Looking across and within: studying ourselves as teacher educators

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to describe the ongoing self-study of a community of physical education teacher educators (PETE) striving to enhance their research capacity and program effectiveness. The underpinnings of the project reside within professional development/professional learning and self-study. Engaging in self-study projects ‘allows teacher educators to focus on their own practice and students’ learning while meeting the research expectations of life as an academic’ [Tannehill, D. (2014). My journey to become a teacher educator. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, 19. doi: 10.1080/17408989.2014.898745]. While often beginning with individuals looking at their own work, self-study does not need to confine itself to individuals and can involve collaboration among varying numbers across a variety of participants [Loughran, J. J., & Russell, T. (Eds.). (2002). Improving teacher education practices through self-study. London: Routledge Farmer]. This paper reflects one PETE program's attempts to examine the early findings of our programmatic self-study research into the development of a PETE learning community. It describes our initial findings reported through three themes reflecting our self-study work and experiences: dialogue, memory, and becoming, which link directly to Ovens and Fletcher's [Ovens, A., & Fletcher, T. (Eds.). (2014). Self-study in teacher education: Exploring the interplay of practice and scholarship. London: Springer] self-study characteristics of community, stance, and desire. While still a work-in-progress, this project has allowed our group to address tensions, dilemmas, and practices of interest, providing for the acquisition of knowledge to move forward both programmatically and individually. Our intent in sharing this work is to provide a platform for discussion as to the potential programmatic use of self-study to enhance PETE programs and the research capacities of PETE.