The Power of "We" for Professional Learning Through Self-Study

• In Event: Polyvocal Professional Learning Through Self-Study Research

Abstract

1.Purposes
Multiple viewpoints must be considered in self-study research processes (Laboskey, 2004). In transdisciplinary self-study, which offers a broader inclusiveness of practitioners inside and outside of teacher education, dialogue between multiple fields of professional expertise and diverse disciplinary backgrounds offers varied perspectives and can result in innovative ways of conceptualising and undertaking research (Harrison, Pithouse-Morgan, Conolly, & Meyiwa, 2012; Samaras et al., 2014b). This paper takes up the challenge of making encounters with diverse ways of seeing and knowing—what can be called polyvocal professional learning—a focal point of written portrayals of self-study research. In particular, it focuses on the polyvocal professional learning of the editors of a book on transdisciplinary self-study research. It demonstrates an evolving understanding of how and why self-study research can bring about the interaction of multiple ways of seeing and knowing as an integral part of professional learning.

2.Perspectives
Polyvocality can simply mean many voices, but it also has connotations of the potential fruitfulness of bringing into dialogue multiple points of view. In understanding what this might mean for professional learning through self-study research, it is helpful to draw on Bakhtin’s (1984) explanation of how polyvocality (which he refers to as polyphony) functions in a novel: “What unfolds . . . is not a multitude of characters and fates in a single objective world, illuminated by a single authorial consciousness; rather a plurality of consciousnesses . . . combine but are not merged” (p. 6).

3.Methods
Two self-study methods were used: a) collective or collaborative self-study –and b) arts-based self-study. Within this methodological framing, the study used reflective dialogue and found poetry as literary arts-based research practices that involve selecting words and phrases from data sources and rearranging them into dialogic and poetic form. The dialogues and poetry make visible the book editors’ interaction with each other as they developed the book proposal and engaged with chapter proposals and drafts submitted by the contributors.

4.Data sources
The key data source is 18 months of almost daily transcontinental email correspondence between the book editors before and during the book process.

5.Results
The dialogues and poetry illuminate how the process of developing the book provoked new insights about the educative potential of polyvocal professional learning though self-study research. These insights highlighted the promise of dialogue, collaboration, and transdisciplinarity in and for professional learning. Polyvocality, dialogue, conversations, and collaboration across continents and disciplines offer professionals a wide range of possibilities for learning from and with each other. Taken together, the dialogues and poetry offer evidence of how the editors grew in their individual understandings because and only because of their interaction with each other and the book contributors as critical friends who are committed to learning with and through others.

6.Significance of the study
This paper suggests the importance of physical and virtual spaces for transdisciplinary dialogue and exchange that can contribute to polyvocal professional learning among self-study researchers.

Authors

• Kathleen Pithouse-Morgan, University of KwaZulu-Natal

• Anastasia P. Samaras, George Mason University