Mary Lynn Hamilton

On the Threshold of a New Century Trustworthiness, Integrity, and Self-Study in Teacher Education

Teacher educators are talking about and calling for educational reform from many different perspectives. To augment this discussion, the authors ask a cycle of questions that probe possibilities regarding the knowledge base of teacher education and the importance of a foundation of teacher education, and they consider the possibility of trustworthiness as a cornerstone for that foundation. The authors look to the potential of self-study for developing a pedagogy of teacher education as a way to respond to current and emerging issues within the field.

Fitting the Methodology with the Research: An exploration of narrative, self-study and auto-ethnography

Sharpening our approaches to methodology in self-study research can strengthen our work and clarify questions that arise for readers unfamiliar with this research genre. Our article considers three methodologies – narrative, auto-ethnography and self-study – that privilege self in the research design, believing that addressing self can contribute to our understandings about teaching and teacher education. We address two questions: In what ways, if any, does the methodological choice affect the inquiry of the researchers? When, if ever, might self-study be the best choice for inquiry? For this, we use one selected work to explore the critical elements of these methodologies to determine usefulness. This is not a discussion to determine which approach is better; rather it is a discussion to explore when one method might be privileged over another and why.

The Dialectics of Passion and Theory: Exploring The Relation Between Self-Study and Emotion*

Initially this chapter focuses on three issues that emerge from our reading of the chapters in the Handbook’s second section. These issues include the relationship between the individual and the collective in the process and position of outcomes, the content of the knowledge produced, and the ways to, and the consequences for, that knowledge production. We consider the ways individual and collective aspects of self-study work merge and differentiate, the need for integrity and trustworthiness in this work, and strategies that allow expression in various forms. We explore the ways that professional knowledge relates to the pedagogy of teacher education and assert that understanding this pedagogy supports teacher educators in experiencing the satisfaction necessary to maintain the motivation and commitment they need to do their work. We argue that knowledge content needs to be broad and deep to complement the complexity and richness of teaching. We propose a framework that can be used to formulate, evaluate, and develop work in self-study. To do that we look beyond the technicist reductionism from the perspective of “knowing how to” toward a “being some-one who” perspective. We examine the moral dimension of knowledge that includes vulnerability in teaching, the integrity and trustworthiness necessary to do the work, and suggest the need for a language to address this dimension. We investigate the political dimension because the issues and dilemmas that simply appear to have moral ramifications may hide questions about power and interests. We suggest that we need to look at teacher knowledge more broadly and remember that relationships in educational settings are not without emotional currents and that emotions are a central part of teaching. We Offer ways to bring these dimensions together that will keep the passion in teaching and support the development of professional knowledge.

Exploring the Concept of Dialogue in the Self-Study of Teaching Practices

This papaer examines professional dialogue as a crucial element in r self-study practice and research. Over time our group has consistently employed professional dialogue to critically explore our work. Using electronic communiques, institutional documents, informal interviews, and more we have recorded and analyzed our experiences in academia and beyond. In this work we begin to question Dialogue as either method or methodology. We consider the interweaving: how we talk about practice and how we practice teaching and teacher education individually, collectively, and individually again. We consider the themes of community, cycles, and knowledge building for knowing and using dialogue. Finally we assert that through dialogue, we come to more clearly walk our talk.

The Epistemological Dimensions and Dynamics of Professional Dialogue In Self-Study

In this chapter, we articulate dialogue as a research stance or methodology. We begin by outlining our process in exploring dialogue. We propose that professional dialogue allows researchers to explore ideas, theories, concepts, and practice so that the understandings or assertions for action uncoffered provide a basis for confident action: physical, mental, or explanatory. Once an idea is put forward in this method of inquiry, it is met with reflection, critique, supportive anecdote, or explanation and analysis which interrogates and thus establishes the power of the learning as a basis for meaning making, understanding, or practical action. In a similar way, a situation, context, or experience is met with critique and analysis whereby competing, modified, or deeper supportive response can follow. Even if the dialogue gets passionate at times, it is not argument or disputation. In dialogue, practice, theory, and experience are intertwined. Since the investigation is focused on human interaction, the “findings” or “results” that emerge and the inquiry itself exist in an inconclusive state within a zone of maximal contact in the time frames of past, present, and future. To anchor this definition, we provide an analysis of segments of on-line chats. Next we position our ideas concerning dialogue against other historical and theoretical perspectives. We consider what dialogue is rather than what it should be; explore the use of dialogue for a purpose rather than just to converse, and, finally, articulate the dilemma of reaching consensus or truth in contrast with embracing multiple interpretations. We further support readers’ understanding of what we mean by dialogue as methodology or research stance through the presentation of our past work in terms of our current understanding of dialogue. Finally we re-present our definition of dialogue through an analysis of an audiotaped conversation recorded while writing this chapter. A method for examining professional practice must embrace the inconclusive nature of human interaction and yet allow for findings about which one can have su3cient confidence that action can be taken and that understanding from one situation can be used in analysis of another.

Developing an Understanding of Teacher Education

Teacher education is a field of study that has increasingly come under scrutiny in recent times as the expectations for the teaching workforce and the hopes for advancement in school learning are so often tied to the perceived ‘quality’ of initial teacher education. It could reasonably be argued that such attribution is as a consequence of a particular conception of teaching and learning that ostensibly portrays them as existing in a direct ‘cause and effect’ short-term, immediately measureable, linear relationship. As a consequence, although perhaps not always stated as such, telling as teaching and listening as learning (Loughran JJ, What expert teachers do: Teachers’ professional knowledge of classroom practice. Allen & Unwin/Routledge, Sydney/London, 2010) persist. As a consequence, school teaching and learning is simplistically portrayed as a ‘banking model’ (Freire P, Pedagogy of the oppressed. Herder & Herder, New York, 1972), through which ‘rate of return’ and ‘substantive interest’ are linked to curriculum certainty delivered through transmissive teaching approaches (Barnes D, From communication to curriculum. Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1976) designed to mitigate variability. Not only does such a situation cloud the reality of the nature of schooling but it also leads to confusion about that which is reasonable to expect of pre-service teacher education.

Narrating the tensions of teacher educator researcher in moving story to research

Purpose – This chapter explores the complexity and tensions inherent in the question of how story becomes research with particular attention to the use of narrative research in studying teacher education. Approach – To do this, we begin each section with a narrative fragment from earlier published research in which we collaborated (Hamilton, 1995). Then, we use narrative research analysis tools to explore the meaning of each fragment, lay that understanding alongside research accounts and wonderings about research in and by teacher educators, and consider the fragment in terms of specific understandings of narrative inquiry as research methodology for studying teacher education. Findings – This chapter examines when story moves to research while probing the tensions between knowledge and living as teachers, teacher educators, and teacher educator researchers. Using the first fragment, we explore fulfilling roles as a teacher educator by using a narrative analysis tool that teases apart the authors role of narrator, actor, and character. In the second fragment, we consider the contexts that influence a teacher educator researcher by examining the fragment to determine the levels of narrative. In the third fragment, we utilize the tools of plotlines and tensions to unpack the competing plotlines of epistemology (modernist vs. narrative) ending with an examination of the importance of ontology in narrative work. In our fourth fragment, we unpack nine approaches to narrative by examining the essential role of story for each element of the research process. Research implications – As teacher educator researchers, we always stand in the midst – in the midst of the story where we may be simultaneously narrator, character, and actor, in the midst of living the research we are most interested in studying. Within a single moment, we can act as teacher, teacher educator, and teacher educator researcher when our research focuses on our own practice. Our experience as we live it represents the tension between arrival and arriving. Value – The value of this chapter is the way in which it demonstrates narrative analysis and distinguishes among various approaches to narrative research.

Considering the Role of Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices Research in Transforming Urban Classrooms

We explore the first four articles in this Special Issue of Studying Teacher Education to identify challenges to the self-study of teaching and teacher education practices (S-STEP) methodology, and how this methodology supports the work of teachers and teacher educators working in urban settings. We respond to these articles by identifying strategies and tools that might be used by S-STEP researchers to strengthen the presentation of their work and to explore the challenges to transforming classrooms using this methodology.

Interpretation and Gender Within the Zone of Inconclusivity

In this chapter, we focus on how gender, feminism, and queer theory can influence and inform the Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices (S-STTEP) methodology with particular attention to interpretation. Drawing from previously published work we explore interpretation and analyze the interpretive process within this methodology. This leaves open the contributions of gender, privilege, ethnicity and power and demonstrates how interpretation is an open, on-going process.

Researcher as Teacher: Lessons Modeled by a Well-Remembered Scholar.

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 ones own practice can generate profound insights into ones own teaching, can model good teaching to our students, and can serve as the foundation for research about teaching. One teacher–researcher–scholar, Jeff Northfield, developed a powerful set of insights into the value of exploring personal practice while contributing to our general knowledge of teaching. Within the context of the current paradigm wars concerning “best” research in the reform of teaching and teacher education, this paper demonstrates that the work of researchers like Northfield stands as a valuable exemplar of good research of teaching. The paper also explores critical points from Northfields work that can guide future research into our own teaching.