Longitudinal Self-studies of Teacher Education Practices

Each article in this first themed issue of Studying Teacher Education: A journal of self-study teacher education practices reports on some form of longitudinal study of teacher education practice. We are honored to be the guest editors of this special issue and grateful to Tom Russell and John Loughran for encouraging us to expand upon current conceptions of how we might define self-study research. In so doing, we raise the question: Can longitudinal research be considered self-study research? To address that question, each article in this issue presents one form of longitudinal self-study research and is followed by a response, authored by one or more critical friends who contribute additional perspectives. There is intentional overlap across the five research reports and responses; each is focused on improving practice and illustrates elements of pedagogy of teacher education, but each also makes a distinctive contribution to the field of teacher education research. Jack Whitehead's commentary, which locates the research reported in this issue within the larger field of self-study, reminds us that what we are all about is learning – our own learning, our students' learning, and their students' learning.

In preparing this issue we considered what we have learned about self-study research in the years that we have been a part of the self-study community (S-STEP). LaBoskey (2004, pp. 842–852) identified five principles, which we modified somewhat, that guided our selection of articles. Each study had these characteristics:

•	Initiated by and focused on one's self/teaching practices.
•	Aimed toward improving practice.
•	Interactive with students, colleagues, or both.
•	Informed by multiple but primarily qualitative data collection and methods of analysis.
•	Validated through examples.

We also considered LaBoskey's reminder that ‘the goal of research on teacher education is to improve that enterprise [and] by implication a main purpose is to enhance the learning and practice of teacher educators’ (p. 843). All contributors, whether alone or in research groups, have focused on their practice and the impact of their programs. All contributors have sought to improve teacher education by following their students after graduation. Each of these research articles explores the ways in which interactions with students or colleagues have informed research and provide numerous examples for enabling readers to understand teacher education processes and their impact or lack of impact.

The Articles and Commentaries

Schuck's article discusses what she has learned about the teaching of mathematics from graduates of the elementary education program. She elaborates on their experiences of being overwhelmed and her realization of the tensions they face when asked to change the existing math curriculum during this time. Trumbull responds as both critical friend and teacher educator and challenges us to rethink our goals as teacher educators. Clift, who is now at the University of Arizona, reports on the impact her ongoing study of the career paths of students who graduated in 2002 has had on her teaching of teachers and on her work with graduate students. She notes that her teaching and mentoring tended to both push to meet high expectations and to intensify and crowd her prospective teachers' and graduate students' learning opportunities and, therefore, to encourage hurrying as opposed to reflection. Goodwin resonates with the hurried nature of most teacher education programs and discusses how self-study can, to a certain extent, transform our work into a more deliberative endeavor.

McElhone, Hebard, Scott and Juel from Stanford University studied trends in teachers' visions in the pre-service and in-service years across one cohort of new teachers. Using both qualitative and quantitative measures they examined how various visions, developed during the pre-service program, guided or hindered the practice of the beginning teachers. Berry, in response, suggests that teacher educators need to examine their own visions for their practice and consider the intended and unintended messages they convey to their students.

Kosnik, Beck, Cleovoulou and Fletcher from the University of Toronto reported on their study of 22 graduates over their first three years of teaching which revealed that program planning and vision for teaching were two especially important areas that were not adequately addressed in pre-service program. They discuss how they became more explicit with their own visions for teaching to their students and monitored student teacher learning more closely. In Barak and Gidron's response they listened to the story that was between the lines of the research and identified four surprises that the Toronto team experienced.

Freidus, Baker, Feldman, Hirsch, Stern, Sayres, Sgouros and Wiles-Kettenmann formed the Bank Street Reading and Literacy Alumnae Group, a self-generated, self-directed, self-study group. As a result of their regular meetings, in which they framed and reframed their as professionals and became a tightly connected discourse community, and a deeply committed community of learners. Korthagen's response recognizes that the Alumnae Group was an effective model of professional development because, unlike most professional development, it was grounded in the needs and strengths of the people involved and built on supportive interpersonal relationships.

The Articles in Broader Perspective

Research on the impact of teacher education has been criticized routinely for ending when the course or the program ends (see Wilson, Floden, & Ferrini Mundy, 2001; Clift & Brady, 2005). The articles in this issue respond to that criticism in varied ways, using different methodologies and asking different questions. We see these studies not simply as academic exercises but as elements of continuous cycles of learning and development. To inform the cycles we argue that one must attend to the question of timing, or the time frame in which the research should be conducted.

The contributors to this issue are asking self-study researchers to expand the methods they use to gather data and, at the same time, to incorporate into their work data that are often challenging to gather and analyze. This set of articles illustrates the ways in which authors have accessed a range of methods and, perhaps, an expanded range of foci for self-study research to include the study of self as teacher education researcher and teacher of future teacher educators. The articles describe not only research methods, but also the ways that the researchers responded to their findings. They complete the loop of self-study that leads directly into another cycle of research.

If we are to develop a particular set of pedagogies in teacher education (Loughran, 2006), we will need a substantial research base. That base must include data on the extent to which our work with student teachers actually prepares them for the demands they will face as beginning teachers. Our time with our students is limited; hence we need to capitalize on it by selecting learning opportunities that are effective for our students and, ultimately, for their students. Expanding the time frame through longitudinal studies is not a simple task. Logistical (e.g., graduates move away), funding (e.g., longitudinal research is expensive), ethical (e.g., securing approval from often reluctant school districts) and conceptual (e.g., distinguishing the influence of the teacher education program from a host of other factors) challenges abound and, therefore, longitudinal research can be daunting for even the most experienced researchers, but it is necessary.

The articles in this issue illustrate the ways that learning from our students' long-term experiences can lead to powerful learning for teacher educators. These studies point to the importance of strengthening the connections between universities and schools by recognizing their crucial role in the preparation of teachers and in the improvement of education in general. Such links may not be highly visible when research is limited to the impact on one class or a series of classes, but they are conceptually and practically very important and they become highly visible when accessed and examined through longitudinal research. As self-study researchers, we deepen our appreciation of the effects of our own practice, increase our understanding of teaching in the diverse contexts in which our graduates teach, and understand better the links between our programs and beginning teachers' teaching.

Russell's (2004, 1209) chronology of the evolution of self-study research concluded that ‘learning to teach seems to be far more about self than our formal program structures (often established decades ago) tend to acknowledge’. Two recent publications, Research Methods for the Self-study of Practice (Tidwell, Heston, & Fitzgerald, 2009) and Self-study Research Methodologies for Teacher Educators (Lassonde, Galman, & Kosnik, 2009) document some of the most recent developments in self-study research methodology. The first presents 13 studies that address the question, ‘How can I improve my practice?’. The second describes eight methods for collecting and analyzing self-study data. Both point to questions that can only be addressed by longitudinal data. Longitudinal studies are an evolutionary, but very steep, next step in both the evolution of our research and the redesign of our programs. They may enable us to design new and better program structures, ones that deliberately recognize that learning to teach is ongoing and that teacher education is an important beginning, but not an ending.

This special issue invites and encourages the self-study community to take the next step, to innovate and go beyond commonly accepted boundaries and to debate the question, ‘Is longitudinal research self-study research?’ For us the answer is yes, and we hope that reading these articles will generate considerable discussion and debate. We believe that the researchers held tightly to the principles of self-study research. These articles and responses contribute to the growing body of self-study and longitudinal research and we are pleased to be part of these developments. We hope that this theme issue encourages the self-study community to continue pushing the envelope in both our teacher education programs and our research.