Self-Study as Expanding Our Ways of Knowing

Abstract

A central tenet of self-study is the inclusion of multiple viewpoints or perspectives in order to uncover and examine beliefs, assumptions or taken-for-granted ways of being and knowing. In this way, self-study becomes both personally meaningful and professionally significant leading to reframed understandings of self and practice, and potential new courses of action. Expanding our ways of knowing as self-study researchers also enables us to challenge dominant discourses about education, including addressing issues of equity, social justice and social responsibility (Taylor & Diamond, 2020). The six articles that comprise this issue all examine issues associated with expanding ways of knowing through self-study. This is evident both in the approaches used – three of the articles drawn on arts-based approaches to explore and develop their self-study questions, and the perspectives used – with three articles focusing on examining self through cultural lenses. All the articles focus on developing deeper understandings of social justice issues through examining individual and collective ethical responsibilities. The first article, ‘Our Search for Shutaisei: Self-study of Three University-Based Teacher Educators’ reports the work of an emerging self-study group in Japan comprised of three teacher educators, Masahiro Saito, Yu Osaka and Takumi Watanabe, working at three different Japanese universities (Asahikawa, Shunan and Hiroshima). Their self-study focuses on the uniquely Japanese concept of shutaisei, or shutaiteki na manabi, a complex notion that encompasses aspects such as selfownership, agency, and subjectivity. Conducted as an arts-based coautoethnography, their study explores their individual and collective understandings of shutaisei’s meaning in theory and practice, through the medium of drawings. Their drawings reveal differing perspectives and ways in which the authors tried to both live and prepare preservice teachers to reflect on their theoretical and practical pursuit of shutaisei. Their study outcomes reveal interesting insights in terms of the use of drawings in self-study work and teacher educators’ efforts to understand and cultivate particular attitudes in themselves and their pre-service teachers. In the next article, “Making Justice Fundamental: Teacher Educators’ Journey to Reimagine Accountability”, Rebekah M. Degener and Karen R. Colum (Minnesota State University) describe their journey as teacher educators who sought to “shift justice from ornamental to fundamental” in their methods courses. They drew on self-study methodology to document and then re-imagine grading practices in their methods courses from “perpetuating whiteness to centering justice”. Drawing on principles of liberatory education, they introduced a new grading approach to hold pre-service teachers accountable for their growth toward anti-oppressive dispositions by taking ownership of their learning through the documentation of their learning and self-assessment of their continued progress. Degener and Colum discuss shifts in their pedagogy, practices, and beliefs as a result of their initiatives. They also analyze the tensions of engaging in efforts to adopt STUDYING TEACHER EDUCATION 2023, VOL. 19, NO. 2, 125–127 https://doi.org/10.1080/17425964.2023.2218991