The Nature of Teaching and Learning in Self-Study*

Abstract

Understanding the relationship between teaching and learning is essential to an appreciation of self-study as a field of inquiry in its own right. The individual research trajectories in the fields of teaching and learning, particularly in recent years, illustrate sufficient common ground to support the contention that enhanced teaching practice is dependent upon teachers problematising the ways and contexts in which they learn and make sense of that practice. While this shift, and its current recognition within the academy, is cause for celebration, we suggest that teachers' problematising their practice is not a new phenomenon. Indeed, we argue that Schwab was only party correct when he characterised teaching as having four commonplaces. We contended that self-study is, and always has been, the fifth commonplace and, as such, it is the cornerstone of professional practice. Without a self-study teaching becomes repetitive not reflective - merely the duplication of models and strategies learned elsewhere and brought to bear unproblematically in one's own classroom. Tracing the interconnectedness between teaching, learning, and a self-study is instructive for appreciating how inquiry is construed, defined, and enacted within the profession.