This paper outlines the outcomes of a two-year project within a teacher education department in a ‘new’ university in England. The project was aimed at increasing understanding of teaching and learning in teacher education, while simultaneously supporting teacher educators in their development as researchers. A self-study framework was adopted for the project as a whole. There was not a strongly established research culture in the department, nor an expectation that all academic staff would engage in research as well as teaching.

Most teacher educators in the department experienced high levels of teaching hours, coupled with supervision of student teachers on practicum. Their situation was thus similar to that of the university departments researched by Murray, Czerniawski and Barber (2011) and also to that of some teacher education departments elsewhere in Europe.  It was also similar to that outlined by Lunenberg, Zwart and Korthagen (2010) in their discussion of establishing a self-study group to support inexperienced teacher educator researchers in the Netherlands. The research objective was therefore to investigate the potential of self-study research as a means of supporting the development of a ‘researcherly disposition’ (Tack and Vanderlinde, 2014), while retaining the focus on practice, which was seen as central to the professional identities’ of the majority of department members.

A different strategic approach was taken compared to that used by Lunenberg et al (2010) which employed a pre-determined framework within which five participants conducted their self-study research.  A much larger group of teacher educators expressed initial interest in participating in the project (20+). Project activities were more fluid, and conducted without such a formal framework, although they formed a regular agenda item at Department meetings.

Self-study has been shown to be a powerful, and transformative research approach, developing and strengthening the professional knowledge of teacher educators and in articulating this distinctive knowledge (Loughran 2007, Lunenberg et al 2010 , Swennen, Volman, and Van Essen,. 2008). It requires ‘intentional and systematic inquiry into one’s own practice’ (Dinkelman, 2003), supported by collaborative discussion with peers in order to re-frame understanding and to validate findings (Samaras & Freece, 2009). However, self-study research is relatively unknown in the UK or wider European research context.  In a similar vein to Lunenberg et al (2010), Murray (2010) argues that forms of self-study research can act as research induction for new teacher educators, enabling them to  “articulate and extend the informal, work-based and often tacit learning taking place through teacher educators’ everyday work” (p.205).  Nevertheless, Murray also warns against the possibility that practitioner research in teacher education may become a ‘research cul de sac’ (Murray, op.cit p. 206), in that practitioner research has not been given status within a culture of research audits and competitive research ‘league tables’.  Consequently, forms of practitioner research, including that of self-study, may limit opportunities for teacher educators to engage in more ‘conventional research discourses and practices’ if their research remains within this paradigm. Whilst this caveat was recognised, within the context of the Departmental project outlined above, the promotion of self-study research was regarded as strategically appropriate in order to promote engagement in research activity and to retain a focus on developing teaching and learning.  

The research questions for the project as a whole focussed on two issues: how far self-study approaches supported teacher educators in developing their identities as researchers, and whether the establishment of a department-wide self-study project had facilitated the development of a collaborative research culture. Implicit within these questions was the focus on teaching and learning in teacher education, which characterises self-study.

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