Narrative Accounts of Self-Study

Papers in this issue of Studying Teacher Education illustrate the place of story as both data and analysis and show a variety of ways to structure responses to practice through self-study research. Carter (1993) highlighted the place of story in teaching and teacher education and illustrated how the process of interpretation is influenced by the nature of the self that inevitably influences the manner in which stories are constructed and understood. Clandinin and Connelly (2004, p. 597) offer particularly relevant thoughts about narrative and self-study:

Well done self-study inevitably, because of the experiential base of the self-knower, will transcend and be richer than similarly obtained collaborative narrative knowledge. Thus, our position is that self-study is important not for what it shows about the self but because of its potential to reveal knowledge of the educational landscape. Self-study holds the highest possible potential for improving education.

We invite readers to consider these papers from the perspective of the role of narrative accounts in self-study research.

This issue opens with a paper by Dinkelman, Margolis, and Sikkenga that offers insights into the experiences of beginning teacher educators. This study brings into focus a number of crucial issues that shape understandings of what it means to learn to be a teacher of teachers and does so in a way that helps to shed light on an aspect of pre-service teacher education that has hitherto received little attention. Their study describes the struggles involved in moving from classroom teaching to university teaching and research; it also highlights the changes in demands and expectations that inevitably affect understandings of practices associated with what is considered important in creating meaningful and relevant experiences for students of teaching. This paper is the first part of a two-part exploration of this topic; the second part will appear in a subsequent issue of this journal.

The work of Dinkelman, Margolis, and Sikkenga is extended by Nicol's examination of specific teacher education practices associated with the notion of listening. She illustrates how the development of teaching about teaching is enhanced when conceptualized in terms of the development of a pedagogy of teacher education. Adopting an explicit inquiry approach, Nicol makes clear the importance of self-study in shaping our understandings of practice, both as students of teaching and as teachers of teaching. Her study shows how important it is for beginning teacher educators to have opportunities to think about their teacher education practices in ways that genuinely extend their understanding of what they are doing, why and how. Her call for more explicit understandings of practice is a valuable reminder of the need for teacher educators to be clear about their intentions and purposes in teaching about teaching.

The team of Samaras, Kayler, Rigsby, Weller, and Wilcox contributes a narrative account of their research into a “faculty building a successful collaborative culture and team teaching experience in a unique Master's program for practicing teachers.” Members of this team shared their experiences of collaboration with their teachers and, in so doing, found that their teachers began to see faculty in new and different ways. The experience also shaped the manner in which the teachers themselves viewed their own approaches to team teaching. This paper highlights the potential value of collaborative teaching practice. The authors encourage others to think more seriously about the value and impact of such work and the central place of self-study in supporting the growth of professional knowledge and practice.

Strong-Wilson's paper complements and extends the work of Samaras and her colleagues as it “explores the complex relationship between researcher self-study and teacher research.” Strong-Wilson argues that, while self-study and teacher research have strong connections in their pedagogical, theoretical, and methodological underpinnings there are important reasons for “keeping them distinct.” She illustrates the different insights arising from each and explains why it is important that such differences be recognized more generally in the research community.

Macintyre Latta and Olafson explore the experiences of three girls in middle schools, examining the nature of learning experiences with a reflexive approach to data collection and analysis. They attend to the self in relation to learning about teaching and learning by focusing on the importance of relationships and the need for students to develop a sense of “belonging to learning.” Closely following Bakhtin, they suggest that “finding ways to create learning relationships through answerability, outsideness, and unfinalizability” becomes a crucial aspect of creating conditions for learning about teaching. By extending their understandings of middle school classes into their teacher education classes, they suggest that elements to be developed in approaches to teaching and learning in schools must also be developed in teacher education.

Donnelly reports a self-study of the approach used in a Postgraduate Certificate Course in Teaching for academic staff that is based largely on Kolb's (1983) Experiential Learning Cycle. With a major focus on learning technologies, Donnelly considers “how teacher educators can plan for effective integration of technology into the curriculum.” In essence, her approach to this study is based on the need to create experiences for participants that reflected the teaching and learning approaches advocated for other end-users. She concludes that the use of learning technologies is important in helping learners “move from examining their concrete experience of learning and teaching … through the steps of abstraction, reflection, and active experimentation.” This paper reminds us of the need for the intentions of reflection on practice and the subsequent understandings of self-study to extend beyond the boundaries of schools of education and across tertiary institutions more generally.

In this issue's final paper, Craig examines the challenges she faced in attempting to work with teachers and principals whose urban schools were awarded major school research grants. She draws interesting parallels between the dilemmas she encountered in this major research project and the manner in which they affected her own teaching practice. Interestingly, Craig draws attention to how she attempted to manage her “ivory tower position in her relationship with others both in schools and on other university campuses” and how that influenced her growing understanding of herself as a teacher educator through the narrative that comprised that aspect of her self-study.

We hope that readers of this issue of the journal will find these papers organized and structured in such a way that the linking of one with another encourages a personal questioning of practice such that public exposure of each of these authors' learning through self-study offers further encouragement for others to pursue deeper understandings of teaching and teacher education through researching practice.