Self-Study in a Community of Learning Researchers: What Can We Do to Help Teachers/teacher Educators Benefit from Our Research?

Abstract

This article reports on the results of an intensive summer course in which a community of learners, consisting of three teaching and teacher education academics and 17 European PhD students in the field of education, conducted a collective self-study. The international collective self-study offered a unique opportunity to go beyond parochial and local perspectives on the process of research and knowledge creation. The central question in this summer course was: ‘What can we, as researchers, do to help teachers/teacher educators benefit from our research and what can be learned through this research on research?’ The participants first studied relevant literature about the — relatively new — concepts of self-study and a community of learners. Secondly, they studied and discussed their own research projects through the lens of a self-study methodology. The critical study and discussions of both literature and the research projects resulted in a list of 15 guidelines. In addition, the doctoral students experienced and learned that forming a community of learners can be an effective environment for collaborative inquiry learning and that conducting a collective self-study can be an effective way of carrying out research. A Mediterrannean island, a research question and twenty researchers …