Self-study enabling understanding of the scholarship of teaching and learning: an
exploration of collaboration among teacher educators for special and inclusive
education.
King, FionaORCID: 0000-0001-5749-1435, Logan, AnnaORCID: 0000-0002-1477-4803 and Lohan, Adrian
(2018)
Self-study enabling understanding of the scholarship of teaching and learning: an
exploration of collaboration among teacher educators for special and inclusive
education.
Studying Teacher Education: A journal of self-study of teacher education practices, 15
(2).
pp. 118-138.
ISSN 1742-5964
While teaching is increasingly being accepted as a discipline there is a growing emphasis on teacher
educators researching their own practice to advance the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL)
(Loughran & Russell, 2007). This study sought to explore the extent to which self-study contributes to
teacher educators’ understanding of the SoTL within the discipline of teaching. While self-study is
generally accepted as a scholarly approach (Kitchen, 2015) the aim here is to address the call for selfstudy researchers to evince a commitment to a practice-based and theory-building research agenda by
linking with public theories (Vanassche & Kelchtermans, 2015), in this case the SoTL (Kreber &
Cranton, 2000). Additionally given that self-study is collaborative (Loughran, 2010) findings here
may help to somewhat address the dearth of knowledge about teacher educator collaboration
(Heldens, Bakx & den Brok, 2015). A self-study approach was adopted to explore a journey of two
teacher educators as they designed, implemented and evaluated new modules in special and inclusive
education withinaninitial teacher education programme in the Republic of Ireland. Analysis and
synthesis of data from 24 student teachers and two teacher educators provide insights and
understandings into the collaborative interactions and factors that enabled and hindered these
interactions. This may support other teacher educators develop a collaborative pedagogical culture to
enhance greater understanding of the SoTL We argue for adopting self-study as a scholarly approach
to engage with other theories, such as SoTL, thus contributing to the broader field of teacher education
research.
Item Type:
Article (Published)
Refereed:
Yes
Uncontrolled Keywords:
Scholarship of teaching and learning; collaboration; initial teacher education; special and inclusive education