Special Issue: Insights From The 2018 Castle Conference

The Castle Conference holds a special place in the hearts of many in the community of Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices (S-STEP) researchers. As many readers of this journal know, the International Conference on Self-Study of Teacher Education is held every two years at Herstmonceux Castle near Hailsham in East Sussex, England. Herstmonceux Castle was acquired by Queen’s University in Canada as a gift from Alfred and Isabel Bader, its most generous benefactors, and is now officially known as the Bader International Study Centre of Queen’s University. This biennial event offers a safe and constructive environment in which teacher educators can share ideas, explore innovative approaches, and forge strong relationships as both teachers and researchers.

S-STEP was formed as a special interest group of the American Educational Research Association in 1993, following suggestions made at a symposium at the 1992 meeting of AERA. When Tom Russell, a professor at Queen’s University, shared photos of the Herstmonceux Castle grounds (opened to the public in 1994) to a few members of the group, they responded with, “We have to have a conference there!” The first International Conference was held in 1996 and subsequent conferences have been held there every two years, most recently in July 2018.

The theme for the 2018 conference, Pushing Boundaries and Crossing Borders: Self-Study as a Means for Knowing Pedagogy, simultaneously celebrates self-study’s inward and outward directions. The subtitle serves as a reminder that S-STEP’s core mission is transforming our practice as researchers for whom teaching teachers is a high priority. Through our attention to pedagogy, illustrated by the eclectic and diverse chapters in the monograph of conference proceedings edited by Dawn Garbett and Alan Ovens (2018), we can indeed push boundaries through ongoing attention to theory, methodology and policy and we can cross borders by widening the circle of educators engaged in self-study.

This Special Issue presents articles that had their origins in papers presented at the 12^th International Conference on Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices. At its meeting during the conference, the Editorial Board of Studying Teacher Education agreed to invite a range of presenters to revise and extend their conference papers to produce articles that include an account of their learning from their interactions with those who participated in their presentations at the conference. One of the Board’s goals is to illustrate to others some of the unique features of this biennial international conference.

Those invited to contribute to this special issue responded quickly and enthusiastically to the challenge. The result is this collection of self-study research articles, each of which includes an account of insights gained during the 50-minute presentation and interaction with their audiences. Presenters at the conference are encouraged to use the extended single-paper sessions to engage their audience in activities and discussion that contribute to deeper understanding for both audience members and presenters. Many articles describe these activities in rich detail, while others illustrate how the dynamics of the conference helped to advance their scholarship of practice. Because of the strong response to the invitations, we regret that we are unable to include in issue 14/3 all of the articles prepared for this special issue. The remaining articles will appear in issue 15/1. The following summaries of the articles in this issue focus on the theme of pushing boundaries and crossing borders, as well as on the nature of Castle Conference presentations and how the conference sessions advance teacher education scholarship.

“Disseminating Secret-Story-Knowledge through the Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices” by Amanda Berry and Rachel Forgasz pushes boundaries by proposing that S-STEP members consider the metaphor of professional knowledge landscapes in relation to their “experiences of the transformative potential of self-study methodology.” In a tightly argued article, they make a strong case for this way of thinking as a response to “the inhospitable terrain of teacher education reform.” Amanda and Rachel’s presentation prompted a lively discussion of the teacher education policy context, although the authors would have liked the audience to have considered more how they might influence policy and policy-makers. This article will inspire deeper analysis of professional knowledge landscapes and education policy.

Jennifer Mansfield and John Loughran, in “Pedagogical Equilibrium as a Lens for Understanding Teaching about Teaching,” push boundaries by drawing on cognitive equilibrium, cognitive dissonance, and pedagogical discontent in order to provide an innovative way of framing and articulating the complexities of teaching. This article introduces a pedagogical equilibrium approach to working through dilemmas that unsettle existing routine knowledge and potentially shed “new light on the complexity of teaching.” The presentation at the Castle invited participants to consider their own pedagogical moments of unrest. It also highlighted the demands of teacher education and illustrated how the approach offered in this article might help us grapple with the challenges of enacting our practice in changing times.

“Living in Plurilingual Spaces: Self-Study, Critical Friendship, and the Plurality of Publics” by Cécile Sabatier and Shawn Bullock is a collaborative self-study that evokes personal histories in relation to teacher education practices. This article crosses borders by considering a plurality of publics in which they “identify, and are identified” and by engaging “in translanguaging practice.” They praise the Castle culture and presentation format for advancing S-STEP scholarship: “People come ready to talk, they can read your paper, and they want to use the 50 minutes for more than a PowerPoint presentation. In this way, the community itself acted to augment the trustworthiness of our critical friendship and point us in new directions for our research.”

In “Shaping Community in Online Courses: A Self-Study of Practice in Course Design to Support the Relational,” Shaun Murphy and Stefinee Pinnegar apply S-STEP methodology to teaching teachers in online courses. This article pushes boundaries by extending knowledge on how to create relational online spaces and by drawing attention to Schwab’s commonplaces as a framework for considering these issues. They also credit the experience of their Castle presentation with advancing their scholarship: “We became clearer about the turn back to the self and the importance of supporting gains in social capital for students.”

Eliza Pinnegar and Emma Quiles-Fernández’s “A Self-Study of Researcher Relationships with Research Participants” offers insights into the intimate relationship between researchers and research participants. Building on their shared recognition of the impact of relationships on field research, Eliza and Emma explore how relationships that are “complex, multilayered, and sometimes filled with tension” enhance their capacities as researchers committed to authentic relationships with participants. Presenting a range of experiences to their Castle audience helped these early-career scholars deepen and develop our understanding of research relationships,” refine their analysis for this article, and strengthen their sense of “authority…as researchers, as teacher educators, and as women in the world.”

“Self-Study of a Teacher’s Practices of and Experience with Emotion Regulation: Being and Becoming through Reflection and Engagement” by Lauren Paravato Taylor and Melissa Newberry draws on research on teacher emotion regulation and their teacher education experiences to argue for the importance of teachers identifying, rather than controlling, their emotions. In order to make the session more authentic, Lauren and Melissa engaged participants in role plays as either teachers or antagonists. They report that because “the Castle is a friendly atmosphere, where interaction between presenters and attendees is common, this activity was not resisted.” The responses of the audience helped to confirm the generalizability of the findings and may inspire the authors to explore further the connections between emotional regulation and teacher identity.

Dawn Garbett, Alan Ovens, and Lynn Thomas cross borders in “Biculturalism 101: A Self-Study Exploring Culturaly Responsive Practice” by combining language learning with critical and indigenous issues. This article focuses on the learning experiences of Dawn and Alan when they enrolled in a foundation level Māori language course in New Zealand as a means of making their pedagogy critically responsive, with Lynn’s critical friendship offering insights into language learning. Their presentation, which employed “a modified pōwhiri (welcome ceremony) to showcase an inclusive and non-threatening way of reinforcing protocol through an embodied experience,” reflects the move in many Castle sessions toward creating authentic and meaningful experiences, rather than just reporting findings and discussing implications.

In “Why Self-Study? An Exploration of Personal, Professional and Programmatic Influences in the Use of Self-Study Research,” Melva Grant, newly exposed to self-study by critical friend and co-author Brandon Butler, investigates her practice. This article pushes boundaries by presenting a Black woman’s “struggles with outsidership and expectations, teaching from an othered perspective, and weathering programmatic shifts.” They describe the Castle as “unlike any research conference either of us has ever attended.” As a newcomer, Melva felt that “people were interested in getting to know one another” with many “seeking new relationships for collaboration, and everyone… supportive of new attendees.”

“Supervising the Teacher Education Practicum: A Self-Study with a Critical Friend” by Andrea Martin and Tom Russell pushes the S-STEP community to probe further into the practicum experience in teacher education programs. They open with the question “How good is each teacher candidate’s learning and how well is it supported by the university supervisor?” While field experiences are identified as singularly important, the practices and assumptions of university supervisors at the intersection of theory and practice have received little attention within self-study research. Andrea and Tom emphasize the importance of listening and metacognitive elements in supervisory conversation after lesson observation. Their presentation at the Castle, which involved group discussion of key questions, generated a lively discussion and an acknowledgement that this is an important theme worthy of more study by the self-study community.

We hope that this special issue helps readers vicariously experience the Castle conference and understand its role as an incubator for new ideas and a community-building event. We regret that we are unable to include Spanish translations of titles and abstracts in this special issue; publication deadlines made it impossible to do so much translation once the articles became available. We do wish to acknowledge and thank Fernando Murillo for his translations that appeared in issues 1 and 2 of Volume 14. We also congratulate Fernando on recently completing his Ph.D. at the University of British Columbia.