Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices as a Pedagogy for Teacher Educator Professional Development

• In Event: 70.042 - International Teacher Education: Promising Pedagogies

Abstract

We present Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices (S-STEP) as a research methodology that can be used pedagogically to explore the practices of teacher educators' professional development. It can be seen as a pedagogic practice that enlists reflection to enable teacher educators to explore and explicate practice and make explicit what they know about teaching and teacher education in order to improve practice and contribute to larger conversations in research on teaching and teacher education. After providing a succinct interpretation of the origins of S-STEP work we suggest that historical context along with understanding of the theoretical underpinnings make it viable as a research methodology and a potentially valuable pedagogy for teacher education research. S-STEP is an intimate research methodology (Hamilton, 1995) in which the person conducting the research is both the focus and the author of the research and provides an insider’s perspective into practice and experience. Indeed, S-STEP research methodology has several characteristics that position it well to be simultaneously a form of professional development and we describe them in some detail. A study of teacher educators’ practices comprises an unlimited and evolving basis for developing knowledge about teacher education and teaching. While guiding a teacher educator or teacher to become a better practitioner is a helpful promising aspect of S-STEP as pedagogy for professional development, the research record constructed also has the potential to contribute to our understanding of teacher education and inform and improve the practice of other teacher educators. We will provide examples to demonstrate how we and others take up S-STEP as pedagogy for teacher educator professional development that allows us to grapple with what we know either explicitly or tacitly from and about our practice. In taking up S-STEP as pedagogy for professional development, teacher educators identify various kinds and spaces of practice that might be studied. As a community S-STEP work has dual purpose – it leads us to develop and improve our understandings and our practice and contribute knowledge that might never have been uncovered to the conversation of research on teaching. From its beginning,
S-STEP methodology has been shaped and molded across countries, cultures, and contexts. Currently researchers in many countries use S-STEP methodology to face the challenge of collaboration among university scholars and teacher educators who have participated more in practice than research. International S-STEP research has the power to inform the professional development of teacher educators across these boundaries, because it attends carefully to the particular of the practice and context from which it emerged.

Authors

• Mary Lynn Hamilton, The University of Kansas

• Stefinee E. Pinnegar, Brigham Young University