Personal and Professional Growth Realized: A Self-Study of Curriculum Design and Implementation in a Secondary Science Classroom

Abstract

This study focuses on the experience of designing and implementing an action research-based curriculum in a secondary science classroom. By systematically examining ourselves and our practices, we brought to light beliefs and values that were realized through this process, came to a deeper understanding of our own learning, and developed new awareness as teachers and researchers. Here, we provide our perspective on how the process of curriculum design and implementation facilitated our personal and professional growth, and we share this as an example of how teacher educators and kindergarten through grade 12 teachers can position one another as generators and disseminators of knowledge through collaborative self-study to inform their own and others' teaching practices.

Keywords::

• curriculum design
• collaboration
• beliefs and values
• professional learning
• professional growth
• critical theory

During the 2010–2011 academic year, Elizabeth, an elementary school teacher who was moving into a university faculty role, and Megan, a high school science teacher, began the process of designing and implementing an environmental science curriculum in an urban high school classroom. In this action research-based curriculum, students identified environmental issues in their communities, posed investigable questions of interest to them, and then conducted action research projects to better understand the issues and propose possible solutions. We conducted our self-study to systematically examine ourselves throughout the process of designing and implementing this curriculum and to engage in extensive reflection regarding how this experience enhanced our own personal and professional growth as both teachers and researchers. In order to be meaningful, self-study must result in a reframing of the researcher's beliefs, showing evidence of learning, as well as changes that were realized in practice (Pinnegar, 1998). We argue that engaging in this process has greatly influenced and shaped our beliefs, values, and practices as science educators. In this account of our self-study, we share details about the context of our relationship as teachers and co-researchers, provide details about how we conducted this research, and share our findings, including how they contribute to existing education research.

Background

Our Story

We first met several years ago in a general curriculum and instruction course at the beginning of our doctoral program at Loyola University Chicago. At the time, Elizabeth was a fifth-grade teacher in her seventh year of teaching and Megan was a high school science teacher of nine years. We applied to the Curriculum and Instruction doctoral program for similar reasons, including a desire to re-think our practices as teachers and to form an intellectual community of colleagues to support us in this endeavor. These common goals connected us as we began to informally discuss our beliefs, values, and experiences together, sparking the formation of our personal and professional relationship.

Our doctoral studies began to challenge our existing views of science education, and this piqued our interest in focusing our future research on our own science teaching. Then, at the beginning of the 2010–2011 academic year, we both found ourselves in new roles. Elizabeth left the elementary school classroom as she accepted a clinical faculty position teaching elementary science methods courses at Loyola University. Megan took on a leadership role at her school and was ready to plan and implement a new science curriculum, based on ideas discussed in an independent study course taken with Elizabeth in the previous semester. During this independent study, we discussed our experiences with teaching science, and we articulated our frustration with the way science was often taught in the schools where we worked, resulting in students who were generally disinterested in science. Based on existing examples of youth engaging in action research (Brydon-Miller, Kral, Maguire, Noffke, & Sabhlok, 2011; Cammarota & Fine, 2008; Elmesky & Tobin, 2005) and our discussions about these models, we formulated ideas for how we could work together to make science accessible and engaging to all of our students through action research.

In the fall of 2010, Megan reached out to Elizabeth for help incorporating an action research-based project into her ninth-grade environmental science course to address her concerns with students' lack of engagement with science. With this collaboration, we hoped to provide one another with assistance in taking on the daunting task of curriculum design, and we intended for this opportunity to aid us in shifting our practices as teachers and in forming the intellectual community we desired to create when we first began our doctoral studies. Right away, we recognized that our partnership was unique, as we shifted into different roles and navigated this new collaborative endeavor. We began first as graduate school colleagues and friends, and although Elizabeth could have been viewed by Megan as an outside expert coming in to provide assistance, our existing relationship prevented us from taking on static roles of expert and novice. Instead, we both considered ourselves adept professionals, as we brought our own expertise to the curriculum design and implementation process. What resulted was a curriculum informed by existing practices of both scientific inquiry and action research (see Table 1 for an overview of the curriculum), yet something different from the way either of us had previously taught science. We recognized that the context of our prior relationship and our unique personal and professional experiences allowed us to be full collaborators in this process and to challenge power structures that often exist between university researchers and school personnel (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009; Pine, 2009). As we began the curriculum design, we saw the value in conducting a self-study and became eager to document and analyze our experiences while designing and implementing this curriculum.

Table 1 Overview of our action-research-based curriculum.

Unit	Description
1: Selecting a research topic	Students select research topics of interest to them, form groups with other students who have related interests, and think about how their action research projects might connect to concepts they have been learning in their environmental science course.
2: Developing a research plan	Students develop detailed research plans, which include goals for their research, some background information on the topic, investigable research questions, a plan for data collection, as well as a preliminary time line for the proposed project.
3: Collecting and analyzing data	Students execute their data collection plans, as well as begin to organize and analyze their data.
4: Formulating findings, sharing   results, and taking future action	Students formulate their findings, using the claim-evidence-reasoning framework to address their research questions, and groups make their findings public at a school research symposium. In addition, groups generate tentative plans for future action and include those plans in the public dissemination of their work.

Curriculum Development

We spent approximately two months designing the curriculum and began implementation in January of 2011. We implemented the curriculum in two sections of Megan's ninth-grade environmental science course, which was a year-long required course for all incoming freshmen. The school was a Catholic college preparatory high school with over 95% of the student body being African-American and the vast majority qualifying for free or reduced-cost lunch. In this context, Megan served as the classroom teacher primarily responsible for instruction, and Elizabeth supported her throughout the curriculum implementation. During the second semester of the course, Elizabeth attended each environmental science class at least once a week to help with instruction and management of student projects. We developed the structure of the curriculum together, but due to our varying classroom roles, Megan took responsibility for making modifications to the daily curriculum, instruction, and assessment during implementation. Each class had about 24 students, who viewed us both as resources who could provide help with their action research projects. When Elizabeth attended class, she often sat with one group at a time in a quiet place to minimize distractions. Elizabeth offered students another adult's perspective on their research and encouraged their work. When not in the classroom, Elizabeth helped the groups acquire necessary equipment to conduct their research, and students called or emailed her with updates and questions. Megan ensured that students completed their projects in a timely manner and helped with daily concerns related to their research. We both took responsibility for ensuring that students properly challenged themselves and for giving regular feedback on their projects. As co-designers of the curriculum, we were both equally invested in the implementation process, and we hoped that conducting a self-study might aid us in the modification and future implementation of the curriculum.

Theoretical Framework

While conducting our self-study, we utilized the lens of critical theory to analyze our experiences, with a particular focus on the idea that critical research involves the empowerment of individuals (Kincheloe, McLaren, & Steinberg, 2011). We engaged in this self-study to improve our curriculum development skills and our teaching so that we might empower our students through their learning. Although we focused on studying ourselves, our students remained the central motivation for conducting this research. The purposes of our self-study included the following: (1) to empower ourselves as teachers by positioning ourselves as researchers of our own practices; and (2) to study the curriculum designed to empower our students through their engagement in science as experienced through action research.

Using critical theory allowed us to examine both ourselves and our practices in a number of ways. First, critical theory provided a way to challenge the traditional role of teacher as the subject of research (Freire, 1970); in our self-study, we positioned ourselves as both researchers and subjects of our investigation. We intended to provide personally meaningful insights into our own practices that research conducted by an outsider would be unable to provide (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 1998). We also aimed to benefit other practitioners by sharing our experiences regarding our practices in our own voices (Roth, 2007). Aligned with critical theory, our intentions in disseminating the results of our self-study are not only to empower ourselves, but to support other educators by helping them realize the personal and professional benefits of taking on challenges, such as curriculum design, in their own practices.

Critical theory shaped our study throughout the process, pushing us to expand the focus of our inquiry. Instead of concentrating solely on identifying specific elements of our practices, such as how we went about creating and implementing a curriculum, we questioned prior beliefs and assumptions about teaching and learning, and we continuously found ourselves challenging conceptions of good teaching promoted in our workplaces. An identifying feature of critical theorists and practitioners is their ability to disrupt and challenge the status quo (Kincheloe & McLaren, 2003). We challenged the status quo, first, by designing and implementing a curriculum that was outside of our own comfort zones and deviating from the existing science instruction at the school, which was largely lecture based. In addition, we focused our reflection inward, asking new questions that challenged our own roles in maintaining the status quo. For example, when we found ourselves assigning blame for lack of success in science on students and school administration, the self-study process forced us to take responsibility and continuously question what we were doing to facilitate students' learning, promote their success, and increase their interest in science. Finally, we attempted to shift the power paradigm in our own classroom by positioning ourselves as learners alongside our students. As self-study focuses on improvement, we took on these re-imagined roles with improvement in mind, acknowledging that with the transformation of teachers comes the transformation of students and of school communities (LaBoskey, 2004).

Methodology

Research Design

Choosing self-study as our methodology allowed us to collectively examine our personal and professional growth while we designed and implemented this new curriculum. We argue that acts such as teaching or researching are not “purely professional” (Coia & Taylor, 2009, p. 4), but are personal acts that naturally involve our beliefs, values, and experiences. According to Bullough and Pinnegar (2001, p. 13), “who a researcher is, is central to what the researcher does;” the same could be argued for teaching, as who a teacher is affects an essential part of the teacher's practice. We found self-study to be a meaningful way for us to conduct research, as it helped us maintain this strong connection between the personal and professional elements of our work.

To examine ourselves during the development and implementation of our curriculum, we addressed the following research questions:

• How were our beliefs and values as teachers realized in the development of an action research-based curriculum?

• What understandings of our own learning did we have to recognize and address throughout the development and implementation of the curriculum?

• What new awareness of developing an action research curriculum did we gain as a result of undertaking this project?

Procedures for Data Collection

We collected multiple types of data over nine months during the 2010–2011 academic year and into the following summer, including audio recordings, research journals, and interviews conducted by a critical friend. We audio-recorded our meetings and discussions together. In addition, Megan audio-recorded personal reflections on her day-to-day experiences teaching the curriculum. We also wrote together on common prompts, such as “What beliefs and values led us to undertake this project?” At the same time, we collected data individually in the form of personal research journals, which contained open-ended writing on our experiences, feelings, and reflections. Finally, we employed the help of a critical friend to check our analyses and findings and to counter some of the subjectivity inherent in the self-study process. Our primary critical friend was a professor who advised us throughout the self-study and who interviewed us about our experiences following the curriculum design and implementation. During three semi-structured interviews, this critical friend questioned us, challenged us to clarify our explanations, and offered his perspective on our responses. Because our critical friend pushed us to think more deeply about our beliefs, values, and experiences, the data generated in these interviews aided us in further analysis and in negotiating richer understandings of our own personal and professional development.

Data Analysis

When analyzing our data, we enacted a dynamic view of identity (Roth et al., 2004), recognizing that not only did our students and we constantly change throughout the teaching and learning process (Attard, 2007; DeMulder & Rigsby, 2003), but the interpretations of our own experiences also changed (Coia & Taylor, 2009). In order to negotiate these evolving interpretations, we engaged in continuous analytic induction (Erickson, 1986), both during and after data collection. We continuously shared and discussed our personal narratives together; as we made assertions, we looked for confirming and disconfirming evidence in our data, shared our interpretations with one another, and challenged one another's thinking, which allowed for continuous reflection and revision of our narratives. Two other major points of reflection and data analysis also occurred when we formally debriefed our experiences together through an extended audio-taped conversation, and again when we were interviewed more formally by our critical friend at the conclusion of our data collection. Both reflective experiences occurred at the end of the academic year, after the curriculum implementation was complete, and they allowed us to reflect upon the process as a whole and to get input from our critical friend regarding themes we saw emerging in our narratives. This process helped us articulate varying insights at different points in our analysis, which was one way we attempted to counter a common difficulty with self-study, shifting our frames of reference (Loughran & Northfield, 1998) to help us produce more than a limited or superficial view of our experience.

In addition to these preliminary analyses during data collection, our self-study involved continued collaborative analysis as we listened to, read over, and discussed our data multiple times (Erickson, 1986). During the summer following implementation, we periodically came together to engage in formal analyses, and we used these opportunities to interact with our data in a variety of ways including direct interpretation and pattern matching (Stake, 1995). We discussed our direct interpretations using our personal research journals, which contained a record of our articulated values, beliefs, and experiences throughout the research process. We also engaged in pattern matching (Stake, 1995; Yin, 2009), using the constant comparison technique to develop emergent codes and analyze the data generated in our conversations and interviews (Corbin & Strauss, 2008).

By engaging in data analysis both collaboratively and iteratively, we were constantly negotiating meaning together, each bringing our own insights to the process, as well as challenging one another's interpretations (Erickson, 1986). Differences in perspectives were acknowledged by one another and discussed through open dialogue, generating interpretations that we felt best reflected both viewpoints. Following these data analysis sessions, we often turned to the research to read more on self-study and critical theory, and we also drafted formal writing to outline our thoughts and insights at that particular point. During this collaborative writing endeavor, we drafted certain sections containing ideas that we focused on, and we then brought the sections together, wrote to supplement one another's initial drafts, and edited one another's work. This part of the process took place over the course of almost a year, which allowed us to continuously revisit our interpretations, instead of focusing on one superficial or simplistic interpretation at a single point in time (Coia & Taylor, 2009). Although this article represents our interpretation at a specific point in time, we have continued to use insights gained from our analyses and reinterpretations when revising and implementing the curriculum with new groups of students each academic year.

Attention to Validity and Quality

We followed the contention of self-study researchers and rejected traditional conceptions of validity and reliability (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 1998). Lincoln and Guba (1986) suggest that instead of validity, studies must focus on the trustworthiness of the researchers' interpretations to determine rigor. Furthermore, Lyons and LaBoskey (2002) argue that trustworthiness is indicated by the degree to which other practitioners and researchers can use the claims made to inform their own practices. We took steps to ensure that the reader will trust our account of this self-examination of our beliefs, values, and experiences to enable its implications to be drawn with confidence. We followed Lincoln and Guba's (1986) criteria for trustworthiness in that we (1) triangulated multiple sources of data, (2) engaged in member checking by continuously discussing and comparing the interpretations of our journals and audio recordings, pushing each other to be more precise and clear in our explanations, and (3) collaborated with a critical friend who assisted us in developing our research design and aided us in our analyses by questioning our interpretations, giving us vital feedback, and offering an outsider's perspective on our findings.

We also attended to many of Bullough and Pinnegar's (2001) guidelines for quality in self-study research. First, in our findings, we intended to illuminate and honestly reveal ourselves as persons. This included talking frankly about our own beliefs, values, and experiences, even those we were reluctant to share with an audience at first. Quality self-study research should also show the reader a pattern in experience (Graham, 1989) and provide a clearer understanding of a particular issue. We intended to show the patterns of our experience in addressing an essential issue for us: learning to develop and implement curriculum that is meaningful both to our students and to us. Finally, we aimed with the greatest fidelity to present the reader with an inside look at our thinking and feeling by sharing intimate beliefs, values, experiences, and emotions that we had not articulated to others before, thereby providing the reader with intimacy and openness (Bullough & Pinnegar, 2001) in this account of our self-study.

The Importance of Narrative

Narrative was an essential tool we used to develop a deep level of intimacy and openness during our self-study process. We engaged in intentional reflective action throughout the self-study process, and we used narratives in order to make meaning of our experiences (Lyons & LaBoskey, 2002). We shared informal narratives with one another in discussion, and then we analyzed these narratives in order to generate knowledge about the process of developing an action research curriculum. These first-order narratives (Carr, 1997) were the stories we told one another about our individual experiences. In addition, we also present here a second-order narrative (Carr, 1997), which is the account we have constructed of our experience developing an action research curriculum together and how we have made sense of this experience. While the findings of our study do not read as a chronological narrative of events, they highlight meaningful aspects of the process and attempt to show the significance of specific ideas in relation to the whole experience (Elliott, 2005). Each highlighted theme addresses a particular research question, and the elements of our narratives are used as evidence to support the theme and to illuminate our beliefs, values, or experiences related to that theme.

Findings

Beliefs and Values Realized in the Development of the Curriculum

Science Teaching and Learning Should be Both Relevant and Empowering

We believe that science teaching and learning should be relevant to teachers' and students' lives. When this is achieved, science education has the ability to become an empowering endeavor for both parties. Megan highlighted the importance of science being connected to students' lives when she described her message to students that “[science] is going to make sense to you. This is going to help you understand everything about you.” Because students selected their own topics and formulated their own research questions in the action research curriculum, this allowed us to emphasize to students the importance of making science meaningful to their own lives. Students connected deeply with their action research projects as they chose to investigate questions related to issues, such as the water quality in their neighborhood, that were deeply connected to their everyday experiences and that could potentially help them address problems in their own lives.

Furthermore, we believe that when science teaching and learning are relevant, it can provide the context for people to take action in their own lives. According to Elizabeth:

Education is something that should empower people. It should be transformative in the sense that it transforms the person. Then if [people] take action and transform others, then they impact more than just themselves. [Science education] should empower you to make your life better, to make your community better, to make the lives of people around you better.

We share this critical belief that the purpose of science education should be to help students empower themselves, therefore aiding in the transformation of individuals, and ultimately, society as well. This belief provided the foundation for the structure of the action research curriculum, which in turn helped us emphasize this belief in our practices. In the curriculum, we encouraged students to take action and make important decisions regarding their projects. Students identified problems they saw in their own lives or communities. They used the tools of science to better understand those problems and to share their knowledge with others. Finally, we encouraged students to develop action plans for the future and to think about how the results they found could be used to improve their own lives and the lives of those in their community.

Good Science Teaching is not an Exact Formula and Consists of More Than Just Telling Students Information

We believe there is not one formulaic way to teach science effectively, and we reject models of teaching that focus solely on the transmission of information from teachers to students. At the beginning of the curriculum design process, Megan articulated her frustration with formulaic models of teaching when she stated:

I dislike people trying to make teaching a science. They're trying to come up with the magic theory or system of how to teach. There, you've got the five things you have to do. Bam, bam, bam [teaching concepts quickly and uniformly]. This doesn't mean that [this one method is] giving you good teaching. Or that it's giving you good [student] learning.

Elizabeth echoed this frustration, saying “that's what turns me off about teaching sometimes. There's not one right way to teach.” Through conversations like this, we began to realize that much of the frustration we had experienced in the classroom prior to our curriculum design – whether it was working with elementary students, secondary students, or teacher candidates – stemmed from the pressure we felt to standardize our practices. Rather than follow an algorithm given to us by other experts, we wished to empower ourselves and take a reflective and responsive approach to our teaching, where we could use the intricate knowledge of our contexts to make decisions regarding instruction. Positioning ourselves as researchers of our own practices through self-study was a significant way for us to establish this reflective stance in our practices and to challenge formulaic notions of good teaching.

In addition, our self-study brought to light the realization that many models of science teaching we had encountered in our own lives overemphasized transmission of information from the teacher to the student. Once we vocalized the implicit pressure we felt from many of our colleagues to teach in a didactic way, we were able to support one another in challenging this view of what others thought effective science teaching and learning should be. In one of our discussions, Megan articulated the active role she felt both students and teachers should play in the classroom, saying:

Science for me is not getting up in front of the room and throwing information at kids. That's not fun. The best part about teaching science is those moments of figuring stuff [science-related ideas] out with kids and helping kids figure stuff out.

Through our collaboration, we acknowledged that teaching and learning should be an enjoyable process for all involved, as teachers and students work together to develop deeper scientific understandings. Wanting to do more than just tell our students what they should know, we solidified our shared belief that good science teaching encourages students to think critically and question the world around them. As Elizabeth stated, students should know:

It's not only okay to ask questions or to question things, but it's good, and it's healthy, and it's productive. [One doesn't] always have to take everything at face value… Sometimes deeper observation, more prolonged observation, and thinking and analysis is really important.

In this conversation, we affirmed the notion that students should not simply accept information offered to them by others, such as their teachers. Instead, we believe that students should question the world around them and examine ideas on a deeper level before deciding how to think and act. We saw science, and particularly our curriculum, as a way to help students build the skills needed to deeply examine issues related to their lives and to engage in more thoughtful observation and analysis so that they might become the experts, rather than relying on the expertise of others.

Through our self-study, we found that our curriculum aligned with our beliefs about effective science teaching and learning. Because students engaged in projects on many different topics, our curriculum did not lend itself to a formulaic or didactic way of teaching. Each group followed a different path and we, as the facilitators, guided groups in unique ways based on their topics, questions, and specific needs. The action research curriculum also required students to be active learners who had more control over the direction of their own learning, which reflected another essential belief we held about science teaching and learning.

Student Control over Their Learning is Essential to their Empowerment

We believe it was incredibly important to give students as much control over their action research projects as possible, rather than directing every step they took in the process. We feel that this shifting of control from teacher to student is a significant way students can empower themselves through learning. Megan described what she wanted to communicate to her students, saying:

I want [students] to know [they] have experiences and thoughts that are valid and useful in answering these questions. [They] may need to know how to seek out other information. But other information isn't always the end-all-be-all. [The] teacher doesn't have all the answers or the adults don't have all the answers. Sometimes [students] can start and find the answers [themselves].

The structure of the action research curriculum reflected this belief in the importance of student control, as it allowed students freedom in choosing a topic, designing questions and data collection techniques, finding ways to analyze and represent their data, and selecting how to communicate it with others. We believe that exercising this freedom is a way for students to see themselves as legitimate experts, rather than passive recipients of information. Despite our strong convictions, though, we found it a significant challenge to shift our practices in a way that embodied this belief in student control and autonomy, but that also helped us and students make the best use of the time spent engaging in the curriculum. We address these challenges in more detail when we discuss new understandings of our own learning and our struggles with releasing control in the classroom.

Understandings of Our Own Learning

Blending the Roles of Teacher and Learner

To design and execute this action research curriculum, we assumed multiple roles as both teachers of science and students of our own practices, while recognizing the importance of taking on these different perspectives simultaneously. Because this type of curriculum was new to us, we took on the role of learners, trying to discover the most effective way to structure and implement the curriculum. We engaged in the type of risk-taking we asked of our students and confronted the imperfections in our own teaching, which both facilitated our growth as practitioners and helped us to break down the power structures inherent in our relationships with students. While it was difficult at first to see ourselves as both teachers and learners, as the process went on, we became more comfortable with simultaneously taking on these roles. Elizabeth expressed this when she said:

I've learned it's okay not to be perfect at something right away, not to be perfect in your practice. Investigate [your teaching] and take a look at it. See how you can make it better. To me, it's a giant relief that I don't have to be perfect at first, and then I can use the skills that I have to really develop my practice and make it better.

By developing this understanding that we can be imperfect learners who constantly work on improving our practices, we were better able to communicate to the students what we expected of them as learners. We attempted to break down the power structures between our students and us by not demanding perfection from them, but rather, the willingness for them to continuously build their scientific knowledge and improve their scientific skills. This realization shifted our thinking away from the idea that our teaching would only be considered successful if students created perfect projects using a neat and orderly process, and it helped us focus on student growth, rather than only on students' weaknesses. For example, when we were reflecting on one group's final project that did not meet our expectations for rigorous work, rather than only discussing aspects that did not match our standards or expectations, we found ourselves also highlighting where students' content knowledge and skills were evident in the project and what growth we had seen in them over time. Accepting the imperfections in our own practices as a part of our growth as teachers helped us accept students' imperfections as part of their growth as science learners.

Relinquishing Control in the Classroom

During the implementation of the curriculum, we relinquished control in directing the activities of students and embraced the idea that we did not have to be the “all-knowing experts” at all times. By developing an action research curriculum, where students had more freedom to make their own choices, we knew that we would not be able to immediately answer every question students asked or direct every aspect of students' learning. Despite our discomfort with not knowing what direction students' projects would take, we recognized the benefits of taking this approach. According to Megan:

When students had a success, it was more meaningful and it was more exciting. When they took initiative and got something done, you knew it wasn't because you spoon-fed that to them or told them to do that. [Students] were actually thinking and applying their knowledge and ideas into their [research] design… We didn't tell them all the things they had to do at every step of the project. I think that made the successes greater.

We both recognized this benefit of student autonomy; we knew whether the students truly understood a concept or not, as they were not simply regurgitating information to us. However, we also recognized that this lack of control on our part sometimes resulted in students going down unproductive paths. For example, several groups selected topics we knew might not be feasible given the time and materials we had, or they posed research questions that did not lend themselves to actionable investigation. However, we did not want to stop these students from pursuing their interests or indicate that their questions were not valuable. In some of these instances, we let groups struggle for days or weeks before we intervened to guide students in modifying their topic or research questions to be more manageable.

In other cases, group dynamics and behavior were issues, as project-related debates and personal conflicts arose on a consistent basis. Reluctant to dictate to groups how to resolve these conflicts or to punish students by breaking up or rearranging groups, we often waited to see if students would be able to work out these issues themselves. At the time, we felt that in order to release control, we had to let students initiate solutions to any problems they encountered throughout the process. What we came to realize is that we could promote student autonomy and still facilitate students in resolving these issues by suggesting several choices for how they could modify their projects or by mediating disagreements between students and providing conflict resolution strategies. Reflecting on our actions during our self-study, we began to realize, as Elizabeth stated, that “letting go of control sometimes helps you understand what the kids know. On the other hand, [the teaching and learning process] might not be clean and polished.” This statement describing our teaching as messy and involving difficult decisions highlights the challenges we faced when implementing an action research curriculum, which involved us acknowledging and embracing the uncertainties, disorganization, and mistakes that arose, among both our students and ourselves, in order to observe evidence of meaningful learning.

Dealing with Vulnerability, Doubt, Insecurity, and Fear

As evidenced by our struggle to balance student autonomy with teacher control when facilitating meaningful science learning, we made decisions throughout the curriculum implementation that were not ideal for our students or ourselves. Showing ourselves as learners by making mistakes alongside our students and relinquishing the role of experts put us in a more vulnerable position with both our students and our colleagues. Despite the growth we accomplished, taking on the role of learners was difficult because we had to acknowledge these mistakes and grapple with our own personal feelings of doubt, insecurity, and fear that came with risk-taking and putting our teaching on display. At the beginning of the process, Megan's audio-reflections were filled with references to her fear. She stated:

This curriculum's design and implementation was centered on the philosophy that all students can learn. I was concerned that if I attempted to implement this curriculum and failed, the belief that under girded my teaching decisions for the past 10 years would be proven false.

We put a concerted effort into ensuring that the curriculum's design reflected our beliefs about the purpose of science education and about all students' ability to be engaged in rigorous and meaningful practices of science. While we had confidence in what the curriculum represented in theory, Megan's statement indicates the fear we were experiencing during the curriculum implementation. We were concerned that if students' action research projects were not successful, that would mean our carefully crafted curriculum was also unsuccessful, which would cause us to question everything we believed regarding effective science teaching and learning.

In addition, during the curriculum implementation, since many students involved administrators, teachers, and parents in their projects, our teaching became more public than it had been before. We realized that these parties were taking notice of our teaching approach and were watching carefully to see the results of our endeavor. The insecurity we felt in our teaching abilities continuously reemerged, as described by Megan:

I was nervous because [the students were doing things like] testing [emissions] on the president of the school's car and… they interviewed him too, so there was some apprehension… [and I was thinking], “Don't make us look bad”. There was a little bit of apprehension and it also opened us up to criticism. I would hear back criticism about [students' work not being rigorous enough]… which was nerve-wracking.

Taking a different pedagogical approach from our colleagues and receiving criticism from them increased our fear of failure and our insecurity with our practices at particular points during the implementation. Since we were not always confident in what the outcomes for students' learning would be, we were not secure with our teaching being scrutinized by our colleagues. Although Megan had a higher level of accountability to the administration, teachers, parents, and students than Elizabeth, the fact that we both felt the pressure to prove ourselves as capable teachers spoke to the depth of our relationship and our commitment to the curriculum development. We were incredibly invested in the process, and so we both took full ownership of the entire implementation, considering ourselves personally accountable for any failure or success that occurred.

While we both felt immense pressure to execute the curriculum successfully, fortunately, the strength of our collaborative relationship, forged through both our work in the classroom and our self-study, helped us deal with our fears and insecurities, and it pushed us to continue to take risks in critically examining our practices. Elizabeth wrote about this as she reflected on the curriculum implementation:

Megan and I have been there to support each other, but also to challenge each other and help one another critically analyze our own practices as teachers… Throughout this process, we have had to be very honest with ourselves and with each other about what has worked in this curriculum implementation, and what has not been successful.

Having the support of one another helped us open ourselves up to criticism – both from outsiders and ourselves – and deal with this challenge of being open and vulnerable. Because of the trust between us, we were able to honestly examine our practices, as well as confront our fears and insecurities. This brought about a new level of awareness of our practices, thus making us stronger, more experienced practitioners.

New Awareness of Developing and Teaching an Action Research Curriculum

Developing an Action Research Curriculum Involved Altering Our Conceptions of What Constitutes Effective Teaching

Our views of what constitutes effective teaching, and particularly effective science teaching, were fundamentally altered and shaped by this experience. Throughout this process, we both struggled with abandoning what we saw as social ideals of exemplary teaching, in order to envision possibilities for new models of science teaching. For Elizabeth, this involved moving from a perception that teaching is neat and orderly to the idea that effective teaching can be messy. According to Elizabeth:

I always used to think of science, and teaching and learning, as very orderly and very organized. You [as the teacher] have to have a specific sequence for how you do everything. When delivering a lesson, I want to ask the perfect question and get the perfect responses and see perfect engagement. The action research with kids conducting their own projects independently changed this… The whole [teaching and learning] process overall was messier.

When Elizabeth was pushed outside of her comfort zone to take on a curriculum with less teacher control, she was able to let some of her perfectionism go so that her beliefs about science learning as an empowering experience for students could be more fully realized. While we both had spoken of this belief in student empowerment with strong conviction, it was difficult for us to fully realize this in our practices. We had to abandon narrow visions of us arranging perfect teaching and learning experiences to make room for the messy process of allowing students to make their own decisions, which did not always take their learning in the direction we anticipated.

Megan also continuously struggled with conceptions of teaching promoted in her school, such as the notion that good teaching means transmitting content and good learning means being a passive receptor of this content knowledge. She stated:

I struggled with the idea of silence [in the classroom]. The idea that silence equals [students'] attention or silence equals learning – I've always known cognitively that's not true, but…it's hard to accept that [idea]. There was also a struggle with me in terms of content. I was not delivering the content. [Information] was not filtered through us to the students. Which was hard too because we have [to administer a standardized] assessment, and [the students] didn't do so well. And I questioned, should I have been more in control of the content? We focused so much on the process [of conducting research], which I know is important, but was I depriving them of some of this [science] content they needed to know?

On one hand, Megan knew that she did not want to be a teacher lecturing to quiet students who passively took in the information she conveyed to them, but she still doubted herself at times, such as when her students' test scores were not high enough. In many of our conversations, we discussed the tension we felt between teaching content and developing students' process skills. While, in theory, we knew that these were not necessarily separate entities that had to be prioritized one over the other, at the same time, we had difficulty reconciling that idea in our practices when we were not teaching uniform content to every student. Students became experts in particular content areas related to their projects, but that was not always evident on the standardized assessments Megan was required to administer. Seeing mediocre students' test results made us continue to question our belief that good science teaching involves more than telling. Although we were confident in vocalizing our beliefs about teaching and learning, it took developing and implementing this curriculum for us to fully realize the struggle of abandoning our previous socially constructed images of teaching. Conducting this self-study pushed us to continuously question our beliefs about what constitutes effective teaching and helped us create new images of what effective teaching can be.

While Developing an Action Research Curriculum Pushed Us Outside of Our Comfort Zones, It Made Us More Fulfilled Personally and Professionally

Developing and implementing an action research curriculum provided a challenge that pushed us outside of our comfort zones of teaching and learning and allowed us to challenge the status quo, both in our schools and in our own practices, resulting in significant personal and professional growth. Because we could see our beliefs and values realized in the enactment of a curriculum, we worked through the frustrations we experienced. For Elizabeth, this, along with the collaborative element of the work, brought her both personal and professional fulfillment. She stated, “Personally, a success [for me was that] in the fall I was sad and depressed about not having my [elementary] students and that same type of relationship. Spending the semester with you and your [students] made me a happier person.” Collaborating on this curriculum development helped Elizabeth deal with her transition out of the elementary classroom and put her in a more solid emotional state of mind. It gave her the opportunity to take on the role of teacher educator, but also to maintain relationships with kindergarten through grade 12 (K-12) students, which was an essential component of her identity as a practitioner.

For Megan, this curriculum development process also rejuvenated her professionally and reignited her passion for teaching. In her words:

[This new curriculum] made me excited to [teach] again. I've always loved teaching science, but I had thought about giving up on it, and this [curriculum] has made me so much more passionate about [science teaching]. It's made me excited to do this again.

When Megan was struggling with her own teaching practice and questioning her future in the classroom, collaborating to develop a new curriculum that aligned with her beliefs and values brought new life to her teaching. While developing and executing an action research curriculum was an unfamiliar and difficult endeavor for us, through this self-study we ultimately gained an awareness of how introducing this challenge into our practices helped us grow as people and as teacher-researchers.

Conclusion

We intend for this self-study to contribute to existing education research, first by complementing and building upon findings from previous studies. As others (Garbett, 2011; Spiteri, 2010) have noted, we found that re-positioning ourselves as learners of our own practices through this self-study helped us build relationships with our students and facilitated our personal and professional growth. During this process, we also became more aware of the power dynamics in our relationships with students (Lee, 2011), as we attempted to shift control and decision-making responsibility to them. While this process caused us considerable discomfort at times (McDonough & Brandenburg, 2012), engaging in this collaborative self-study led us to better understandings of our own beliefs and values in relationship to those of others (Hu & Smith, 2011), particularly when we encountered beliefs and values that conflicted with our own and yet were promoted in our workplaces as ideals of effective teaching and learning. While it took us considerable time to put aside our preexisting and outdated conceptions of teaching and learning and to solidify our new awareness regarding our teaching practices, we acknowledged that the process of personal and professional growth is complex, and therefore not immediate (Margolin & Tabak, 2011). We recognized that the knowledge generated about our practices and the new awareness we gained of ourselves as persons and practitioners would take time to merge with our existing beliefs and values (Hu & Smith, 2011). Nonetheless, we saw how examining our lived experiences, beliefs, and values facilitated this process of both engaging in curriculum development (Berry & Loughran, 2002; You, 2011) and becoming “more fully who we are” (van Manen, 1990, p. 12), as we discovered new dimensions of our personal and professional selves. For example, Elizabeth used self-study as a way to ease her transition when shifting from the role of elementary teacher to teacher educator (Donnell, 2010; Grierson, 2010; Wood & Borg, 2010), and this allowed her to expand her identity to include a vision of herself as an effective teacher leader. Megan used self-study to develop a collegial relationship with Elizabeth (McDonough & Brandenburg, 2012; Tidwell, Wymore, Garza, Estrada, & Smith, 2011), providing support that was previously lacking in her workplace and strengthening her identity as an effective science teacher leader.

In line with tenets of critical theory, Clemans, Berry, and Loughran (2012, p. 298) articulate the need for endeavors that position teacher leaders as knowers who can generate and share knowledge of practice, rather than only as consumers of knowledge generated by others. While our findings align with existing research, using critical theory as our framework also helped us see how the unique context of our relationship as friends, classmates, and teacher-researchers, as well as the unique roles we hold in the university and the high school settings, position us as knowers who can offer a novel perspective on the process of curriculum design and implementation. Our distinctive partnership – between an elementary science teacher educator and a secondary practicing science teacher – also challenges practitioners in a variety of roles and settings to take a broader perspective regarding who might be a beneficial collaborator and co-researcher. In addition to envisioning new possibilities for practitioner partnerships, we intend to provide insights into how those practitioners might engage in collaborative self-study to navigate the challenges encountered in practice in order to experience personal and professional growth. Thus, our study informs the knowledge base of self-study by providing guidance for practitioners on how they might also be knowers who empower themselves to initiate and sustain both collaborative curriculum development and self-study of that process. This work provides a model for how a variety of practitioners, such as teacher educators and K-12 teachers, can position one another as generators and disseminators of knowledge through collaborative self-study to inform their own and others' teaching practices; it does this through our voices as practitioners, emphasizing the importance of locally generated knowledge.

Overall, conducting this self-study influenced us as both teachers and researchers; furthermore, it influenced the way we ask our students to think about and do science. We have continued to learn from this experience as we revise and re-teach the curriculum with new groups of students each academic year. By engaging in this self-study, we gained a greater awareness of our own learning, as well as the confidence to take on challenges that come with being science educators and curriculum developers. Systematically examining and analyzing our teaching through self-study influenced and continues to shape our beliefs, values, and practices as educators.