This article examines the issue of strengthening self-study research in teacher education by consciously situating individual studies within coherent research programs on particular substantive issues. Although acknowledging the positive professional development impact of self-study on teacher educators, this article calls for more closely connecting the self-studies of teacher educators to the mainstream of teacher education research so that the voices of practicing teacher educators are incorporated into syntheses of research on particular aspects of teacher education. The article rejects the dualism of research either contributing to greater theoretical understanding or to the improvement of practice and argues that self-study research should attempt to work on both goals simultaneously. (Contains 12 notes.)