Professional Development Risks and Opportunities Embodied within Self-Study

Abstract

This paper documents a self-study research group's development and its effects on 11 participants. Drawing on the scholarship of the self-study tradition within educational research, we see teacher knowledge as an important and largely untapped source for the improvement of teaching. Positioning participants to look at the sense and selves being made on a continual basis is the task embraced by this self-study group. The paper reveals professional development risks and opportunities confronted by educators through vulnerably, accountably, integrally, and mindfully negotiating teaching-learning lives. The findings suggest that our bodies are the reflexive ground of comprehension, confronting vulnerability, seeking accountability to self, negotiating theory as working notions, and experiencing the pull of teaching-learning possibilities. Thus the role of embodiment within teaching-learning practices is elucidated through educator professional development in action.