An Invitation to “Look Again”: An International Literature Review of Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices

• In Event: When Knowing Is Not Enough: Critical Examination of Self-Study of Practice Methodology

Abstract

Purpose: In a sense Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices reflects ‘an international project in progress’. What S-STEP writings purposefully illustrate is teaching about teaching as the development of a particular form of scholarship, hence demanding a particular expertise and sense of self. S-STEP allows for a broader and ‘more valid’ account of teaching about teaching acknowledging its context-specific and idiosyncratic nature.

Theoretical Framework: Based on an extensive literature review, we evaluate self-study practices as they have been developed and reported so far, and critically examine problems, pitfalls, and issues that deserve more explicit attention if S-STEP wants to achieve its genuine contribution to teaching as a discipline.

Methods/data sources: This paper reports on a systematic review of articles in international peer-reviewed journals by means of the ‘Librisource Plus: Education Sciences’ and ‘Google Scholar’ search engines. The search encompassed all articles in journals from ‘Academic Search Premier’, ‘Educational Resources Information Center’, ‘Sage Journals Online’ and ‘Web of Science’ databases that use self-study, S-STEP, or S-STTEP as the (main) descriptor of the publication. This review further included S-STEP’s discipline-specific publication platforms: Castle Conferences proceedings, International Handbook of Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices (Loughran et al., 2004), S-STEP Springer series and Studying Teacher Education: Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices journal. Additionally, tables of contents of relevant journals were systematically screened (i.e. Teaching and Teacher Education, Educational Researcher, and so on). This review extended to contributions published between 1990-2011 since S-STEP gained momentum in the early 1990s.

Findings: First, S-STEP demands specific technical-methodological skills, and a focus on teacher educators studying themselves as learners, both of which are not self-evident. Our analysis identifies a number of methodological (e.g. data analysis, writing qualities) and theoretical (precise understanding and use of concepts and frames to articulate one’s research interest, critically situate it within the larger research conversations, and describe phenomena throughout data analysis and presentation of the research) issues that often need to be taken up more explicitly in S-STEP. Second, and related to the first, our analysis suggests a critical awareness of the broader institutional teacher education system and practices that inform S-STEP. This structural-historical ‘situatedness’ needs to be made explicit in any legitimate understanding of S-STEP methodology. Attempts have been made to distinguish S-STEP from traditional empirical approaches and more ‘naturalistic’ forms of data collection and validity claims are suggested. Nevertheless, many teacher educators, working in non-university-based teacher training programs where a tradition of professional training outweighs a research tradition, culture and expertise, feel they lack the needed knowledge, research skills, and theoretical expertise to properly perform S-STEP. This creates a risk of recycling self-study as an ‘adapted’ form of research for non-college graduates, hence undermining its epistemological, pedagogical, and critical-political potential.

Significance: In providing a framework for looking across S-STEP research studies, we provide an impetus for critically considering questions that deserve explicit attention when assessing S-STEP’s assertions that S-STEP represents rigorous research.

Authors

• Eline Vanassche, University of Leuven

• Geert Kelchtermans, University of Leuven