As a White, middle-class, English-speaking female of the type commonly found in teacher education programs, I have had to learn how to use my perspective to challenge the assumptions of the "typical" student teachers for whom I am a teacher educator. This self-study describes how I have been transformed by this learning process. Studying my…

This paper describes a self-study of two collaborations. The first collaboration focused on an attempt to study the teaching of social justice issues to pre-service student teachers. The second collaboration was an attempt to understand why the first collaboration was only partially successful. The study charts the process of collaboration over…

In this paper we examine the nature of our self-study practices in an elementary teacher education cohort called CITE (Community and Inquiry in Teacher Education). We argue that self-study is not only important to our continued work in CITE but also a critical feature of professional practice in general. Two general questions frame our analysis:…

This paper begins with a description of my work in a Canadian school of education, where I now realize that I was well insulated from the US context, where many are highly critical of teacher education. My recent move to Stanford University immediately immersed me in the highly controversial practices being imposed on schools and schools of…

In this self-study we examine our collaborative practice across two undergraduate early childhood education methods courses. Framed by our larger question of how teachers and teacher educators do school, we drew on multiple data sources to investigate how we were modeling teaching, listening, and learning to and with these students in our science…

This study examines how student teachers in a 2-year graduate program used inquiry to examine the day-to-day issues that arose in their student teaching placements. Through systematic questioning, collection of data and controlled experimenting with solutions, student teachers learned to apply the technical and theoretical knowledge they were…

While teacher educators may encourage their students to reflect deeply on their teaching, the teachers of teachers rarely seem to examine their own teaching practices. Yet a study of one's own practice can generate profound insights into one's own teaching, can model good teaching to our students, and can serve as the foundation for research about…

The growth in the field of self-study of teacher education practices has largely been based on teacher educators' desire to better understand teaching and learning about teaching. This paper reviews research over the last decade that has been important in shaping understandings of self-study and the issues, concerns and agendas that are emerging…

The notion of critical friendship is central to self-study. A critical friend acts as a sounding board, asks challenging questions, supports reframing of events, and joins in the professional learning experience. In this paper, we share our experiences of acting as critical friends for each other in two separate self-studies of practice. We…

An apparently simple self-study that consisted of a longitudinal review of Grade 12 students' self-reflections from the past five years triggered a personally profound struggle about past classroom practices and surfaced a host of assumptions about teaching and learning. This research challenged the author to enact personal and professional values…

There is little research that investigates the relationship between mothering and teaching. Even less has been revealed about teaching and the mothering experience of women who are also teachers. Here we examine how the learning gained from teaching is highlighted and clarified by studying stories of mothering. By examining stories of motherhood,…