Risks and Opportunities within Self-Study: A Presentation for the S-STEP SIG, American Educational Research Association, 2006

Authors

Margaret A. Macintyre Latta, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Gayle A. Buck, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Teresa Abrahams, The University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Chandra Diaz-DeBose, The University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Sandra Dop, The University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Kathy Fuchser, The University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Joyce Lehn, The University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Colette Mast, The University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Virginia Newton, The University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Judith Ruskamp, The University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Sarah Thomas, The University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Date of this Version

3-21-2006

Comments

Copyright 2006 by the authors.

Abstract

This paper documents a self-study research group from its inception, storying its development and impacts on the curricular lives of 11 participating educators individually and collectively. Drawing on the scholarship of the self-study tradition within educational research (Loughran et al. 2004), we see teacher knowledge as largely untapped and an important source for the improvement of teaching. Positioning participants to look at the sense and selves being made on a continual basis places reflexivity is at the heart of self-study. Our paper reveals multiple ways educators might engage reflexively, considering and reconsidering beliefs about the nature of learners, learning, teachers, and teaching, manifesting philosophies of education to be lived out/theorized within practice. A text emerges that deliberately foregrounds the work of reflexivity, examining the potential of intersections among theory, self-study, and concrete teaching/learning examples, elucidating educator professional development in action.