The topic of teacher educator professional learning has risen to the top of many academic conversations in the past years. The professional learning of teacher educators is a current policy priority in the European Union (European Commission, Education and Training, 2013).  Furthermore, a number of teacher education research agendas have begun to focus attention on teacher educators, as a distinct professional group, as key players in the endeavour to improve the quality of teacher education and, by association, called for the examination of the role of teacher educators’ professional learning and development (Bates, Swennen, & Jones, 2010; Karagiorgis & Nicolaidou, 2013; Loughran, 2006).  These research agendas include, among other things, determining an effective structured preparatory route to a career in teacher education, best pedagogical practice for teacher educators, individual and shared teacher educators’ professional identity, teacher educators’ professional development opportunities, and building a professional development community among teacher educators (MacPhail, 2014).  Karragiorji and Nicolaidou (2013) challenge us to understand teacher educators’ continued learning through the examination of experiences and practices related to professional growth.

Self-study is a form of research that might allow examination of teacher professional learning and development. Tidwell, Fitzgerald, and Heston (2009) suggest that self-study is embedded with the overarching research question – How can I improve my practice? As Tannehill (2014) indicates, engaging in self-study ‘allows teacher educators to focus on their own practice and students’ learning while meeting the research expectations of life as an academic’ (p. 19).  Meaningful self-study allows individuals to address tensions, dilemmas, and practices of interest, providing for the acquisition of knowledge to move forward both programmatically and individually. The learning gained through self-study is intended to be used for genuine educational change as it provides an understanding of from where we have been, leading to an understanding of possible future directions through analysing what has been learned.

This research reports on an ongoing self-study investigation on how, I, one teacher educator learned to traverse my world of work through the development of my knowledge, skills, and abilities. As such it constitutes my first steps as a teacher educator into the realms of self–study in order to contextualise and make sense of my continual journey; reframing and rethinking my pedagogical approaches with the pre-service physical education teachers I currently teach.  Literature calls for teacher educators to 'practice what they preach'; to teach in ways that match with the learning expectations they have for their pre-service teachers. The purpose of the study was to interrogate my intentions in relationship to the student learning within a series of dance pedagogy workshops with 2nd year pre-service teachers in order to better understand the relationship between subject and pedagogical content (Amade-Escot 2005).

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