Self Study in Teaching About Teaching

Abstract

Growing interest in the development of preservice teacher educators' professional knowledge has been accompanied by increasing activity by teacher educators as researchers of their own professional practices. Self-study of teacher education practices has emerged as one important way of understanding this work, helping teacher educators explore questions about how knowledge of teaching about teaching develops, what informs approaches taken to examine and develop such knowledge and how teacher educators' choices affect their students' learning about practice. This chapter addresses the motivations of teacher educators engaged in self study of their own practices and the growth of knowledge of teaching about teaching that has developed through such work. The chapter illustrates how the nature of the knowledge developed by teacher educators about their practice is often rich in complexity and ambiguity link to narrative. Within the problematic world of teaching about teaching, one way of conceptualizing this knowledge is as a series of tensions link to narrative that influence teacher educators' learning about practice developed through self-study.