Self-study as a Means of Understanding ‘Who I Am in How I Teach’

Abstract

The title of this editorial reflects one of the fundamental characteristics of self-study, that is, understanding the person within the professional and how the ‘who’ of the teacher educator is understood and enacted through practice. Understanding self and identity and its relationship with practice is captured in the title of Geert Kelchtermans’s (2009) seminal article, ‘Who I am in how I teach is the message’. Each of the five articles in this issue engages with issues of self and identity, albeit through different perspectives and via different means. The articles offer insights into the challenges experienced by teacher educators in choosing to investigate ‘who they are’ as they seek to establish their identities and (re)define their roles. The first article describes a collaborative self-study examining teacher educators’ understandings of self and practice, employing a novel approach to data collection and analysis. In their article, ‘Letting the Light In: A Collaborative Self-Study of Practicum Mentoring’, Awneet Sivia, Sheryl MacMath and Vandy Britton (Canada) investigate their identities as mentors, teacher educators and colleagues as they introduce a practicum innovation into their teacher education program. In order to honor the diverse and collaborative nature of their data, these authors employed the methodological tool of braiding that enabled them to create a more complex and complete representation of their experiences and insights. The authors propose the use of metaphorical tools such as braiding that can allow for different voices and data sets to be more equitably valued in self-study research. The next two articles continue the theme of examining personal and professional identity growth through collaborative self-study, although each begins from a different place in the life course. In their article, ‘It’s Definitely Something You Have to Work Towards: A First-year Female Faculty Member’s Attempt at Role Management’, Kelsey McEntyre, Victoria Shiver and Kevin Andrew Richards (USA) employed an adaptation perspective on role theory to investigate how Kelsey navigated her work and non-work roles as a new faculty member, wife and first-time mother. Role theory adopts a theatre metaphor to explain how individuals are expected to act based on the roles they play in society. Their study affirmed the importance of feeling comfortable to be vulnerable within a critical friendship, thereby enhancing the self-study process by allowing indepth conversations to occur. Following this article, Amon Glasser (Israel) examined the shaping of his academic identity through drawing on childhood episodes of formal and non-formal learning in his article, ‘Autoethnography of Childhood Memories: Clarifying and Enhancing Auto-Pedagogical Identity’. Together with two critical friends, he sought to understand how his early life episodes have served as shaping influences on his pedagogical beliefs, principles and practices as a teacher educator. Utilising autoethnography as a methodological approach, Glasser identified two main principles guiding his current approach: curiosity to learn and a humanistic approach. STUDYING TEACHER EDUCATION 2022, VOL. 18, NO. 2, 119–120 https://doi.org/10.1080/17425964.2022.2102930