the research underwent a rigorous selection process, and therefore only a small number of reports could be used, these results must not be taken as representative of the whole group of teachers.

In this article, three methods for inquiry of self-understanding were used: narrative approach, core reflection, and Socratic dialogue. There are other methods, and further research will show how these methods help to involve the whole person – body, mind, and spirit. Particularly in Western educational contexts, there has been a tendency to ignore the interdependence of feeling, thought, and action, and to focus almost exclusively on what are seen as purely intellectual activities. However, as Vygotsky emphasized in his last major work, “thought has its origins in the motivating sphere of consciousness, a sphere that includes our inclinations and needs, our interests and impulses, and our affect and emotion” (Wells & Claxton, 2001, pp. 5–6).

The main theme in self-study research carried out by teachers seems to involve making a connection between a dilemma and core values. The latter serve to solve the dilemmas that teachers face in their daily practice. This is what our in-depth analysis of six self-studies shows and we hope that through this we have contributed to the “being someone who” perspective in teaching, a perspective which, as we argued in the first part of this article, helps teachers to become value-driven professionals.