Knowing, Becoming, Doing As Teacher Educators : Identity, Intimate Scholarship, Inquiry 9781784411404

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KNOWING, BECOMING, DOING AS TEACHER EDUCATORS: IDENTITY, INTIMATE SCHOLARSHIP, INQUIRY

ADVANCES IN RESEARCH ON TEACHING Series Editor: Volumes 1 11: Jere Brophy Volumes 12 26: Stefinee Pinnegar Recent Volumes: Volume 15:

Adolescent Boys’ Literate Identity

Volume 16:

Narrative Inquirers in the Midst of Meaning-Making: Interpretive Acts of Teacher Educators

Volume 17:

Warrior Women: Remaking Post-Secondary Places through Relational Narrative Inquiry

Volume 18:

Emotion and School: Understanding How the Hidden Curriculum Influences Relationships, Leadership, Teaching, and Learning

Volume 19:

From Teacher Thinking to Teachers and Teaching: The Evolution of a Research Community

Volume 20:

Innovations in Science Teacher Education in the Asia Pacific

Volume 21:

Research on Preparing Preservice Teachers to Work Effectively with Emergent Bilinguals

Volume 22A:

International Teacher Education: Promising Pedagogies (Part A)

Volume 22B:

International Teacher Education: Promising Pedagogies (Part B)

Volume 22C:

International Teacher Education: Promising Pedagogies (Part C)

Volume 23:

Narrative Conceptions of Knowledge: Towards Understanding Teacher Attrition

Volume 24:

Research on Preparing Inservice Teachers to Work Effectively with Emergent Bilinguals

Volume 25:

Exploring Pedagogies for Diverse Learners Online

ADVANCES IN RESEARCH ON TEACHING VOLUME 26

KNOWING, BECOMING, DOING AS TEACHER EDUCATORS: IDENTITY, INTIMATE SCHOLARSHIP, INQUIRY BY

MARY LYNN HAMILTON Department of Curriculum and Teaching, University of Kansas, KS, USA

STEFINEE PINNEGAR Department of Educational Inquiry, Measurement, & Evaluation, Brigham Young University, UT, USA

United Kingdom North America India Malaysia China

Japan

Emerald Group Publishing Limited Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK First edition 2015 Copyright r 2015 Emerald Group Publishing Limited Reprints and permissions service Contact: [email protected] No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters’ suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-78441-140-4 ISSN: 1479-3687 (Series)

ISOQAR certified Management System, awarded to Emerald for adherence to Environmental standard ISO 14001:2004. Certificate Number 1985 ISO 14001

CONTENTS PREFACE

ix

INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK

xxiii

SECTION I: IDENTITY SECTION OVERVIEW

IDENTITY

CHAPTER 1 DEFINITIONS OF IDENTITY

3 5

CHAPTER 2 NAMING-AND-BEING-NAMED

23

CHAPTER 3 PATHWAYS AND EXPERIENCE

37

CHAPTER 4 KNOWLEDGE AS A TEACHER EDUCATOR

57

CHAPTER 5 IDENTITY CONCLUSION

67

DISRUPTION BETWEEN IDENTITY AND INTIMATE SCHOLARSHIP

69

COMMENTS: DISRUPTION WHAT’S IN A NAME? EXPLORING THE EDGES OF AUTOETHNOGRAPHY, NARRATIVE AND SELF-STUDY OF TEACHER EDUCATION PRACTICE METHODOLOGIES

71

SECTION II: INTIMATE SCHOLARSHIP SECTION OVERVIEW

INTIMATE SCHOLARSHIP

CHAPTER 6 THE VALUE OF THE PARTICULAR v

107 111

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CHAPTER 7 VULNERABILITY

121

CHAPTER 8 OPENNESS

129

CHAPTER 9 DIALOGUE AS A TOOL FOR KNOWING

143

CHAPTER 10 ORIENTED TOWARD THE ONTOLOGICAL

159

CHAPTER 11 INTIMATE SCHOLARSHIP CONCLUSION

185

DISRUPTION BETWEEN INTIMATE SCHOLARSHIP AND INQUIRY

193

COMMENTS: DISRUPTION SCRUTINIZING TRUSTWORTHINESS IN SELF-STUDY OF TEACHER EDUCATION PRACTICES RESEARCH

197

SECTION III: INQUIRY SECTION OVERVIEW

INQUIRY

247

CHAPTER 12 KNOWING THROUGH INQUIRY INTO EXPERIENCE

251

CHAPTER 13 DESIGNING INQUIRY

261

CHAPTER 14 ATTENDING TO THE PROCESS OF INQUIRY IN INTIMATE SCHOLARSHIP

271

CHAPTER 15 TRUSTWORTHINESS, COHERENCE, RIGOR

281

CHAPTER 16 INQUIRY CONCLUSION

297

DISRUPTION BETWEEN INQUIRY, CONCLUSION, AND INTERNATIONAL CONNECTIONS

301

Contents

vii

COMMENTS: DISRUPTION FORMING, FRAMING, AND LINKING IN DEVELOPING RESEARCH QUESTIONS

303

FINAL SUMMARY

319

DISCUSSION OF INTERNATIONAL CONNECTIONS

337

REFERENCES

347

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

371

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PREFACE

A DELEUZIAN JOURNEY

The two of us wrote Anti-Oedipus together. Since each of us was several, there was already quite a crowd. Here we have made use of everything that came within range, what was closest as well as farthest away. We have assigned clever pseudonyms to prevent recognition. Why have we kept our own names? Out of habit, purely out of habit. To make ourselves unrecognizable in turn. To render imperceptible, not ourselves, but what makes us act, feel, and think. Also because it’s nice to talk like everybody else, to say the sun rises, when everybody knows it’s only a manner of speaking. To reach, not the point where one no longer says I, but the point where it is no longer of any importance whether one says I. We are no longer ourselves. Each will know his own. We have been aided, inspired, multiplied. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 3)

Although the text cited above 1000 Plateaus was not our first reading to encounter with Deleuze and Guattari, we found our imaginations ignited by these words and knew we needed to think alongside these philosophers to consider the words we know and have yet to discover. Theses scholars articulate and have helped us articulate challenges to the ways we and others see the world around them. Over the course of his lifetime, Deleuze authored far more than 50 texts (some translated into many languages), many as a single author(e.g. Deleuze, 1988, 1991, 1997), some with colleagues like Guattari (e.g. Deleuze and Guattari, 1983, 1987, 1994). A well-respected philosopher, who Foucault saw as a leading thinker of his day and who Derrida (1995) saw as leaving, “a profound mark on the philosophy of this century, the mark that will remain his own, incomparable” (p. 2). Deleuze sought to challenge and to awaken us to (what might be considered) the fictions we set in place that bind rather than open ways for us to consider our world. He often took different positions from one text to the next in the hope (we think) that his readers would come alongside or resist his ideas. Although certain concepts might carry through, there is little to suggest that Deleuze could be captured with one book or another. Rather he seems determined to confound our thinking with one text suggesting we look in one direction and in another text pointing us elsewhere. ix

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The two major texts written with Guattari are the texts most often cited Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus. Both texts offer new vocabulary and new ideas with most terms and concepts recognized by various authors (e.g., Buchanan, 2008; Colebrook, 2002, 2006, 2010; Colman, 2005, 2010; Khalfa, 2003; Parr, 2010a, 2010b, 2010c; Roffe 2010a, 2010b; Williams, 2010a, 2010b, 2010c) as the most provocative and/or important. In fact, at least one dictionary exists (Parr, 2010a) that attempts to define the Deleuzian concepts most often used. In fact, one of our first observations came in our noticing that when scholars address Deleuzian ideas or texts or concepts, they talk about them in laudatory terms like the most influential, the most important, and so on. If we are to judge from these comments, the Deleuzian compendium provides the best and most thought-provoking ideas of its kind in the 20th or any other century. Other texts provide glossaries or some definitional accounts to support readers. From our reading we recognize that scholars express Deleuzian concepts with a variety of depth and breadth. To assist in the clarity of the Deleuzian influence on our thinking, we select concepts to situate ourselves upon our map of destiny and locate our de-centered selves and the zone of inconclusivity along the Deleuzian plane. We begin with a look at possible definitions of these concepts through our understanding of Deleuze and the Deleuzian scholars who have wrestled with his work for years and address why these issues fit so well with the ideas we promote in our text. If you seek answers and certainty on a steady ground, stop reading here. Alternatively, if you seek to disrupt, entangle, and travel along shifting ground, please continue. Rather than undertake the futile endeavor of depicting our understandings of the entirety of the Deleuzian catalogue of ideas with superficial brushes against ideas he would/would not link together, we highlight those aspects of the Deleuzian perspective that seem to us as most relevant to our text. We find that in educational research many times only the Deleuze and Guattari text Anti-Oedipus (1983) or 1000 Plateaus (1987) is cited although sometimes both are included. While intriguing and important texts, using them as the only source(s) limits our understandings and in some respects misses the point on developing and understanding these ideas as defined by Deleuze, Deleuze and Guattari and those authors recognized as Deleuzian scholars. Throughout our work (Stefinee and ML) together we have been interested in the concept of “becoming” as teacher educators. We recognize the ongoing and developmental nature of this work that is always opening rather than reaching some attainable stasis or finished product. Rather, we live with this uncertainty and recognize that states of development are

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neither finite nor limiting. This principle of uncertainty exists on the terrain (Hamilton & Clandinin, 2011) of teacher education where questions, ideas, findings, and implications that may seem steady and easily understood in one context, can transmute quickly in another: the same, yet different. We came to the works of Deleuze and Deleuze and Guattari via Sarup’s (1993) introductory text on postmodern and post-structural ideas. When we read his introduction to their ideas stating that there, “is not separation between the personal and the social, the individual and the collective (p. 93),” we knew we wanted to read more. Although we could not detail why this seemed important to us, we felt a resonance with ideas found in this introduction. Intrigued, we took our time reading and recognizing the ways our thinking fit well with the ideas addressed by Deleuze and his writing partner, Guattari. In many ways, we have been looking for Gilles Deleuze all of our academic lives. Although we have thought our own thoughts about research on thinking and teaching and more, his vocabulary (with and without Guattari) and his ability to bring ideas together when challenging the ideas we hold dear unsettled us in ways that deepened our thinking. His ideas are comical, deep, and true (for us). Over his writing life (alone or with writing partner Guattari), he attempted to bedevil thinkers with his vocabulary from so many vantages including science, art, and sociology. He bedeviled us as he added, subtracted, infused, erupted, and enthralled our thinking. We read indictments of his/their works and ideas along with those scholars who have grounded their new ideas on their works. While Deleuze offers no assent or acknowledgment, we find encouragement in his works and in the works of others to think outside the imposed boxes, provoked by the blind adoption of science and imposed theories of understanding.

STANDPOINTS To follow a small pathway on our map using the openings and invitations of Deleuze, we want to examine again the understandings we have about aspects of teaching, teacher education, identity, and inquiry. We hope to disrupt and entangle the ways we have seen teaching and research defined and to think again, to see if we might bring fluidity to ways of thinking about these issues to bring possibility to teacher educators and to renew education. Before we turn to our discussion of Deleuze, we want to acknowledge our standpoints, the ways we look at the world around us. We have worked together as a collaboratory for more than 25 years; some of that time has

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been as Arizona Group members but most recently (perhaps 10 years) we have worked in collaboration. Raised up in the academy as qualitative researchers (although Stefinee also has a strong quantitative background) we brought a critical, questioning stance to our work as researchers in teacher education. Most notably we observed that scholars in the academy dismissed the research that could inform teacher education and teaching. Early into our work we could see the need to question the tacit assumptions about research, teaching, and knowledge about teaching and teacher education. What/who was valued and what/who advanced ideas that raised questions for us. We knew then (as we continue to know now) that a focus on the particular reveals much in the study of teaching and teacher education. We also questioned the ways that the use of certain methodologies distanced educational researchers from the teachers with whom they worked and we noticed that a level of disrespect seemed to exist that questioned the knowledge that teachers had/used in their teaching. We could see that we valued the process and experience more than claims to know and took an ontological stance toward our research before that became a popular turn. We also recognized that we had a constructivist eye for our work tinted by our ideals of justice. To honor teachers and explore critical moments of teaching, we began to study our own practice (with inspiration from others) with attention to ways that knowledge and teaching and students intersected pathways. From this standpoint, we look across our map to see entanglements, disconnects, and more as we attempt to create openings in the understandings of practice and the ways we might talk about educational issues that (we hope) make a difference. We must note that Deleuze talks about the, “indignity of speaking for others” (Deleuze, 1995, p. 87) and warns against making universal statements. With respect for and attention to these points in this text, we address our own understandings of the works and words of Deleuze and utilize citations to connect our ideas to his words and/or the perspectives offered in the views of scholars who study these works. In the next few pages we present our perspectives on Deleuze’s concepts and how we thread these ideas into our text and why.

OUR PERCEPTIONS OF THE DELEUZIAN WORLD Deleuze is a philosopher who takes seriously his task of challenging the system/s around him. He came onto the writing/thinking landscape after World War II poking and prodding and ideas and ideals held sacred when

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scientists seemed to live under the leftover illusion of moral and ethical rightness and surety. He never seemed to waver only to develop and expand as a thinker from the 1960s when he met Guattari, into the 1980s with the two seminal texts written with Guattari until his too-early passing. While Foucault noted joke or not that the 20th century would be called the Deleuzian age, it seems like he might have been too hasty as, at least in education, the Deleuzo-Guattarian tools to foster deeper thinking and questioning have not reached the writings of many educational researchers beyond an occasional mention. Of course, there are those who have taken up and taken on these issues wholeheartedly (Semetsky, 2003, 2005, 2008; St. Pierre, 2000), most often in methodological writings (Leach & Boler, 1998; St. Pierre, 2013; Jackson & Mazzei, 2012) but we can see that some distance along the map of destiny must be traveled before their ideas reach commonplace.

SITUATING OUR UNDERSTANDINGS IN THE PRESENT MOMENT In each present moment Deleuze questions the view of history (and life?) as linear, suggesting that events occur and then coexist in that present (Davies et al., 2013, p. 682). Does this raise an eyebrow for you as you read it? Good. We think that Deleuze wants to push our thinking beyond those solidified notions of what is, has been, and will be. From our own work we see that ideas of the present moment fit with our own discussions of the “now” when we address Stern’s work (2004) as well as Bakhtin’s (1981) zone of inconclusivity where nothing is fixed. Another perspective with which we resonate is the assertion that we are always in the midst or in the middle of BECOMING. Along with these philosophers we see and have written elsewhere (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009) about the BECOMING of teacher educators and teachers never closing, always opening the space between ideas and practices that we study. Deleuze and Guattari (1987) suggest that in BECOMING we reach a plateau of many plateaus that is, “always in the middle, not at the beginning or the end” (p. 21). In contrast with the liveliness and fluidity of BECOMING, Deleuze sees identity as a fixed state and points out that habitual thinking can thwart creative thinking. With attention to disrupting our habits related to identity, he sees BECOMING as, “critical, for if the primacy of identity is what

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defines a world of re-presentation (presenting the same world once again), then BECOMING (by which Deleuze means ‘becoming different’) defines a world of presentation anew” (Stagoll, 2010a, p. 26). Too often, in our present moments we trap ourselves in our habitual notions. Challenging that tradition, Deleuze sees our BECOMING as a transforming, changing assemblage of forces (of many kinds) that we engage to interact in our world (Livesey, 2010). For them “being” is flat and muddy and a habit (St. Pierre, 2004). We suggest that you return to the quote at the beginning of this section and read again the last line regarding “I.” About this BECOMING-to-know process Deleuze and Guattari write: You are longitude and latitude, a set of speeds and slownesses between unformed particles, a set of nonsubjectified affects. You have the individuality of a day, a season, a year, a life … or at least you can have it, you can reach it … It should not be thought that a haecceity consists simply of a de´cor or a backdrop that situates subjects … It is the entire assemblage in its individuated aggregate that is a haecceity. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 262)

In BECOMING Deleuze and Guattari see not individuals as much as they see our individuating and our individuality as related to events (St. Pierre, 2004). Deleuze (1990) writes that: individuation beyond those of things, persons, or subjects: the individuation … of a time of day, of a region, a climate, a river or a wind, of an event. And maybe it’s a mistake to believe in the existence of things, persons, or subjects. (p. 26)

Here, again, he takes a dramatic stand to (potentially) deepen our thinking or at least to de-center it. He goes on to say that the title A Thousand Plateaus, “refers to … individuations that don’t individuate persons or things” (Deleuze, 1990, p. 26). Needless to say, Deleuze demands that we interrogate our ordinary habits of saying “I.” In Deleuzian terms, “‘I’ is not an expressive subject, only a linguistic marker indicating what body is addressed by the whispered imperative immanent to that particular position within that particular state of things” (Massumi, 1992, p. 33). Too many times it seems that “we continue to produce ourselves as a subject on the basis of old modes which do not correspond to our problems” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 88). Deleuze and Guattari invite readers to rethink the “I,” implicitly reminding us that there may be endings but they are unpredictable and not always happy. We are reminded that Butler (2002) also contests and troubles the “I” and the ways this term is and can be understood as does Barad (2007) who recognized the important of difference and breaking away from habitual thinking that miss the intra-actions with the materials world

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around them. Pushing further into expressing and addressing the “I,” Deleuze writes: More generally, every field of forces refers back to a potential energy, every opposition refers to a deeper ‘disparateness’, and oppositions are resolved in time and extensity only to the extent that the disparates have first invented their order of communication in depth and rediscovered that dimension in which they envelop one another, tracing hardly recognisable intensive paths through the ulterior world of qualified extensity. (Deleuze, 1994, p. 236)

To challenge us, we see that Deleuze and Guattari warn us that we can acquire habits at levels of our consciousness and that these habits can go unchallenged (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; Phillipe, 2003). They seem to suggest that our thoughts and our examination of assemblages are always in motion. To that end they describe BECOMING as standing in the midst of ideas, senses, emotions, things as we shape our thinking and transform our world. Khalfa (2003) reiterates as he states, “identity is not about individuality but the process of individuation and in the process of becoming, ‘subjectivity can be understood differently than a traditional notion of a self’” (Semetsky, 2003). It seems that Deleuze sees tension between BEING and BECOMING and locates it in, “the western tradition’s predominant and unjustifiable focus upon being and identity” (Stagoll, 2010a, p. 25). He de-centers the focus on individuals like academics, “who are burdened by the citational chains through which they are recognized and made recognizable” (Davies et al., 2013, p. 683), and turns toward ways where difference emerges. At this in-the-midst moment or an in-between place he seems to see vulnerability. In his writings Deleuze attempts to push readers to and from tensions that may inspire creative thoughtfulness about difference and how they come to understand that. He broadens versions of self beyond the singular. In fact, Deleuze seems to suggest that we are singular and plural, forever evolving, BECOMING: single and same voice for the whole thousand-voiced multiple, a single and same ocean for all the drops, a single clamor of Being for all beings: on condition that each being, each drop and each voice has reached the state of excess - in other words, the difference which displaces and disguises them and, in turning upon its mobile cusp, causes them to return. (Deleuze, 1995)

And in this return we look again at this world we thought we knew. In the text Difference and Repetition (1994) Deleuze focuses away from sameness, toward difference, noting that creative ideas come from repetition and the ways that repetition pushes us (potentially) toward new ideas. Deleuze privileges difference and moves from a view of BEING to

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BECOMING (Davies et al., 2013). Davies et al. (2013) note that Deleuze’s move from, “difference as categorical difference, to difference as emergent, continuous difference” (p. 681) affords readers the opportunity to explore issues newly. While we find many definitions for assemblage one of those concepts identified by many as critical to the Deleuzian ontology we think that a complexity of “objects, bodies, expressions, qualities, and territories” (Livesey, 2010, p. 18) that can be arranged, organized, connected, and disconnected with various intensity at different times will suffice for our work in this text. Colebrook (2002) defines assemblage in this way: All life is a process of connection and interaction. Any body or thing is the outcome of a process of connections. A human body is an assemblage of genetic material, ideas, powers of acting and a relation to other bodies. (2002, p. xx)

Livesey (2010) finds that, “Assemblages emerge from the arranging of heterogeneous elements into a productive … entity that can be diagrammed, at least temporarily, and often as the ability to provide an agencing quality” (p. 18). The cartographer looks at the relations between particular sets of forces and creates a diagram or map. According to Deleuze, it can be seen as a “map of destiny” (Deleuze, 1988, p. 36) that codes the function of the assemblages known by the cartographer producing a new reality “by making numerous, often unexpected, connections …” (Deleuze, 1988, p. 35). Wonders that when we decide in advance on the focus of thought, “how else to proceed except by alternatives which implicitly prejudge the final choice?” (p. 37). For her it seems that this could be “the ancient story of the binding and subordination of difference to identity. As soon as there is initial identity, difference cannot long be conceived as a ‘disparate’ multiplicity, as a free proliferation. Now a framework closes it in, rules over it, totalizes it, so that it can only define itself negatively” (p. 37). We could think of it as a diagram, “the map of relations between forces, a map of destiny, of intensity … (Deleuze, 1988, p. 37) that offers a code for the way it operates.” An assemblage can produce a new reality through various and sometimes unexpected connections (Livesey, 2010) and through its multiplicity it “is shaped by and acts on a wide range” (p. 18, underlining added) of possibilities. Against individuating we can place multiplicity. We can see from Deleuze’s writings that he favors multiplicity rather than identity. Identity can be viewed as a static view of something that captures it in the “right” (unchanging) terms. Colebrook (2002) suggests that at “its simplest, a

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multiplicity is a collection or connection of parts” (p. xxvi). Multiplicity can be seen as a complexity of ideas or things related to (in some way) but not singular expressions of a singular concept or entity (Roffe, 2010a, p. 181). Importantly, a multiplicity has no one identity or definition. Stagoll (2010c) points to the multiplicity of “I” and notes that Deleuze finds that the “I” only ever refers to contingent effects of interactions between events, responses, memory functions, social forces, chance happenings, belief systems, economic conditions, and so on that together make up a life. Colebrook (2002) points out that there are “no fixed centers or particular order so much as a multiplicity of expanding and overlapping connections …” (p. xix). Assemblage and rhizome address connections and the always-in-motion possibility of BECOMING. Rhizome describes the connections with objects, places and people (Coleman, 2010). For Carter (2014), rhizomes are usually thought of as root systems that grow in multiple directions but that eventually interconnect and strengthen a plant. Deleuze and Guattari (1987) use rhizome to theorize research that is non-hierarchical and that uses multiple entry and exit points to represent and interpret data. (p. 36)

When we think of rhizomes we think of tubers and the art of Jeanne Van Heeswijk, particularly the installation called Works, Typologies and Capacities (1993 2012). We see the multi-colored, multi-shaped tubers connected by wire or thread or string as a representation of her art and its influence. Deleuze, along with Guattari, encourage no universal understandings. In fact, they suggest that if you know the answers in advance (Sarup, 1993, p. 93), you can already predict the outcome. From their perspective, they suggest attending to experience and experiment (Deleuze, 1995). From our perspective, consideration of these ideas suggests that the “right” view and the re-presentation of the view do not support BECOMING~teacher or BECOMING~human or just generally BECOMING. Williams (2010b) points out that, “the commitment to identity in representation furthers an illusion that leads us to repress processes of becoming at work in our own existence” (p. 127). Deleuze attempts to open up ideas about our world, not close them and sees notions related to our understanding of who we are as fluid (Leach & Boler, 1998). Leach and Boler (1998) suggest that practicing for Deleuze involves opening multiple lines of exploration for our own work as well as for our students. Naming the multiple at work in education is put in motion by engaging rhizomatic practices whose effects and outcomes may be (one hopes) far beyond our control. (p. 162)

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Complimenting this perspective, Martin and Kamberelis (2013) point out that the ontology of BECOMING enables (even urges) us to see things differently in terms of what might become rather than as they currently are. It is characterized by its ability to engage productively with real movements of social change that open up new forms of life both for individuals and for collectives …. (p. 670)

In their writings Deleuze and Guattari develop vocabulary to “emphasize how things connect rather than how they ‘are’, and tendencies that could evolve in creative mutations rather than a ‘reality’ that is an inversion of the past” (Lorraine, 2010a, p. 147). Lines of flight would be among the vocabulary and offers a lovely sense of opening, seeking, exploring as we navigate our way around and through multiplicities, assemblages, and plateaus. Lines of flights are those ideas or connections or emotions usually unexpected that can, but not always or usually, change our course in thought and/or action. It could be a cough at a silent service or something much more dramatic. As for interpretations, Deleuze and Guattari describe them as traces of already established patterns of meaning; and offer maps as a way to pursue connections or lines of flight not readily through the dominant reality. Deleuze and Guattari wrote their book as such a map, hoping to elicit further maps, rather than interpretations, from their readers. (Lorraine, 2010a, p. 148)

And on their maps new directions may emerge along lines of flight (Deleuze, 1995; Semetsky, 2004). We see that this offers openings in the ways we perceive our world with no closures or cut-offs. On our map we may reach a dead-end but the ability to turn around and consider our direction remains available. In education and teaching we see that some researchers want identities and correct strategies as a way to improve education. On the Deleuzian map, we can see that taking that road brings us to dead-end in a cave where the avalanche has blocked our movement. St. Pierre (2013) asserts that “Each Deleuzo-Guattarian concept brings with it their entire system of thought, a very different order of things, and a vibrant and seductive ontology” (p. 653). Still, Deleuze and Guattari nudge us at every turn to fold their work into our work to propel our thinking. Their worlds are connected with our worlds are connected to other worlds with veils of ideas that come together or do not. As we walk through our present moments we are encouraged to think of possibilities and avoid the binaries that exist and thwart our creativity. As St. Pierre (2013, p. 655) cautions, “we have our work cut out for us as we try to set aside a system

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of thought, an order of things, that is so powerful we can slip back into it with a single, telltale word.”

CHALLENGE TO SCIENCE We also find that Deleuzo-Guattarian views of science and research relate with our own assemblage as those views establish “connections between certain multiplicities drawn” from “semiotic flows, material flows, and social flows simultaneously (independently of any recapitulation that may be made of it in a scientific or theoretical corpus)” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, pp. 22 23). When we read their assertion: There is no longer a tripartite division between a field of reality (the world) and a field of representation (the book) and a field of subjectivity (the author). Rather, an assemblage establishes connections between certain multiplicities drawn from each of these orders, so that a book has no sequel nor the world as its object nor one or several authors as its subject. In short, we think that one cannot write sufficiently in the name of an outside. The outside has no image, no signification, no subjectivity. The book as assemblage with the outside, against the book as image of the world. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, pp. 22 23)

St. Pierre (2013) asserts that if we accept the Deleuzian notion of the past existing in our present and that repetition can bring about deeper understanding and the encouragement to generate new ideas, we find the Deleuzian challenges to science as welcome and inspiring (p. 648). If we stand in our present moment looking forward and back we see a turn toward science as a way to validate certain points of view. St. Pierre (2013) notes that in the 1980s, “to resist so-called value-free scientific knowledge and make public the knowledge and everyday lived experiences of the oppressed, the silenced, and the lost and forgotten in the service of social justice” (p. 648) brought tensions among those with a look toward particular lives and those with positivist attentions and distance. These struggles came on the tails of the War-to-end-all-Wars that saw the extent to which knowledge and science could save/shatter our world (St. Pierre, 2013). We are not surprised when we read Deleuze’s comparison of education to business: In disciplinary societies you were always starting all over again (as you went from school to barracks, from barracks to factory), while in control societies you never finish anything … school is replaced by continuing education and exams by continuous assessment. It’s the surest way of turning education into a business. (Deleuze, 1995, p. 179)

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While we hope for something different, teachers, teacher educators, and others seem trapped in the habits of how education has always been (St. Pierre, 2004). We can look to see “what it means to talk of institutions breaking down: the widespread progressive introduction of a new system of domination” (p. 182) and resonate with the Deleuzian talk about the choke hold that governmental bodies have on the standards for and funding of educational research (St. Pierre, 2013). We believe we offer a counterpoint to the grand narrative that many educational researchers hold dear. It is our intention to disrupt perceptions of culture, self, and ways to contemplate education and educational practice. More important than recognizing that teacher education may mean different undertakings in different areas of the world is the acknowledgment that sometimes we limit ourselves with tacit acceptance rather than exploring infinite possibilities. Deleuze seems to recommend that we disrupt our thinking and established understandings to reveal differences that exist in the present moment of our lived world. As Stagoll (2010b) notes, awareness “of such specific circumstances means that the notion of some ‘thing in general’ can be set aside in favor of one’s experience of this thing, here and now” (p. 76). Doing this “enables the reading of the signs, symbols and symptoms that lay down the dynamical structure of experience” (Semetsky, 2010, p. 93). Among educational researchers focused on teacher knowledge, identity is a frequent topic. We wonder about the professional identity, the development of that identity, and how we might foster that identity. Deleuze challenges that understanding of identity where you look for sameness rather than difference. This is not an “I feel differently today than yesterday,” it is an exploration of nuance and how the repetition of who you are today requires that you begin again to discover your BECOMING, “to affirm the power of the new and the unforeseeable” (Parr, 2010c, p. 225). For Deleuze, identity is reductive and is, perhaps, the strongest example of BEING where an idea is held in stasis and re-presented without critical examination (Williams, 2010a, p. 127). A well-defined identity leaves little space to consider difference. If we think about this notion in relation to the current trends in teaching and teacher education globally, we see that we have become mired in the identity of ideas and strategies without careful, critical examination. (We develop the discussion of these points in more detail in Hamilton, Pinnegar, & Davey (in press).) As described by Leach and Boler (1998), Deleuze reiterates the lack of distinction between individual and collective and reminds us that “an engagement of concept, percept and effect characterized by energies

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vibrating and resonating along nomadic itineraries … cause those who travel to become other than themselves. How different this is from sedentariness with its rules of identity, resemblance of the self-identical form …” (1998, p. 156). For us these ideas connect to the ideas of world traveling suggested by Lugones (1987) where we travel across cultures and ideas to connect. It seems that at the crossroads we might find ways to inquire that seem less about decisions and more about opportunities to trace through “hardly recognizable intensive paths” (Deleuze, 1994, p. 236). Deleuze sees no simple problems and encourages readers to find problems (Deleuze, 1990, p. 15) in a way that “disrupts life and thinking, producing movements and responses” (Colebrook, 2002, xxxiv). Approaching our lives in this way leaves us questioning and exploring the world around us. When reading his work, Greene (2013) recommends that we deliberately not de-couple and separate ideas but entangle them. As we explore these ideas we see it as an attempt to find proper glasses or, perhaps, seek new eyeballs. To understand Deleuze we must move beyond the literal. Defining his terms can be limiting if you capture yourself in the definition. Deleuze has so much to offer current thinkers in education. We recognize that our understandings of Deleuze and Deleuze and Guattari are BECOMING deeper and that in any present moment a line of flight could take us to a different multiplicity as we develop our assemblages of teacher education, for identity, of inquiry and more. We think carefully when we see Colebrook’s (2002) reminder that more than any other thinker of this time, Deleuze’s work is not so much a series of self-contained arguments as it is the formation of a whole new way of thinking and writing … For this reason there is an almost circular quality to Deleuze’s work: once you understand one term you can understand them all; but you also seem to need to understand all the terms to even begin to understand one. (pp. xiv xviii)

Within this text you see our attempts to grapple with issues that we think contribute to understandings of teaching and teacher education.

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INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK TEACHER EDUCATION As we take up an examination of becoming teacher educators and how identity and inquiry represent and shape this process, we recognize that we are writing in a time when teacher education, teacher educators, and teachers are under almost constant critique not only in the media but also in the grocery store. Often the recommendations for what “ought to be done” are actually descriptions not of what should be but what already exists in the teacher education programs we are engaged in and the teaching practices that teachers practice (Darling-Hammond, 2006; DarlingHammond & Bransford, 2005). In thinking of the received wisdom about teaching and teacher education, we are reminded of an old aphorism that seems to underlie much of what others believe and seemingly have always believed about teacher education and teaching: Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach, and those who can’t teach, teach teachers. (G. B. Shaw, 1946)

The great irony is that deep skepticism and disrespect for teachers and teacher educators co-exist and persist in a time when across the world there is an expressed need to support and educate good teachers. Indeed one of the themes of concern in research across the globe is attention to teacher recruitment and retention (UNESCO, 2006) and the need to attend to the quality of teacher education and teacher educators. Most countries decry the drain of teaching talent from teaching in the United States over 25% of the teachers hired leave teaching in the first five years (Ravitch, 2010; UNESCO, 2006, 2010, for more information). Yet, the public’s focus is not on how can we provide the kind of support economically, emotionally, and intellectually that would enable teachers to remain in the chosen profession and teacher education to empower them. Instead, the focus is on creating a pressure vice of criticism and testing (or Surveillance in the Foucauldian sense). In the United States, everyone from the policy wonk to the woman waiting to catch the bus has an answer to the teaching-teacher education problem. But even when the advice comes from well-respected, educated policy makers, the answers and recommendations usually argue for xxiii

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the creation of teacher education programs that appear remarkably similar to those already in existence. Moreover, these policy makers assert the need for teachers to engage in pedagogical practices that most teachers we work with already demonstrate and most teacher education programs routinely teach. We also note that in the face of the demand for stronger teacher education and more quality teachers, politicians push for alternative routes to teacher licensure that remove teacher education from the equation and for the creation of more charter schools where sometimes teaching practices are less sophisticated and more old-fashioned. In these settings, teachers are not required to educate those who need the most support and best prepared teachers students with disabilities, struggling readers, and second language learners (Ravitch, 2010). In the face of this maelstrom and ongoing commitment to re-reform, we take up considerations of what it means for those in the process of being and becoming teacher educators. We begin by arguing that teacher education is an international concern, and it is neither uniform nor unidimensional across countries and continents. Because teacher education is at its heart a relational, human endeavor and because of the fundamental obligation is to the students of the teachers being educated, it is also context bound. While across countries the fundamental task is the same (to prepare teachers in knowledge of and skills for teaching and to orient them to take up the needed dispositions to be strong teachers), what is needed within individual contexts, the requirements for citizenry in different countries, and the cultural practices of teaching will always be particular. We are reminded of Bullough’s (1997) assertion that who teachers are as teachers emerges from who they are as people. As Clandinin’s (1985) work demonstrates, the embodied knowledge that teachers utilize to make and enact their classroom curriculum is based in the personal and practical (Connelly & Clandinin, 1988). It grows as teachers rely on what they have learned in the past and is shaped by the learning experiences they have in the present. In this way, the demands and concerns of teacher education may share themes across countries, but the way in which teacher education is constructed must respond to both the contextual needs of a country or culture and the individual experience and understanding of the person becoming a teacher. A recent edited volume edited by Craig and Orland-Barak (2014) have engaged educators from across the world (Canada, Chile, China, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Iran, Israel, Japan, Korea, Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and the United States) to identify what they consider the most promising pedagogies

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of teacher education within their institutional context. The chapters in the book indicate not just the range of promising pedagogies but the similarities and difference in terms of the response of the pedagogy to the context in which it is developed. What becomes fairly clear is that while we may name practices similarly with labels like “teacher research,” “reflection”, “mentoring” (for example), what these activities look like across contexts and countries may differ greatly. This is so because, the instantiation of these practices is shaped by the situation, setting and politics of countries and communities in which the pedagogy is developed and implemented. We argue in this text that this is the variation that contextual difference brings about. This variation enables the research community to see the nuances and even stark differences and this feature opens space for teacher educators to imagine how their own programs and practices might be organized differently. Before we articulate and examine the processes involved in the ongoing process of becoming a teacher educator, we begin with an exploration of teacher education since being a teacher educator means that we participate in teacher education. Teacher education attends to what humans need to learn, do, and believe to become teachers along with the structure, practices, policies, organizations, institutions, philosophical orientations, and commitments involved in preparing individuals to take up the obligations, duties, and responsibilities necessary to both act and be certified as a teacher. A hidden and not well-understood fact of teacher education is that it involves a more complex enterprise than calls for reform, specify. Teacher education usually crosses multiple institutional boundaries across universities, between public schools and universities and across programs and departments within a single college of education. Hoban (2005) edited a volume from the perspective of examining teacher education utilizing a systems approach. In the series of chapters each taken up from a different standpoint within the whole, Hoban’s volume makes visible the complex interactions and interdependencies involved in education a teacher. What makes the volume of further interest is that chapters are written by authors who represent not only different institutional contexts but also perspectives from different countries. The different participants and aspects of the system and the different potential standpoints within it explored by the chapters makes visible the complex interaction and relationships of systems in the preparation of teachers. When reformers speak of teacher education, they are usually targeting only one program or one aspect of the whole and lay the blame for perceived failure on colleges of education or departments of teacher education. Without attention to the nuances and complexities of teacher preparation as an enterprise, it is easy

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to present simple, straightforward one-dimensional answers (see Ball & Forzani, 2009; Bullough, 2014).

INTERNATIONAL TEACHER EDUCATION ENTITIES THAT PROVIDE TEACHER EDUCATION In North America, Schools and Colleges of Education usually offer more than one teacher preparation program. Just as often teacher preparation programs may be located in departments across the university. Teacher educators focused on secondary teacher education may be located in departments and colleges representing arts and letters, biological and physical sciences, business, physical education. Those educating early childhood teachers might reside in psychology departments. Colleges of education may house elementary education programs and they may be located singularly as an elementary education program or in a department of teacher education that administers elementary, secondary, and early childhood education. Students in elementary education are educated to teach multiple content areas along with basic numeracy and literacy skills to children from ages 5 to 12. Early childhood education programs can be independent or a shared endeavor with the colleges of social science and they focus on teaching candidates to work with children in preschool (3 or 4 year olds) through grade 2 or 3 (8 9 year olds). Secondary education programs reach across departments within the university; however, most of the responsibilities for the education component can be located either in the college of education or in the department that offers certification in a particular content area. Depending on the discipline the program may focus on preparing teachers to work in a particular content area (e.g., English, Math, or Chemistry) or multiple content areas (e.g., social studies or life sciences) to teach students in 7th through 12th grade or it can focus on teaching children in a particular content area (such as music or P.E.) across all grades. The university may also provide teacher certification programs in areas less familiar to the public such as technology, wood and metal work, home economics, and construction management. Additionally, universities may provide teacher education in conjunction with the business college since secondary teachers can be prepared to teach accounting, secretarial skills, business management and entrepreneurship. Finally, Colleges of Education may offer preparation in Special Education which is usually located in its own

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department. Further, teacher preparation at an institution may exist simultaneously as undergraduate and graduate programs. Students graduate from these programs with bachelor’s or master’s degrees and usually with certification. In addition, there are many alternative routes to teacher education where students with completed degrees intern in schools and simultaneously take coursework that prepares them to teach. State, province, or potentially national levels of offices of education sometimes deliver this coursework, sometimes by the independent entity sponsoring the program, through school district personnel offices, or in conjunction with a local higher education institution. Everyone involved in this work may or may not label themselves teacher educators but all are part of the education of particular teachers in particular places. This is the terrain of teacher education in North America; in other countries, the variability is expanded since each country determines who will be responsible for educating teachers in that country. Teachers may be educated in institutions designed exclusively to educate teachers. Teacher education may be the purview of schools rather than universities with a heavy apprenticeship orientation. Each country and often even each program within a country will orchestrate the programs differently. Each complexity of how teacher education is orchestrated offers ways to understand teacher education, work as a teacher educator, and varying contributions to becoming a teacher and teacher educator. Several years ago in the United States, critics raised concerns about the content coursework of preservice teachers arguing that preservice teachers were not adequately prepared to teach their content since they often took few courses in the content areas. In reality, while elementary teachers who must teach all elementary content take courses across an array of departments, secondary teachers usually complete the degree requirements in the major of the field they are preparing to teach in as well as methods courses for teaching that content along with additional pedagogy and methods courses. In fact, research has demonstrated that in the United States teachers in the various disciplines score as well on exit tests and have similar grades to those who major in the various departments (Darling-Hammond, 2000). Thus, the pathway from student to teacher is always a matter of institutional complexity and collaboration and at most universities almost every college on campus will have some involvement with the education of teachers. All of this becomes evident when we consider the complexity of the preparation of teachers in just one area elementary education at least in North America. The preparation of elementary teachers is almost always

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located within Colleges or Schools of Education. The content preparation of these teachers involves content courses in the areas the elementary teachers’ teach: social studies, English, the earth sciences, and mathematics. They also learn how to use technological tools, like cell phones, iPads/ tablets and the software they can use for record keeping pedagogically and managerially and how to teach their own students to use these tools. They are taught about child development, cultural differences, learning differences and disability. They learn how children acquire language and develop as readers and the skills, strategies, practices and methods they will use to teach children to read, to develop mathematically, to understand science and social studies. They learn to differentiate instruction since regular education, special education, English learners, and talented and gifted students will sit side by side in their classrooms. Elementary majors learn how to plan a lesson, a day, a semester, and a year. They learn about the use of state core standards and curriculum standards to guide their lessons. They learn about assessment how to use commercial and standardized assessments, how to engage in informal ongoing assessment, and how to track students learning and report it to the child, the parents, and other teachers. They learn about how to collaborate. Through field placements, they learn how to transfer and combine the various things they have learned so that they can enact the role of teacher in a competent way. This means that teacher preparation programs must negotiate across institutions and departments so that the students they prepare can have the quality learning experiences they need to be good teachers. In the United States, each state sets out standards or guidelines for licensure, requirements for student teaching, and required assessment. Individual Colleges of Education translate requirements into coursework (e.g., Utah State Office of Education: http://www.schools. utah.gov/cert/; Kansas State Office of Education: http://www.ksde.org/ Agency/DivisionofLearningServices/TeacherLicensureandAccreditation.aspx; Michigan: http://www.michigan.gov/mde/0,4615,7-140-5683_14795—,00. html; Florida: http://www.fldoe.org/teaching/certification/index.stml; Washington: http://www.k12.wa.us/certification/). What our description of the types of certification and programs available, the involvement of colleges and departments across an entire university campus, and the involvement of multiple institutions indicate is that teacher education because of its complexity and far reaching goals become an easy target for simplistic criticism when the consideration of it and the role of teacher educators require attention to nuance and tensions. In our discussion, we include consideration of the following tensions:

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• Is preparation to teach education or training? • Does teacher education end when teachers leave higher education programs certified as a teacher or does it involve life-long learning? • Is teacher development and learning primarily the responsibility of universities or the schools where teachers teach? Is there an optimum balance of university coursework and teaching practice? • Is the orientation toward the moral or the ethical?

TEACHER EDUCATION

TEACHER/TRAINING

Often teacher education and teacher training are used interchangeably without attention to underlying differences in the meaning and the orientation implicit in the labels. If our orientation is toward training teachers rather than educating them, then it means implicitly that as teacher educators we believe we can articulate and specify the exact knowledge that preservice teachers need to learn developing inclusive descriptors and specific clearly observable behaviors that can be used to reliably distinguish the quality of the performance. At the most extreme, teacher preparation defined as exclusively teacher training is conceived of as a task of delivering codified knowledge and specific practices. From this standpoint, teaching is conceptualized as a set of practices that are either context independent or that the variety of contexts and conditions where particular practices will be used can be specified and the person can be trained through demonstration, modeling, and repetition to execute the practice perfectly across settings and contexts to bring about the desired results. Further, from this perspective enacting the preferred practices in the appropriate way will inevitably lead to achievement of the desired results. Within this orientation the knowledge, skills, and behaviors of teaching that teachers may enact are agreed upon and knowable (Ball & Forzani, 2009). From this perspective, teacher educators specify explicitly and completely all that a person needs to know to be a teacher. The job of the teacher educator proceeds in a straightforward fashion. Those preparing to teach can be given codified propositional knowledge that can be committed to memory and assessed on standardized tests. The skills and behaviors that teachers need to take up can be clearly described in such a way that a trained observer can easily and accurately rate teachers’ performances and their progress in their acquisition and display of the preferred practices and behaviors. From a training orientation, teacher

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preparation programs would be highly similar. The courses to be taken, the content learned in the courses, and the skills to be demonstrated would be uniform across context with little need for variability from program to program. When teacher preparation is conceptualized from the perspective of education, teacher educators recognize that what is required of a teacher and needed for teaching children can seldom, if ever be specified. The act of teaching and learning-to-teach are messy processes where good teachers act in the present moment drawing on their teaching plans, their accumulated understandings of place and context, their skills to respond to the learning needs of the children they teach. Teacher preparation situated in this orientation attends to the practical knowledge teacher candidates bring, the philosophical perspectives they hold toward teaching and learning, the knowledge in terms of facts and skills they need to demonstrate and understand along with the experiences needed for their personal practical knowledge of teaching to grow and develop. Such an orientation demands not only that teachers learn facts and skills to demonstrate behaviors of teaching but that their preparation positions them to learn as a teacher developing further skill, knowledge, attitudes, and behavior in response to their experiences as a teacher. Teacher education in contrast to teacher training positions teachers to learn from their practice and adjust and adapt their teaching often inventing new practices or assembling old practices in new ways to meet the evolving needs of students they teach, not just to sharpen practices.

A MOMENT IN TIME

A CONTINUUM

Tensions around what constitutes teacher education center, at least in part, around whether teacher educators prepare teachers to enter their classrooms as beginners or continue to support them as they develop across their teaching careers. In the United States, all students students learning English as a second language, students with identified gifts, students with diverse backgrounds, students with different abilities, and so on must be educated together in classrooms. Orchestrating instruction that educates these students to minimal standards and enables them to maximize their talents is not an easy task. When we design teacher education to meet the challenge of teaching in today’s classrooms, our beliefs and understandings about how we fit into their education and in teaching make a difference. If

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we, as teacher educators, conclude our obligation to teacher preparation upon completion of their preservice work, ending our opportunity to educate and support them in learning as teachers, this influences the design and content of the teacher preparation programs we provide. Instead, if we believe that we need to prepare them to be competent beginners and that we will have future and ongoing opportunities to support them in learningto-teach, we make different decisions about the knowledge level and standards beginning teachers must meet. In most US contexts, while teacher educators may work with teachers as we supervise student teachers or when they return to work alongside us in other roles, for the most part, as much as we would wish differently we are not included in many of the aspects of teacher education we might like to be like as induction and ongoing professional development. Consequently, teacher educators may feel pressed to include everything we can in teacher education coursework initial plus long term preparation somehow hoping that we prepared our preservice students to take up and remember ways of thinking and strategies, we insisted on including regardless of whether they learned what we taught in the long term teaching. The way in which the education of teachers beyond initial preparation is conducted in other countries varies. In some cases, there may be little professional development and in others the program for developing teachers as teachers may be well orchestrated. A variety of sources (UNESCO, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2013; UNESCO Associated Schools, 2013 for example) argues that teacher education is a continuum from preservice to induction to professional development, but practical experience belies that claim. This results in ongoing tensions among teacher educators about what to include and what, in good moral conscience, we can set aside in our initial preparation programs.

UNIVERSITY-PUBLIC SCHOOLS In teacher education, strains exist in the relationship between universities and public schools since each have a vested interest in teacher preparation. Across the world and across individual countries that has what kind of power over which portions of teacher preparation programs vary and different patterns of engagement with public schools exist. However, both entities participate in some way in the education of teachers even if their engagement and interaction is minimal.

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One of the most likely connections and interactions between the two institutions usually involve practice teaching often labeled student teaching. However, it is not absolutely true that every teacher preparation program across all countries has a practice teaching component that is enacted in a classroom of students who are the grade or age level in which the teacher candidate is preparing to teach. In some situations, all of teacher preparation occurs at the university and those who want to be teachers leave the university and take up teaching without an apprenticeship directed or supervised by the college of education or university. In some countries and in particular programs (such as the various programs in New Zealand, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom based on the US-based Teach for America program or other kinds of apprenticeship structures) more teacher preparation may occur in schools than at the university. School personnel may take up a role beyond teacher supervision to provide coursework needed to complete licensure. Some schools and school districts have positioned themselves as providers of teacher education. In Alternative Route to Licensure programs of various kinds, teacher candidates complete degrees at a university and provide a third party in concert with teachers providing teacher preparation acting as the teacher-of-record within a school setting. As a result, how much these two institutions must interact, negotiate, and collaborate varies. Most generally, in the United States while individual colleges or schools of education may consult with public schools and teachers for advice concerning their programs, colleges, and schools of education usually determine the courses taught, along with the scope and sequence and their desired interaction with public schools (determined by guidelines, requirements, and standards specified by state offices of education). The relationships and tensions that exist, rather than the teacher educators’ interests, may determine the quality, kind, and opportunity for practical teaching experience that preservice teachers can expect. In the same way, the negotiation of these tensions has implications for whether teacher educators experience teacher education as a continuum that exists across the careers of teachers or as a single opportunity that occurs at the beginning of teachers’ careers with a few teachers returning for individual classes or pursuit of advanced degrees. While, for the most part, schools depend on colleges of education to prepare teachers, this is not always true and as a result college of education may have some bargaining power. Another way that schools of education can have bargaining power is when public schools’ educational programs depend on preservice teachers to enact valued programs. Wherever teacher educators seek to have

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students engage in field experiences or practice teaching, teacher educators are always at the mercy of the schools. As demands for testing and accountability for students’ learning escalates, teachers and schools become less and less willing to host practicum students and student teachers. Without good relationships, opportunity to provide real world experience in schools becomes very limited. Therefore, usually colleges of education cater to the interests of the schools. Adjustments in practicum schedules, the time and organization of teaching practice may become less than optimal when this relationship is disrupted. Colleges of education cannot always control the quality of this relationship. When preservice teachers articulate what they think is important in their preparation program, experience in practice settings is always rated as essential. Yet, their behavior in these placement experiences can impact the relationship that exists between the two entities. Preservice teachers are not always cognizant that their opportunity to be in any classroom setting exists as a result of the good will of the public schools and their commitment to the education of future teachers. As a result, preservice teachers may be vocally critical of teachers, sometimes interceding and encouraging students to assert rights, or they may simply be reticent to engage in practice settings. The tensions between these two entities are also played out at the personal level. Teacher educators may publicly criticize the teaching practice of the teachers who observe or supervise their students (Bullough & Draper, 2004). They may ask students to observe teacher behaviors and invite them to critique their actions in the classroom. Often when preservice teachers enter the schools, teachers may state something like, “Forget what you learned at the university; we will show you how to teach.” When preservice teachers share theoretical understandings with teachers, teachers may dismiss those understandings and theories as “ivory tower” thinking and assert there is no need for these beginning teachers to remember or apply any of that stuff. While these tensions can be productive when both parties respect the knowledge and skills of the Other, it remains a tension that teacher educators and teacher education programs must negotiate.

COURSEWORK/FIELD EXPERIENCES One tension related to the relationship between the university and public schools or other potential practice settings is more a teacher education

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curricular issue. It has to do with how the two are distributed in relationship to each other. When and what kind of practice experiences will be provided to students and how and what kind of coursework will constitute the program in relationship to the practice experiences. In some programs, future teachers begin by volunteering in classrooms before they can be admitted to the program, other programs offer early field experiences. In some programs particularly smaller ones preservice teachers spend significant and continuous time in school settings perhaps in situations where college of education faculty actually teach their courses on-site. In other programs, preservice teachers finish their coursework and then engage in a practice teaching assignment. The tension in the relationship between colleges of education and public schools may constrain or shape the relationship between coursework and field experiences and their arrangement within the curriculum. Investigations into the use of virtual practice experiences and other uses of technology have introduced new tensions. Research in teacher education and teacher development has never determined the optimum interaction between field experiences and teacher education coursework. There is no research-based prescription for which courses should come first in teacher education followed by which field experiences. Research does not dictate whether, for those preparing to teach in secondary, content courses, teacher education coursework, and field placements should be interspersed in particular ways to maximize preparation to teach in particular content areas or at particular grade levels. Currently, accrediting agencies in the United States (see http://www.teac. org/news-events/caep/) argue that preservice teachers must have a minimum of 200 hours of practicum experience for them to optimize their potential success as a teacher but examination of what is optimal in terms of the distribution of field experience and it interrelationship with coursework has yet to be determined.

MORAL/ETHICAL Ongoing tensions between concerns with the moral and ethical dimensions of practice shape teacher education practices. Teacher education is fundamentally about human interaction and therefore at its base is moral and must concern itself with moral judgment, principles, and decisions. Everything we teach our students holds the potential to guide them to make a meaningful difference for their own students and every interaction with

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have with preservice teachers has the potential to make a meaningful difference to the development of the teacher as well. The tension between the moral and the ethical then is played out in the curriculum and structure of teacher education programs particularly how well we educate our teachers to meet both their moral and ethical obligations to their own students. The tension between the moral and ethical resonates in relationship to the tension around whether teacher education occurs at only one moment in time or whether it is a continuum. When teacher education occurs at only one moment in time (preservice teacher education), there may not be opportunity to have ongoing thick relationships with our students in which we continue to support them in meeting the moral and ethical obligations they have for their students. There is a potential emptiness we feel as teacher educators when the teachers we prepare move forward and the obligations we have to them and the potential to support further development ends. There is also tension related to the moral and ethical around the relationships we have with our students and the relationships we have with the colleagues we work with in the public schools. Because the moral and ethical tensions in teacher education involve personal relationships between teacher educator and preservice teachers, public school teachers, and other university and public school personal ethical relationships and ethical considerations often exist in tension with the moral. Margalit (2002) distinguishes between the ethical and the moral by distinguishing between the thick relationships which we have with those we are close to and thin relationships which are those we have with everyone else. The moral (thin relationships) are rule-based and principledriven in terms of our general obligations to others. In tension with this is the ethical set of rules (often idiosyncratic and relationship dependent) that guide our close relationships. The moral and ethical can bump up against each other in teacher education as the moral represents the obligations teacher educators have to public schools, the future students of our teachers and the colleges of education. The assessments and standards we use to make certain that the teachers we educate have sufficient knowledge and skill and the appropriate behaviors and dispositions needed to provide good instruction and welldesigned environments that will support the learning of all their students present our obligations. We reveal our ethical commitments and obligations in our support of preservice teachers in learning these skills and the adjustments and accommodations we make for individual students in light of their circumstances, their efforts, and our perceptions of their unmet potential. The moral commitment manifests in the assumption that teacher

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education programs certify as qualified teachers only those truly qualified to teach regardless of the personal connection toward individuals. Within teacher education programs this means that the moral commitment to provide strong teachers will prevail because of our obligation to the students our students will educate. However, this tension exists as programs negotiate how to be fair to both constituencies. Further, tensions exist because our ethical obligations to guide our students and be in relationship with them is often played out against teacher education structures and organizations that make it difficult to develop the kind of thick relationships with our students upon which our ethical obligations depend. Sometimes, teacher education programs are attuned to the moral but not the ethical with a focus is on enacting what is right what is generally moral without the accompanying close relationships. This can happen when teacher education courses are so large that the close interpersonal relationships are almost impossible or when we have only the confines of our single course to connect with students. Being able to have special relationships in which we nurture and guide specific students through the demands and nuances of teacher education programs leads to the development of a richer culture within teacher education. When teacher education is constructed to make thick relationships difficult or impossible then a leveling occurs and enacting moral principles may feel narrow and self-righteous, since the moral principles are general and simply applied to situations and conditions. This tension then between the moral and the ethical is played out in the programmatic as well as the individual decisions we make in teacher education programs. It underlies our naming of the skills, knowledge, and dispositions we determine to hold teachers accountable for and how we will evaluate performances. It guides curriculum decisions as programs determine the relationship between coursework and field work. Consideration of this tension guides teacher education programs in determining what they should be accountable for, the relationships they will have with public schools and public school personnel, and the interactions the program will support teacher educators in having with their students.

TEACHER EDUCATORS The tensions we have discussed co-exist within any teacher education program and are emblematic of the enterprise of teacher education generally.

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Teacher educators are those involved in the education of teachers. Naming who is a teacher educator is not as easily straightforward as it appears here and how this is played out varies across countries and cultures. Concern with how uncovering the knowing and learning involved in becoming a teacher educator conducted through intimate scholarship the focus and substance of this book.

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SECTION I IDENTITY

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SECTION OVERVIEW

IDENTITY

Critical to our understanding of our development as teachers of teachers is the way that experience played such a critical role in the process of our learning. Memory shaped our experience. Experience shaped our experience. Memory of our experience shaped our experience (p. 52) … we proudly name ourselves as “teacher educators.” That name represents the professional and personal essence of our perceptions of ourselves … we see ourselves as different from, yet connected to, the representations of this title in the work and lives of our colleagues in teacher education and its institutions. We find the title essential to accounting for ourselves and our work. (Arizona Group, 1995, p. 53)

In articulating the elements that contributed and contribute to our being and becoming teacher educators, we name experience, memory, and knowledge. In this text, we try to account for the interaction and balance of memory and experience in identity formation and yet our language falls short. We use language to specify the complementary elements and their interaction, negotiation, and integration. Through our language, we attempt to relate the amorphous process and the overlapping and interactive nature of how the various elements shaped and formed us as we took the important step of naming ourselves teacher educators and thus specifying an identity. While this passage is an approximation of the tenuous and inconclusive nature of this process, it really neither describes completely nor defines conclusively our identity as teacher educator, since we are always in a process of becoming. Definitions are interesting things, because the very act of defining a concept specifying what it is or is not makes what can be considered a process into something static. In building the definition of a concept, we try to open its possibility by articulating its nuances, elements, aspects, or categories but in this very act we limit and constrain it. Currently, most researchers who do work on identity argue that identity is socially constructed, negotiated, and emerging. Having asserted this, scholars then turn to defining identity and what they mean by identity through the identification of boundaries, processes, and development and the definition then ends up having a static quality to it and its situated nature and tentativeness is lost (e.g., Harre´ & van Langenhove, 1999; Markus & Nurius, 1986). Thus, from the beginning of this work we argue we are interested in 3

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identity making and identity formation in the doing and being involved in becoming a teacher educator yet, we attempt to leave meaning open and fluid. Through the text itself we try to communicate the fluid and evolving nature of identity formation as a teacher educator. Indeed, it is always in process, partial and incomplete. As we articulated in the initial section of this text, Deleuze critiques traditional conceptions on similar grounds. In Deleuze Guattari quote that begins that section, they assert that while only two physical beings are present in the room it is actually crowded with the many people and ideas those authors represent. This is so, because in the process of becoming we have multiplicities and assemblages of ideas that fold into the rhizomatic development of connections in the past present future of our evolving experiences. The quote that begins this section makes clear the complicated interrelationships of memory, experience, naming, and knowledge in this process and the fact that from almost the beginning of our becoming teacher educators we have been interested in our progression. We recognize that as we name ourselves as particular kinds of people, take up the accompanying obligations, duties, and responsibilities and fulfill expectations in interactions with others and use our embodied and propositional knowledge to act, we are becoming particular people. In other words in doing teacher education we engage in the fluid, on-going process of becoming teacher educators. In this section, we begin by considering various conceptions of identity and identity formation generally and for teacher educators specifically. Instead of focusing on deficits in these conceptions, we focus on overlaps highlighting how slight variations in aspects of identity shape international conceptions of identity making as teacher educators. We then turn to the role of naming in this process. We consider how taking up a teacher educator identity and the contexts of institutions and countries shape the meaning of being a teacher educator. We articulate the pathways for becoming a teacher educator and rather than arguing for the superiority of one over others we explore the influence of pathways on identity formation. Because knowledge that contributes to our sense of being a teacher educator and guides our action is fundamentally embodied and arises from experience, practice, learning, and research, we explore the contribution of knowing to being and becoming a teacher educator.

CHAPTER 1 DEFINITIONS OF IDENTITY Recently teacher education research has turned to a consideration of teacher educator identity (Davey, 2013; Erickson, Young, & Pinnegar, 2011). This research as much as other current research on identity-formation in teaching begins with a concept of identity as socially constructed, multivoiced, and fluid. As the title of this book suggests, we share a similar view. Being and becoming captures our conception of identity making. Indeed, identity emerges in the space between doing and being and is always evolving. The phrases doing and being and being and becoming capture the definition we hold of identity making. We act in various contexts, in various roles, on the basis of what we know, and in relationship with others. We exhibit agency in the process. These things are implicit in our action and our actions (physical and verbal) provide evidence of who we are, what we value, and who we are committed to being. As we act, we observe what our actions including language reveal to us and in response adjust or embrace the self that is revealed to us. In this way we are always in the midst of becoming. In doing teacher education, we are being teacher educators whether or not we yet have a conception of ourselves as teacher educators. Like many of those currently doing research on teacher educator identity, we do not consider identity as something that is static and settled but like Deleuze (1994) we believe we are always in a state of becoming. We think of identity as socially constructed, negotiated through consideration of the characteristics, relationships, experiences, and contexts of our lives and in interaction with others. We recognize that there are theories of identity, identity-formation, and identity making and we begin here by taking up the task of defining and exploring the nuances of the process of identity making. We begin by reviewing our understanding of theories and concepts of identify. We identify the characteristics and elements of those theories or conceptions of identity that have contributed to our thinking about this process. As we take up each theory, we introduce the concepts and then explore their contribution to our understanding of how we develop identity, particularly as teacher educators. 5

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ERIKSON AND IDENTITY MAKING AS TEACHER EDUCATORS Erik Erikson’s theory of identity (e.g., Erikson, 1968; Erikson & Erikson, 1998) has maintained its influence in some parts of the world and even new theories of identity making are based on or in opposition to his work. Josselson (1996) and McAdams (1997) utilize conceptions of identityformation from Erikson even though they utilize narratives to explore identity development. From a Canadian context, Clandinin (e.g., Clandinin, 1995; Connelly & Clandinin, 1990; Clandinin et al., 1993) explains how our identity is represented the stories we live by. Ubani (2012) in contrast to Erikson explores teacher identity of beginning religious educators in Finland using preservice teachers’ conceptions of particular competencies as central in developing a professional identity as a teacher. Crawford, Lengeling, Pablo, and Ocampo (2014) privilege language choice as a symbol of identity development in a study of Mexican teacher education. Often work that examines identity from an Eriksonian perspective categorizes development according to concepts from his theory. In contrast, to these more typical explorations of identity development through the theoretical lens of Erikson, we argue below the ways in which his theory actually proposes identity-formation as evolving and socially constructed and altering based on context and experience across a lifetime. We explore the fluidity of Erikson’s theory and then examine the implications this holds for developing understanding of becoming a teacher educator. Several concepts from Erikson’s theory of identity and identityformation are important as we consider developing identity as teacher educators: identity as a life-long endeavor, the biopsychosocial nature of the theory, insights from Erikson’s characterization of the movement within and across his eight stages, and the intergenerational components of the theory (relevant studies include: Beijaard, Meijer, & Verloop, 2004; Izadinia, 2014; Kozhanov et al., 2015; Leshem, 2014; Schepens, Aelterman, & Vlerick, 2009). A central tenet of Erikson’s theory is that identity development is a life-long process and therefore we are always in the midst of identity development. According to Erikson (as with other more recent theories) we never securely arrive at an identity. Earlier resolutions emerge in our current experiences of identity making. From our infancy through the time of our death we are always in the midst of forging an identity spurred by the crises we confront in the particular contexts of our lives. For us this suggests that as we move into roles as teachers and teacher educators the particular

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and cultural contexts involved shape our identity making. It also suggests that while we act within the identity of teacher educator that identity will continue to emerge. Therefore, like other identity theorists, Erikson is clear: identity is never a settled phenomenon. Indeed in a text published posthumously (Erikson & Erikson, 1998) he makes clear that identity continues to develop. For Erikson our physical and mental development along with our social interactions and contexts influence and shape our identity. As named by him, this biopsychosocial theory finds that identity has physicality to it not just a mental and social component. The biological predispositions, capabilities, and our development of them both constrain and enable identity development. This seems fairly obvious in infancy and youth, but in adulthood we might overlook this physical element of identity making. As adults, our genetic predispositions, our decisions about healthier or less so, our vigor, and our energy all support and shape our identity. An important contribution of Erikson then is that our physical beings are not in isolation but in interaction with other aspects of life that contribute to our identity making. These have impact within our context as teacher educators and influence the process as we are shaped and constrained by our physicality. Gee’s (2000) conception of identity making within positioning theory notes that while we may have Nature-Identities (aspects of identity that come from forces of nature) these alone do not account for who we are and who we take ourselves to be. In contrast with Erikson, Gee articulates three other identity positions: Institutional (aspects of our identity that emerge from the institutions we are in and the positions we occupy), Discourse (characteristics attributed to us in social interaction and discourse with others such as caring), and Affinity (aspects of our identity emerge through our association and interaction with others we are in relationship with through our choice). These relate mostly to the social aspect of Erikson’s theory since all are related to social interaction. Although, Gee asserts that all contribute to the sense of self that emerges, he along with Erikson, asserts that the person has a meaning-making function in bringing together and sorting out his/her own interpretation of the meaning of these identities individually and in relationship to each other. The second part of Erikson’s label names the psychological as part of the identity-formation process. This includes our intentions, motivations, thinking, and interpretation of the biological and social. While this is similar to Gee’s (2000) notion of a self that resolves and reconciles or merely accepts the Nature-Identities, Institutional, Discourse, and Affinity identities, it differs because of its inclusivity toward mental states that comprise

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our identity-formation. The contribution of the psychological is the conception of individual agency as a part of our identity-making process. We have biological predispositions, capabilities, and development but the meaning of those, along with the meaning of our social experiences, are mediated through the psychological. This includes how we respond, interpret, and take up the other aspects of our identity. Thus a contribution of Erikson’s theory is the reminder that humans are meaning-makers and that experience and heritage must be interpreted and decisions are made concerning what the response will be. This characterization contributes a sense of dynamism and volatility within the identity-formation process. Thus given similar biological heritage and capabilities, social interaction, and cultural experience it is because of the psychological aspect of our development that potentially different conceptions of identity will emerge. In our experiences as teacher educators and given our genetic and physical make up, we decide what things mean and how we will respond. Some current theories of identity making such as Markus and Nurius (1986) work on a notion of possible selves (all the selves we imagine we might or could be in addition to those we actually take up). MacIntyre’s (2001) conception of the creation of narrative coherence as an aspect of identity making, also asserts the agency an individual enacts in determining what identity will be taken up. For us, the assertion of the agency enacted by the self in the process of identity making is important, since this construct allows consideration of choice, resistance, and interpretation as aspects of identity-formation as a teacher educator. Usually, the current work in identity making argues the fundamental influence of social interaction and social context in shaping and forming identity. A common assertion in such theories is that identity is socially negotiated and socially constructed (Gee, 2000; Harre´ & van Langenhove, 1999; Mason, 2008). Erikson’s theory of identity posits that our social and cultural context including the social interactions within them present conflicts to individuals. Based on their biological and psychological development, as well as their choices, humans respond and in their responses forge an identity. Erikson continually asserts the influence of the social particularly in terms of the cultural and social interaction in shaping identityformation across the life-span. The fluid nature of identity making and the ways in which experiences and resolutions from the past emerge in current identity-formation is implicit in Erikson’s articulation of his stages of identity development. Erikson argues that the conflicts at each stage represent a continuum rather than an either/or status. Thus, for example in resolving the trust versus mistrust

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stage infants having resolved that stage emerge from it with some balance of the elements of mistrust and trust present in the resolution as they engage with a new conflict. He further argues that as we move to latter stages, our experiences in resolving a later stage positively can result in our re-experiencing and more positively resolving the crisis in that earlier stage. Thus, Erikson suggests, as does Bowlby (1988), that our past experiences always are part of and can emerge and be reformed and reshaped in our current experiences. Bakhtin’s (1981) conception of the zone of maximal contact provides one explanation. He argues that we have experiences where action or reflection in a current experience bring forward past experiences and in a moment of reinterpretation we reimagine and rethink our past, which causes us to be transformed in the present and reconceptualize our future. This conceptualization of identify-formation as a non-linear process that draws our past experiences forward allowing us to resolve past experiences differently and reconsider present and future identity issues from a new ground or in different ways, is an explicit formulation of Erikson’s theory that is often overlooked in accounts of Erikson’s theory (e.g., Miller, 2009). But this fluidity of temporality and therefore identity making is central to our understanding of how teacher educators form their identities. In discussing identity making during adolescence and the stage of identity versus role confusion, Erikson (1968) further asserts the fluid nature of identity making when he argues that adolescence in resolving this stage in identity development re-visit each of the earlier stages. In other words they consider anew each previous stage which allows for a more positive resolution for earlier stages. They begin by considering questions of their own status as trustworthy humans making decisions about who they can trust and how to decide that. They re-determine whether they can act autonomously or whether acting autonomously will result in shame or lead them to doubt their ability (separate from toilet training). They consider whether they can take initiative without feeling guilty. Next, as they prepare for careers and marriage they consider whether through their industry they can achieve success or do their actions lead them into failure and a sense of inferiority. Finally, they resolve identity versus role confusion all of the re-resolutions of earlier stages contributing to how they resolve this one. Erikson also asserts that it is through the positive resolution of identity versus role confusion that humans are positioned to engage in open, honest, intimate relationships with others. Given the age ranges, many people who are beginning teachers fall into the intimacy versus isolation stage. This means that right at the point

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when the teachers we educate need to be able to engage in intimate open relationships with their own students, they may actually be struggling to resolve that conflict. Research in teacher education has recently turned to a focus on the importance of identity development as teachers. This suggests that at the point of their emergence as teachers our students may still be struggling with aspects of their own identity-formation and experience some difficulty in developing intimate relationships with their own students or the teacher educators who will mentor them. As teacher educators, most of us stand in the place of generativity versus stagnation. As we emerge as teacher educators, we are making decisions about whether we want to move forward, embrace new challenges, and seek to mentor and shepherd a new generation or struggle to remain fixed and selffocused. If we consider the implications of Erikson’s work, we may reconsider who we can and should trust and whether we are trustworthy, whether we can act autonomously as teacher educators or whether an action will lead to shame and doubt, whether we take initiative or will we feel guilty about overstepping, and whether our industry leads to feelings of success or inferiority. We also look at whether we have a strong sense of our identity as teacher educators or will we (given the many conflicts in this identity) devolve into role confusion, whether we isolate ourselves or form the kinds of open, honest, intimate relationships and collaborations necessary to have successful experiences with our students and colleagues and finally, whether we act in generative ways or stagnate. These important personal questions comprise part of our process of identity making as teacher educators. These dilemmas can lead to, inform, and shape productive research questions concerning our work in teacher education. Exploration of these dilemmas along with Erikson’s sense of the intergenerational nature of issues and conflicts of identity-formation in consideration with the stages of teachers in relationship to the students can bring forward, offer important contribution to current research on identity-formation in teacher education. As intimate scholarship posits clearly research in teacher education is always interactive and collaborative and in our work we are constantly considering the meaning we as teacher educators are making of teacher education and our identity as teacher educators. Moreover, we consider what our experience teaches us about the emergence of our students’ identity as teachers and our colleagues’ movement from teaching roles to roles as teacher educators. We have considered here the potential contributions of Erikson’s theory of identity development to current theories of identity making in teacher

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education and to our understanding of this process. Concepts from his theory resonate with our understanding about identity making. Identity is an ongoing and fluid process. Our physicality, genetics, and heritage; thinking and reflecting, as well as our social context and interaction combine in our identity negotiation. Past experiences can be reinterpreted in present experience resulting in a reconsideration and reformation of who we took ourselves to be. As we take up the task of being and becoming teacher educators we can reimagine who we are and who we want to be. Recognition of the interrelationship of our experience of identity making and that of our students can generate interesting research questions as well as wisdom and insight within our identity making process. What is of most importance is that these elements from Erikson often form a basis for and contribute to more current theories of teacher educator identity-formation. Erikson’s theory of development actually presents identity as emergent rather than fixed. He argues that identity continues to emerge across the lifespan and that it is shaped within context and through cultural milieu shifting in response to biological changes, psychological insights and growth. The flexibility and volatility found in his conception of identity is reminiscent to some degree with a Deleuzian view of identity. However, we note that the establishment of stages or progressions would meet with resistance as the processes of recognizing differences and engaging in repetition to forward our thinking about the “I” before us to bring us toward transforming out thinking. From our reading of his works, Deleuze would most likely object to ways we apply Eriksonian concepts and theory to our understanding of our process of becoming teacher educators. Yet, when these concepts and theoretical lenses interact with other theories of identity, they create spaces that open multiplicities rather than singularities of what we describe as BECOMING teacher educators. This positioning within theories fosters our wonderings and reconceptualizing of this process.

NARRATIVE THEORIES OF IDENTITY MAKING Narrative theorists provide methods and methodologies for exploring identity making in teacher education. Many researchers argue that the stories we live and tell reveal or capture our identity (e.g., Clandinin & Connelly, (1990, 2000); McAdams, 1997; Witherell & Noddings, 1991). Stories

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include features like plotlines, characters, themes, settings, narrators, actors, movement across time, and frames. Each of these features allows researchers to engage in fairly complex and nuanced analysis of stories told and uncover identities revealed. In addition, because of these features, single stories can be held in relationship to each other and to diverse and contradicting elements and voices. Using multiple stories can allow for very diverse representations of the person across time, place, and setting. In this way stories allow for accounts that present a more fluid and less fixed sense of a person’s identity because elements of the identity can be held in harmony as well as contradiction. Narratives also allow us as humans to grapple more fully with our identity making by exploring what a story told reveals about us at a particular point in time or who we are being. Through examination of the plotline, the characters, the narrator, the actors, the events, the settings, and the way we frame the story as we tell it, we reveal ourselves to ourselves. The story can hold static momentarily who we are being at a point in time. We can explore forward in time and consider the trajectory of our identity making as captured in the story. As we examine the story and find ourselves lacking, it allows us to intentionally alter who we are being and reconsider and readjust in doing who we are becoming. In this way, narrative theories assert that considering the stories we choose to tell and the elements of the stories we tell, whether autobiographical or not, allows insight into our individual identity making. Narrative researchers provide us with an array of analytic conceptual tools that support us in exploring identity making within teacher education (e.g., Bal, 1997; Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach, & Zilber, 1998). When we conceptualize identity as socially constructed, multivocal, fluid, dynamic, and constructed moment to moment in the doing of our lives, we are disconcerted by our accompanying understanding that in the living of our life we feel that we carry a stable idea of who we are and what we would do based on that sense. Intuitively, we think of ourselves as having a stability of self that does not shift easily even as we act out a variety of roles, engage in a range of relationships, and experience a variety of contexts with shifting relations of power. We have a sense of ourselves as having some substance, some stability from which we act. One concept from narratology (Bal, 1997) that is helpful in this regard is the concept of framing or levels of narratives. We can look at the ways we frame stories and the multiple frames we provide for them, the emplotment of the story. In our early work (Arizona Group, 1995), we came to realize both in living

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our lives and in interpreting the narratives of them we utilize frames that guide our attention and provide further meaning to the story told or the identity enacted. Such frames give direction to our actions and are a basis from which we make inferences on which we act (Tanggaard, 2009). MacIntyre (1984) regards these as embodied traditions wherein knowledge exists in a narrative that gives it meaning and guides us in applying those traditions in the living of our life. These traditions are shared by members of a community and provide a context for making claims and taking actions. Schank and Abelson (1977) concept of scripts provides another way to consider this phenomenon of stability in the midst of our becoming. We have routines and patterns for acting in our context and these scripts provide a basis for acting with others and in different contexts. Our experience in identity making as new professors made visible to us our embodied knowledge in terms of the frames we used to attempt to make-meaning and the use we made of our embodied knowledge to act in new roles and new contexts as beginning professors (Arizona Group, 1995). The presence of these frames, embodied traditions, or scripts became visible to us in their failure. Thus, the idea of frames of embodied traditions that guide our action as members of a community and scripts that guide our action and interaction in particular contexts or in our action in particular roles was helpful in our explorations of our identity construction as teacher educators. As the frames became visible in their failure we were able to reconsider, adjust, and redesign. In this way, we developed new frames and new scripts to guide our action. As teacher educators take up identity making, the concept of frames and scripts and embodied traditions are helpful since teacher educators enact many roles such as teacher, coach, supervisor, colleague, scholar, member of an academic community, and member of a community of educators. These frames and our embodied knowing of them allow us to make inferences and act in both public and private interactions as teacher educators. They can be markers to us of who we are becoming and a consideration of our enactment of them can provide comfort as we recognize we know how to act. They can act as a goad when we observe ourselves, acting the script of an academic or teacher that we know but disagree with. In our recognition, we are pushed to create new scripts and new frames that allow us to participate in the communities we belong to and yet guide us to rewrite the scripts and adjust the frames to conform more to who we desire to become. In considering stories lived and told as providing insight into our identity and identity making, Bal (1997) argues that as we tell stories we shift

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among roles as narrator, actor, character sometimes acting in all three, sometimes in two, and sometimes in only one. When we seriously grapple with the stories we tell to examine our identity and our identity making, analysis of the shifts in roles within the narrative presented often reveal us to ourselves in rather startling ways. In Murphy, Pinnegar, and Pinnegar (2011), we encounter Shaun’s story of himself as a sixth grade boy. He tells the story from his perspective now of having been teacher and teacher educator. By examining the space between teacher educator Shaun as narrator and sixth grade Shaun’s action as character, we reopen the story to consider the ethical tensions we experience as we reconsider stories from our past that capture our identities then and bring them forward into our present life. As they say: “Like Shaun, most of us carry these kinds of stories, usually hidden from others, but such stories guide us in the ethical actions and obligations we assume in our lives as teachers and teacher educators. These stories usually present us lived plotlines contrary to those we wished we had enacted” (Murphy, Pinnegar, & Pinnegar, 2011). In this way, we disrupt our being and becoming. Bal’s (1997) articulation of the ways in which exploration of the shifts in roles of character, actor, narrator within a story provides a tool for examining our experience to make more visible our identities and identity making as teacher educators. This can also allow us to more clearly account for our action as teacher educators and what we learn from it. MacIntyre’s (2001) conception of narrative coherence is another valuable tool in making sense of our identity making in our process of becoming a teacher educator. He argues that what provides coherence to all the stories of self that we tell is our ability to link them narratively. Our identity has coherence when we can create a substantive and logical account of who we are that resolves conflicts and oppositions in narratives that capture our identity across time, contexts, and interactions. Narratively linking stories of our identities that account for the variety creates a narrative coherence upon which we can enact a more stable sense of self. Such narrative coherence can also guide our identity making when particular incidents are in dissonance rather than resonance with the account. We construct an embodied story of coherence across narratives of our life that seem not to cohere. In this way we construct a narrative of our being our identity that has stability and continuity. However, as we link these narratives together into coherence, dissonant stories and our taking up of them and uncovering what and who they reveal us to be pushes us to become different. Thus, in the act of

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creating a stable account of being we also thrust ourselves into a space of becoming. McAdams’ (1997) work, as does other works by psychologists (e.g., Josselson, 1996) who use narrative to explore identity and identity making, demonstrates that stories do capture identity and identity development. Such work also makes clear what stories reveal about identity development. These researchers usually use Erikson’s theory of identity in their analysis of the stories of their participants. As we have demonstrated earlier, features of Erikson’s work clearly inform current work in identity making across the social sciences, but it is most clearly evident in this work that such is the case. Their work is also important because it suggests the value of bringing a theoretical lens of a particular theory to interpret and explore the narrative of ourselves as teachers, teacher educators, researchers, and academics. Most identity and identity development theories can be used in this way and provide insight into identity development. Clandinin et al. (2006) differentiate between teachers’ stories and stories of teachers and children’s stories and stories of children in her narrative inquiry work and that of her colleagues. This distinction is an important one since in our research about ourselves as teacher educators we often include stories of our students such as Placier’s (1995) recounting of her fiascos with her students or Pinnegar’s (2005) stories included in her account of recognizing the dynamics of moral authority. According to Clandinin et al. (2006), stories of teachers, stories of students, and stories of children are not the stories they tell of themselves but they are the stories others tell about them. When we tell stories of teachers, students, or children, these stories usually reveal more about our identity than they do about the teachers and children we are telling stories about. Thus, in examining our identity and identity making as it is revealed in narratives, we need to seriously consider who we are in terms of the stories told and what it tells about our being and doing teacher education and our being and becoming teachers. In exploring her development as a teacher educator, Clandinin (1995) introduces the idea of a sacred story. This is the shared, agreed upon institutional story that we tell about experiences. The story exists as a cultural narrative that is represented as capturing the universal plotline of a particular endeavor. Clandinin explores her own narrative against a scared story and in this way reveals nuances in her identity making as a teacher educator. In this process, she reveals to herself and us the kind of shared, sacred story that could be possible and that she is working to create in her practice as a teacher educator.

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Other conceptions of stories that emerge from work in narrative inquiry include Olson and Craig’s (2005) conception of secret stories and cover stories. Secret stories are stories of our actual experience that we hold close and do not always share in public settings. Cover stories are stories we tell that provide a socially appropriate account of an event that protects the person telling the story and situating the story and the action of the teller within the dominant narrative promoted by the educational institution. Since cover stories often flow glibly off our tongues when we are asked to account for potentially politically sensitive situations or aspects of ourselves or others we prefer not to explore, then uncovering our secret stories behind our cover stories, examining carefully what cover stories both hide and reveal, and exploring the tensions between them reveal aspects of our identity and identity making that can easily remain hidden. Such explorations also contribute to the research conversation in teaching and teacher education. Competing and conflicting stories (Olson & Craig, 2005) are other categories that we can use in considering identity making particularly in teacher education. Competing stories represent stories we tell about our experience where there are two or more ways of living the story within a context, but the stories always exist in tension with one another. In contrast, conflicting stories emerge where two possible stories can be told but only one story is allowed to be told. Holding alternative storied interpretation of events in tension with each other (competing stories) allows for both stories to continue to exist. However, when the stories become conflicting stories one or other of the storied possibilities for that landscape disappears. Holding stories as competing stories rather than forcing one or the other story off the landscape allows new possibilities for growth and development to emerge and often our freedom to act on our story to live by as teacher educators can be preserved. Current accreditation mandates that teacher education programs offer particular kinds of teacher education content and experiences assessed in particular kinds of ways, these mandates can develop as either a competing story in tension with teacher education that follows Deweyan concepts of learning from experience or a conflicting one. There is great potential for this second Deweyan story of teacher education to be pushed off the landscape of teacher education and excised from the possible stories of teacher education that teacher educators might live by. The difficulty here would be that those who hold this second story of teacher education as the one that animates and energizes their being and becoming a teacher educator leaves such teacher educators without a story to live by within a program

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of teacher education, having the potential to do deep damage to the identity-formation of the teacher educators involved. It will also have deep impact on preservice teachers’ experience. In her work and that of her associates, Clandinin (2013) attempts to uncover the meaning of an experience held by the person experiencing it. There is a recognition that the narrative account or story told is negotiated and represents partial meanings while the person inquiring into the experience of the Other attempts to world travel to the world of the person telling the story in order to make-meaning of it (Lugones, 1987). In engaging in that process of world traveling, we are continually constructing understandings of who we are and what we believe that may or may not accurately represent the meaning being made by the other. In this process, we reveal the meanings we make of our life and who we are as much as we uncover the meaning the other is making of the experience. As we create narratives that account for our identity, these stories (just like identity-formation) are not univocal, may contradict each other, and often represent us in both harmonious and oppositional ways. Thus, the stories we tell provide excellent opportunities to push forward our understanding of our identity. For as we explore multivocal stories of who we are, we gain a clearer view of the process of our identity making as teacher educators who we are becoming and who we are at a particular moment in time as captured in our narratives. Tanggaard’s (2009) work on interpreting interviews provides clear evidence of the multivocal nature of the narrative accounts we provide of ourselves. Work using narrative inquiry, names and explores particular kinds of stories. Understanding the kind of story told, we can use these types to help us better understand the identity making we are engaged in. They allow us to consider the stories we are telling in relationship to what they might more generally reveal about our identity making, as well as what they could be. For example, Olson and Craig (2005) articulate cover stories teachers tell. They demonstrate using various exemplars of cover stories how through cover stories we position ourselves as in harmony with prescribed institutional narratives and yet enable ourselves to live a preferred story. In such narratives we are storying our identity in compliance with the institutional mandates we are resisting or ignoring in our actual identity-formation. Thus, when we recognize narratives as being cover stories, they can reveal to us aspects of prescribed identities supposedly valued in a role we take up that we do not embrace in our actual identity making. Relatedly, Clandinin (1995) labels these prescribed stories particularly when they hold not just mandates but institutional tradition and specify

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expert roles as sacred stories. In her account, she articulates the emergence of her identity as a teacher educator in opposition to the sacred story of teacher education. Thus, holding our secret and actual stories of identity in relationship to sacred or cover stories makes identity-formation visible. In order to develop this learning as knowledge that can contribute as more formal research, teacher educators can explore the experiences, understandings, and memories involved through the use of intimate scholarship from the perspective of the teacher educator(s) (see the next section on intimate scholarship for an exploration of the meaning and mechanisms of intimate scholarship). Narrative Inquiry (Clandinin, 2013; Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) contributes to our understanding of the dichotomy of being and doing through the identification of the process of narrative being one of living, telling, retelling, and reliving. In order for a story to be told it must first be lived and then in the telling we reveal the sense we are making of the story told. The other two processes retelling and reliving inform our understanding of being and becoming. We live a story and then we tell it, in retelling the story we consider dimensions of the social, the temporal, and place and in this way we sharpen our focus and reconsider and reinterpret the plots, relationships, contexts inherent but partially hidden as we lived and told the story initially. In this retelling of our stories and those of others, we stand in the place of identifying who we are being within that story and we begin to imagine how things might be different. As these possibilities occur to us, we are simultaneously in a space of becoming and we begin then to relive as we bring these new understandings about who we might be and how we might act into our new experiences. Such retelling and reliving are important for us in clarifying and transforming our actions as teachers and teacher educators. When we consider our identity by examining our stories of ourselves through the lens of narrative theories particularly narrative inquiry, much about our identity and our process of identity making are revealed to us. These inquiries contribute new knowledge and understanding to the knowledge base of teacher education. We can explore the stories we tell in terms of theories of identity revealing new understanding about identity and identity making as well as helping us as individuals understand who we are both being and becoming as teacher educators. Using tools from narratology (Bal, 1997), wherein we consider the separation and integration of the narrator, character and actor in our stories and investigate the frames we provide for and within our narratives, we reveal ourselves to ourselves making visible to us who we are as

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teacher educators and who we are in the process of becoming. Using ideas from narrative inquiry, we come to understand better process of identity making and the value of story in uncovering what experience helps us understand about our identity. We recognize that the stories we both live and tell capture our identity and can spur our process of identity making. They have the potential to reveal ourselves to ourselves and hold in tension the competing, conflicting stories of our lives and make visible sacred, secret and cover stories. Embracing narrative as a way to capture and uncover our identity making allows us to use stories to make visible who we take ourselves to be in particular situations, at particular times and within particular relationships.

POSITIONING THEORY Like narrative theories, positioning theory allows us to examine our embodied knowing as well as our expressions of it. There are two strands of positioning theory that provide accounts of identity-formation, teach us things about identity making, and can be used in developing work on identity-formation as teacher educators. These include the work of Gee (2000) and the work of Harre´ and van Langenhove (1998). According to positioning theory, we reveal who we are as we position ourselves and others through language and speech and as we are positioned by them. Central to both of these theories is an acceptance of speech act theory (Hymes, 1974). From this perspective, positioning is revealed in both doing and speaking or a combination of both. Gee (2000) labels identity as: “Being recognized as a certain ‘kind of person,’ in a given context …” (p. 99). He argues that differences in identity are based on social and cultural views of identity. He represents them as “four ways to formulate questions about how identity is functioning for a specific person (child or adult) in a given context or across a set of contexts” (p. 101). As discussed earlier, Gee identifies four kinds of identities (nature, institutional, discourse, and affinity). Each of these kinds of identities represents different aspects of the social and cultural self that we enact or that based on our action, we are labeled with. Nature identity captures our genetic and biologic heritage and is represented when we label ourselves by gender (female) or physical ability (athletic). Institutional Identity harmonizes with role theory and in some ways labeling ourselves as teacher educators is an example of Institutional Identity but so also is labeling

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ourselves as wives or children. Discourse Identity relates to the ways in which others may characterize us as thoughtful, kind or lazy. Affinity Identity represents the things we associate ourselves with and have an affinity for and the social and cultural practices we engage in within the affinity groups we associate with. From this positioning theory perspective, identity is primarily about social and power relationships. The four kinds of Identity Gee articulates indicate the ways in which our identities are not necessarily unitary. Harre´ and van Langenhove (1998) argue “… [P]ositioning theory … can be seen as … a conceptual and methodological framework based on the position/act-action/storyline triad and drawing upon the analogy of all of social life to one of its manifestations, conversations [or discourse]” (p. 6). According to them since most mental phenomena are produced discursively, therefore social and speech-acts form the substance of social life. Through social interaction, a person emerges not as a fixed end product defined by role but as one “constituted and reconstituted through various discursive practices in which they participate” (p. 35). Just as in the structure of a sentence, people can be placed in relationship to each other and meaning and identity can be determined by what is implicit in the relationships expressed through the ways in which we position and are positioned. Through positioning we assign fluid “parts” or “roles” to ourselves and others. As we accept or reject the way in which we are positioned our identity emerges. Clearly, positioning theory represents identity making as fluid, social, interactive, and a process. Our identities are made visible through our speech and our actions. Studies of the actions we take, the documents we produce, the meetings we attend, the institutional arrangements we participate in, the accounts of our practice all provide clear evidence of our identity making that can be excavated to develop understandings of teaching and teacher education. Harre´ and van Langenhove (1998) argue that the positions we take up and the identities we form are in some ways determined by the positions that are offered to us. We find ourselves on the outside of conversations or without a “position” in a community because the discourses of the community do not provide positions that we are willing to take up. Analysis of any speech or action can reveal the position we take up, the story plot implicit in such positioning, and the social force with which we assert that position. It is through the process of positioning and being position that our identity is both revealed and formed. Considering the plotlines and positioning revealed in the narratives, how we position ourselves and others, and how we are positioned by them informs us about our

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understanding of the roles, duties and obligations and the moral assumptions in relationship to the identity we are negotiating as teacher educators. Possible selves are the selves one believes one might become in the near and the more distal future and are therefore important in goal setting and motivation (for a review, see Oyserman & James, 2011). Possible selves are valenced; that is, each individual has both positive images of the selves he or she desires and expects to become and negative images of the selves he or she wishes to avoid becoming (Markus & Nurius, 1986). In this chapter, we have talked about identity-formation and what we mean by identity-formation generally and the contributions of various theories to our conception that identity is socially constructed and that agency, context, experience, and knowledge contribute to it. Based on our analysis of various theories of identity we reveal that for us identity-formation is a process and that process is best characterized by the phrase being and becoming. While at particular points in time through narratives or analysis of action and speech we might determine who we are our being (identity) at that moment, we are actually always in a process of becoming since our identity is fluid. Our identity emerges moment to moment as we make choices (enact agency). The choices we make are both constrained and expanded by the contexts we stand in, the experiences we have and the knowledge we have about and from those experiences and the interpretations we make of them. This leads us to assert that being and becoming a teacher educator is first a matter of identity. Gaining an identity as a teacher educator is a matter of identity-formation. It is also clear that examination of our identity and identity making and our relationships and interactions with the others who are part of this process are potentially a rich resource for studies conducted from the perspective of the self-involved in this process of identity making as a teacher educator.

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CHAPTER 2 NAMING-AND-BEING-NAMED We have explored conceptions of identity-formation that can deepen understanding of continually being in the process of becoming as a teacher educator within teacher education. We recognize that the meaning of teacher educator and teacher education is contextually bound. The cultural milieu, institutional context, and life experience coalesce in ways that shape the meaning of our professional labels. The nuances and alterations in the constellation of relationships that comprise teacher education bring into being varying explanations of what the titles teacher educator and teacher mean. Because practices emerge and are shaped by the interweaving of individual experience, personal and professional commitments, knowledge and understanding of content and process in teaching teachers and, the contexts, examination of e practices, disruptions in enacting roles of teacher and teacher educator and explorations into what walking our talk means are crucial sites for conducting inquiry into our static and evolving knowledge of teacher education, intimate scholarship holds promise for building and informing the knowledge base for teacher education. A central feature of becoming a teacher educator and determining what we mean by that involves naming ourselves. In Alice in Wonderland, Alice and the Caterpillar have a discussion that is relevant: The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice. “‘Who are you?” said the Caterpillar. This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, “I I hardly know, sir, just at present at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.” (Retrieved on August 31, 2015, from https://www.cs.indiana.edu/metastuff/wonder/ch5.html)

As Alice indicates there is a tautology around naming. When we name ourselves as teacher educators, we assert in some way ourselves as embodying the particular meaning of the word and yet as Alice indicates the meaning behind the label fluctuates depending on the constellation of evolving meanings that exist behind the name. What this suggests is that in naming 23

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ourselves teacher educators or particular practices teacher education inquiry into the meaning enables the intimate scholar to develop knowing about the meaning of these names. On the other hand, what Alice suggests is that when we name ourselves the action, practices, experiences that coalesce in the name are potentially shifting even as the name is applied. Yet, developing understanding into identity-formation as a teacher educator begins when we or someone else names us as that. Providing a name for some set of practices, experiences, obligations, roles, and responsibilities identifies a place for exploring this more. To consider what it means to name and be named as a teacher educator seems like a good beginning point. We recognize that naming oneself as a teacher educator is not only an act of identity-formation and meaning-making, but additionally it brings into tension and resonance (Crites, 2001) the fluid character of our identity as teacher educators. Naming practices and the giving and taking up of names across institutional and cultural contexts is not a straightforward process. Across our lives we change our names or we embrace and reject names given to us by others as well as group affiliations or diagnosis (e.g., Albott & Bruning, 1970; Ceynar & Gregson, 2012; Wehmeyer, 2013). We take up new titles or names, and abandon or retire old ones and throughout this process our identity forms, stabilizes, and shifts again. We realize that being named, wherein some entity attempts to define who we are, can be an act of control since by labeling us in particular ways boundaries can be placed around our spheres of influence and obligations. Connections and commitments can be specified. Dickinson’s (2007) examination of the tension between official and unofficial names from the time of the Soviet control over the Ukraine explores the nuances of resistance and choice inherent in such practices. Agency is always part of this process because regardless of the official names we are given, we determine which ones we embrace and which we resist which ones we accept as “true” (De Pina-Cabral, 2010). When we revisited work that explored our own process of becoming teacher educators (Arizona Group, 1994, 1996, 1997, 2007; Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2014) three things about identity-formation as a teacher educator in relationship to naming and being named became clear to us: the narrative character of the names we label our identity with, the difficulty we had in naming ourselves, and the difference in the meaning of the same name when applied by the university rather than by us (tension between the name the university gives and our taking up a name even though the name itself might be the same).

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NARRATIVE QUALITY OF NAMES In our analysis, we came to realize the narrative quality of a name. While naming ourselves or being named can be an act of positioning, it can also represent the beginnings of an assemblage that can shift and change as we uncover the meanings behind the name. According to Harre´ and van Langenhove (1999), when we assert a position, each position asserted contains a storyline and implicit in the storyline is an orchestration of life choices and experiences and the integration and interrelationship of people, events, and commitment. Thus, a name carries within it the stories that define and animate it; as a result, it can in many ways operate as a narrative frame which integrates and organizes the disparate names with which we label ourselves. When the names we call ourselves operate as narrative frames (Pinnegar, 1995) then, as MacIntrye (2001) has asserted about stories, embodied in names are the values and commitments that guide our lives.

THE DIFFICULTY OF NAMING ONESELF Another difficulty revealed in our ongoing work on identity-formation as a teacher educator is that from the beginning we have struggled to resolve the range of labels and names we carried as teacher educators. Dickinson (2007) contends that we never reference ourselves with a single name and that the names by which we reference ourselves are a heteroglossia which according to Bakhtin refers to the text of a literary work, wherein the heteroglossia found in the text is the diversity of voices, styles of discourse, or points of view held together and granted coherence by the juxtaposition of the texts and the meanings within them. Dickinson is arguing that a name (as our example of Alice from Alice in Wonderland suggests) contains within it this diversity of voices. She explains, from the perspective of Bakhtin (1981), that centripetal and centrifugal forces are at work certain names act as centripetal forces that stabilize and make determinate our sense of who we are or what a place is and the constellation of names acts as a centrifugal force that destabilizes the meaning of a name of a person or place. One of the things evident in our accounts of identity-development from our analysis of our earliest letters (Arizona Group, 1994), through our reconceptualization (Arizona Group, 2007) and finally reinterpretation (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2007, 2014), is that we struggle with the multiplicity of names we call ourselves. We struggle with how to bring together the

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names of daughter, mother, wife, friend, colleague, and teacher educator in such a way that we capture a narrative framework that can guide us in the construction of our lives as teacher educators. Just as telling is our struggle of how to name ourselves as teacher educators that would allow us to capture what exactly we meant when we named ourselves as teacher educators in any way other than using slashes (teacher/teacher educator/university professor/researcher) (represented by Guilfoyle, 1995). Our resolution of this dilemma is our assertion of our identity with the name teacher educator (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2014).

IMPOSITION OF NAMES While we reference ourselves in our context at the university with multiple names (including our titles and personal and professional names) there is a tension around taking up a name or having it imposed upon us a difference between teacher educator as an identity taken up, a role we put on, or a label forced on us. This tension resides in the contrast between obligations and responsibilities forced on us versus those we willingly take up. The tension that resides within naming and being named is uncovered when we consider the two names thrust on us by our universities and by public schools. These institutions name us as professor or teacher educator. Both names have a socio-relationship presence as well as a historic one and context and agency usually regulates when we are labeled what. These multiple names and meanings of names represented by us as a physical being bring to mind the quote from Deleuze with which we began this book. Davey (2013) explains that the label teacher educator often has negative connotations and usually positions us on the margins of the work we value most the education of teachers. When our institutions or people within them name us as teacher educators there is almost always a pejorative tone to the label. Their use of the label attempts to position us as less than real academics and professors intellectually and socially. When school districts label us in this way, they position us as separate from them and impugn our status as teacher (for them we are not “real” teachers). When we are named as professors by universities, this pulls us in under the control of rank and status documents, productivity demands at the university, and obligations and responsibilities to serve on university committees. When public schools name us as university professors, they position us and our knowledge as irrelevant. Often accompanying the name might be some

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statement about us as being ivory tower having no understanding of practice. Again, as Dickinson (2007) explains, official labeling attempts to control our identity by rendering it unitary, static, and determinate (Vanassche & Kelchtermans, 2014). When we name ourselves as teacher educators, as positioning theory maintains (Harre´ & van Langenhove, 1999), our narratives as teacher educators represented by the name also assert our sense of our obligations, responsibilities, and duties. Furthermore, doing so suggests the roles available for us and others. In this way, the meaning and value of ourselves as teacher educators infuse the name. For us, the understanding of its meaning and its potential for meaning-making in guiding our action and interaction imbues the name with deeper, richer ethical and moral coherence and resonance. It names social relationships and interaction, our understanding of the history of the name, our commitment to preparing new generations of teachers, and our obligations to the students they will educate (Arizona Group, 1997).

NUANCES OF NAMING AND BEING NAMED We begin a discussion of the nuances of naming and being named as teacher educators and its relationship to identity in teacher education, exploring being and becoming and the act of naming. Next we consider the act of naming, the power of naming, the process involved in the act of naming and being named as teacher educator, the integrative and disintegrative properties of naming, and finally, the position of naming in developing an understanding of identity as a teacher educator.

Naming and the Relationship between Being and Becoming We have argued that identity is a matter of becoming with the process centered as Deleuze (1990) suggests more clearly in the frame of becoming than in being or stasis. As we act to form identity as teacher educators our image of ourselves and who and what we are shifts. Indeed when we stop to examine the self at a point in time we reveal who we are “being” at that moment and in recognizing who we are “being” we immediately once more move into a space of becoming. At moments when we recognize who it is we are “being,” we name ourselves. Sometimes these moments of being actually

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occur when someone names us. As we recognize and accept the name as accurate or we reject it we reveal to ourselves who we are. But this is always a destabilizing process. So while our naming can stabilize meaning it also destabilizes it because again as Alice suggests who we are and what we mean by what we call ourselves is evolving and shifting at the moment we name ourselves. In this way the process of being and becoming is captured by our acts of naming and the meaning behind both the act and the naming. For identity-formation as a teacher educator, while we may at a moment of time recognize our “being” a teacher educator, we understand at that moment what “being” a teacher educator means. Because embodiment and tacit knowledge are involved as part of that recognition, the label teacher educator always means more than we can accurately articulate and as we make the meaning of being a teacher educator explicit at that moment all that is implicit also overwhelms us. Thus our identity as teacher educator seems stable and determinant and then almost simultaneously becomes unstable and indeterminate again. The process surrounding naming and being named is central in developing an identity as a teacher educator and in understanding what it means to be one. Recognizing who we are being can involve our being “named” by others but usually involves a “naming” of ourselves. What we mean by naming is an act by which we take up a name and in taking up the name we account for who we are as human beings. At the university we are officially named as “teacher educator” but it is as we self-label we name ourselves teacher educators that the name gains both official and unofficial sanction and is infused with the meaning we bring to the label rather than the official meaning, even if the difference is only a nuanced one. The act of naming ourselves involves bringing into relationship and coherence the many names through which we name ourselves. The names we give ourselves have history, represent social conditions and relationship. This relates to MacIntyre’s work on identity where he argues that we bring coherence to our identity as we bring together the disparate names along with their social histories and the meaning of the context or situation captured by the name. By creating this kind of coherent resonant narrative captured by the name we give ourselves, we instantiate the values inherent in our identity as well.

The Act of Naming Our identity emerges and is accounted for by the constellation of names we give ourselves, as well as our perception and acceptance of names others

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give us. In uncovering our identity, we recognize that the names we give ourselves and those we accept from others never have equal weight or value. Indeed we may often consider some names “truer” than others (de Pina-Cabral, 2010). According to Dickinson (2007) it is in this interplay of the centripetal and centrifugal forces within the heteroglossia of the multiple names with which we label ourselves that nuances of identity emerge. De Pina-Cabral (2010) argues that when we consider the constellation of names with which we label and are labeled (revealing our identity to ourselves and others), identity “can no longer be seen as ‘representation’ but is plural and a constant process of social construction in interaction with an array of objectifications or names of the self” (p. 306). When I select a name for myself at a particular place and time, I am communicating something about the relationships of the array and the ways in which these names and labels are orchestrated within my identity at that moment. An important part of the process of identity-formation generally and within teacher education specifically involves how we name ourselves and how we are named by others. Of course, the names that represent us include our first and last names, nicknames, family names, titles, and positions but naming ourselves can also involve referencing ourselves with roles we inhabit (the scholar, the friend, the teacher), characteristics we possess (the kind one, the crazy one), or skills and talents we have (the dancer, the thinker, the klutz, the athlete). In articulating the problematics of the ways in which we label people with disabilities, Wehmeyer (2013) makes a point that is relevant here, “… what we name and call a condition [or a person or role] far too often has consequences for how others perceive the person and how the person perceives him or herself; there are consequences for the person’s identity in other words” (p. 122). Ronnie Davey (2013) in introducing her study on teacher educator identity-development names teacher education as a career on the cusp. She argues: … it is not only the nature, location and delivery of teacher education that has been on the brink or “cusp” of change. The international literature on teacher education also firmly positions the work of teacher educators on a different kind of “cusp” on the margins of academic life mainly because of its strong continued affiliation with the teaching profession …. “On the cusp” connotes the idea not only of a career in process of re-formation, but also a professional life spent on the “verge,” a community on the periphery or the fringes rather than at the center of education. (p. 1)

Her image here is a profession in some ways either teetering on the edge of a precipice or being pushed to the margins. In her listing of “nature, location, and delivery,” she suggests the contextual features that situate

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teacher education within the current milieu. She lists “nature, location, and delivery” as primary features of teacher education that also endanger it and clearly positions teacher education as a profession on the “fringes.” Each of these factors, the nature of teacher education, the location of teacher education, and the delivery of teacher education, contributes uncertainty to perceptions of teacher education held by the public, the teachers we educate, and ourselves as teacher educators as we try to positively resolve the conflicting obligations, duties and responsibilities within teacher education that contribute to our difficulties in negotiating teacher educator identities.

The Power of Naming Naming has power. As Rosenblum and Pinker (1983) argue, names are a word magic of a particular kind since the name we call a thing or group of things is its soul and when we know the names we have power over their souls. Indeed, many times by providing a name for ourselves we call into existence an identity and we can either resonate with or resist the label we have given ourselves or that others have given us. An important aspect of identity-formation is naming and being named. For decades psychologists have argued that a name is integral to an adult’s personality and is a necessary part of a child’s social development (Albott & Bruning, 1970). For most of us our name (and the labels we reference ourselves with) can be an important part of our identification of the values we hold and experiences we seek. In taking up a name, as Gee (2000) articulates, we can mark our affinity with certain groups (Affinity Identity). Further, the way in which we are spoken of in different discourses (community, school, home, friends) specifies our Discourse Identity and may shape not just our response in the world but also the response of others toward us. When we are connected to a particular institution, naming us as part of or related to the institution (Institutional identity) has implications for opportunities offered, potentials for experience, and obligations incurred. Most cultures have naming traditions some of which relate to how and what children are named, when names are changed, how relationships are signaled, and what names mean. Among African-American mothers, giving children ethnic names is an indicator of their having higher self-esteem (Anderson-Clark, 2010). Women may agonize about whether to take their husbands name at marriage (Dralle & Mackiewicz, 1981) and whether to keep or change it after divorce. In both situations researchers assert that women’s decisions to change their name indicate things about their personality as well as influence their identity (Ceynar & Gregson, 2012).

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Personal names influence how identity is formed and enacted (Albott & Bruning, 1970; Wehmeyer, 2013). Research has shown that the features of peoples’ first names can predict the life time outcomes concerning educational and economic attainment, and social status (Aura & Hess, 2010). Figlio (2005) found that children’s first names could predict student achievement. He also found that boys who were given girls names were more likely to exhibit disruptive behaviors in their early adolescent years (Figlio, 2007). Names have power. Names can be sacred and in many cultures there are prohibitions against saying the name of deity. In addition some cultures have prohibitions against speaking the name we have been given or in speaking the names of others. This is often because there is a cultural sense that the name captures the soul of a human being. Special educations’ ongoing concern about the impact of being named by one label rather than another and the influence it potentially has for an individual’s development of competence and potential is a more immediate reminder of the power we weld when we name other humans. When we name ourselves, we enact our agency as well as our identity communicating our connection to others, marking our affiliations, and indicating our values, obligations, duties, and commitments.

The Process in Naming and Being Named as Teacher Educator As Erikson (1968) always asserted, identity is an ongoing and life-long process. Through our experience we confront conflicts between our desire and our obligations and we take up and enact values. As we resolve the cultural conflicts, the biological process in play, and our psychological state, we build an identity but our identity can fluctuate. Sometimes we resolve past poorly resolved conflicts and at others we retreat and our identity suffers. Often people working with Erikson’s theory use his charts and graphs to make identity-formation appear static rather than fluid. They categorize individual’s identity in either/or ways. But Erikson’s idea that identity is continually forming and reforming in relationship to our biology, our psychological state, and our context (social position and interaction and culture) suggests that identity-formation is never once and for all, but a process. Daley (1992), in her feminist work on the creation of a female archetype of the self, describes this evolving process of identity-making as follows: “Be/Leaving,” her increasing realization, and her “Be-coming” all of

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which deepen her ability to participate in “ever Unfolding Be-ing” (p. 3). In our work on our experience in becoming teacher educators within the context of the academy, we are very clear that our identity-formation as teacher educators has always been a process with ups and downs (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2014) in many cases articulated and referenced through issues surrounding naming ourselves and being named by others. In telling a narrative, we take experience we have lived and create beginning and endings out of things we may have experienced as middles and middles out of things we once thought of as beginnings or endings (Leitch, 1986). This is a process of interpretation and meaning-making. As we have argued names are narrative in nature. They contain the kernel of a narrative within them and as we select this name rather than or in relationship to another we engage in a narrative action that allows us to uncover and explore the meaning we are making and might make of the identity we name ourselves with. When we attempt to make sense of our experience: … we often lay stories of our past experiences alongside our work to help us make meaning of the analysis or to explain the meanings we are making. In that moment, our past stories become open for retelling and reinterpretation and our experiences as well as their meanings shift or are deepened since what appears settled and done is now open. (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2012, p. 3)

When we name ourselves, as James Baldwin’s (1963) The Fire Next time explains concerning his experience observing his brother, we see ourselves and who we are at a particular moment in time and in that moment of naming we open up all the other selves we have been (the other names we have called ourselves). In naming ourselves with a particular name such as teacher educator we open then for retelling and reinterpreting all of our past experiences with that identity. As teacher educators, with a history of being teachers then, we acted in the role of teacher educators while we were teachers. Often we have been student teacher supervisors, cooperating teachers, practicum advisors. In these roles, whether we named ourselves in that way or not, as we became school-based teacher educators, we recall these experiences and recognize that our current identity as a teacher educator emerged from those experiences. In the very act of renaming ourselves within those experiences as teacher educators, we reanimate our understanding of what exactly we mean when we name ourselves teacher educators and how this naming might be similar to and different from earlier ones. This process of being and becoming, living, telling, retelling, and reimagining for reliving (Clandinin, 2013; Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) is the process through which we become teacher educators and also make sense of what we mean by that.

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Integrative and Disintegrative Properties of Naming Campbell (1972) writes that an affective symbol hits one where it counts: … [and] immediately elicits a response … There is some kind of throb of resonance within … like the answer of a musical string to another equally tuned … when the vital symbols of any given social group evoke in all its members responses of this kind, a sort of magical accord unites them as one spiritual organism. (p. 90)

Names can represent images or symbols of the self even as we name ourselves as teacher educators. This quote, which focuses on the power and resonance of symbol in our lives, is relevant to our identity-making as teacher educators. As we take up the name of teacher educator many of us experience this kind of resonance, one that links together not only all the conceptions of self-inherent in our naming of ourselves as teacher educators but it also connects us to others who name themselves similarly. In this way names are integrative in that they account for our individual identity connecting our disparate images or conceptions of self through a single name. They are also integrative since they connect us to others who account for themselves with similar terms. The resonance from our naming ourselves as teacher educators creates integration within our identity as teacher educator and also connects us to the larger community of those who account for themselves similarly. Thus, naming our identity is integrative. The name teacher educator serves as a bridge, it links together our past images of self that are relevant, our current experiences within the context where we work, and the possible future selves available to us. Markus and Nurius (1986) in discussing the concept of possible selves in relationship to identity-formation argue that as we name ourselves not all things we humans could be are available but what is available are those selves we might adopt given our talents, experiences, abilities, and past identity. Viewing the name of teacher educator as a bridge between past and future opens a space for imagining and reimagining what a teacher educator is and might be. As Clandinin (1995) reveals, in such a space opportunity for constructing a different narrative for being a teacher educator is opened for individuals and for teacher education as a community. Because this space opens possibility it can also be a space of disruption wherein rather than being integrative naming result in disintegration. In drawing together the various ways we name and are named, other paths are opened and the constellations of possibility may overturn our identity. Unfortunately, the integration of our various names into a coherent whole

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as teacher educator can actually result in a jumbling of names and our attempts to integrate just when we may be overwhelmed with the variability within our identity can disrupt our identity as teacher educator. As we draw together, faculty member, academic, teacher, colleague, etc., into the name teacher educator and weave together the elements of our other life roles as part of this name, the centrifugal forces of the variability behind the names may result in a disintegration of our sense of selves and our identity as teacher educator. Since being a teacher educator always exists in a space of becoming, the potential for disruption is ever present. Markus and Nurius (1986) contend that the various possible selves are dynamic not static since, “they represent specific, individually significant hopes, fears, and fantasies” (p. 954). Hopes, fears, and fantasies also represent passions and hesitancies and are therefore volatile. We continually struggle as teacher educators to assert our interpretation against the one society may promote. As regimes of accountability are currently ever present, the institutional grip of accountability (as articulated by Ball, 2003) may lead us to despair and to abandon our identity as teacher educator. As we struggle to bring our lived identity experiences into narrative coherence, we may be overcome, particularly in the case of the name teacher educator, with the marginalized, disrespectful, incompetent connotations of the name and our public representation and lived experiences of our positive and integrative interpretations of the name may be exposed to the secret interpretations we also hold. In that moment our sense of identity may fragment, fracture, or disintegrate. Rolling (2004), in exploring the difficulty of naming himself as he completed his doctoral work and was dealing with the death of his father, provides a description of his struggle with that state, As an individual, I seek a foster name, a reorganizing image. What shall I call myself now that I can no longer call myself a doctoral student, now that Jim Rolling is deceased and my nickname, Jim-Jim, is bereft? How shall I do research if I do not occupy a framework? (p. 872) … In hindsight, I have wondered why my self-image as a Rolling does not hold. Why does it slip away from me? I hold tenaciously to my name, to its correct spelling and pronunciation, yet the name does not adhere to my image. Now, image peels away from name. (p. 874)

Because identity-making as a teacher educator is not a point of arrival but always a moving point a becoming we constantly seek to take advantage of the integrative properties of our identity. What is integrative is often our “image-making” or the image we hold of ourselves as a teacher educator: an image we strive to actualize in the living of our lives.

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In speaking of the power of the integrative function of image-making, Ambareva (2006) explains: “Image-making” means that a man constructs and follows a desired image of himself and tries to behave in a way that harmonizes with this image. The presence of “image” … is explained as self-positioning … as aesthetic self-presentation. This concept … affects all spheres of human life, because always and everywhere there have been a strong dependence of identity on image. (p. 221)

We seek to take advantage of the integrative power of our image of teacher educator which narrates our identity and contains frameworks that guide us in action and interaction as well as the commitments, obligations, and ethics we embrace. Simultaneously, our action in working toward better representing the image we have of the name teacher educator, threatens to disrupt it. Through our being wakeful to the power of naming ourselves as teacher educator we become able to ground ourselves in a new sense of that identity and a new orientation to the world.

Naming and Developing an Understanding of Identity as a Teacher Educator Martin (1991) states, “Names can be more than tags; they can convey powerful imagery. So naming proposing, imposing, and accepting names can be a political exercise” (p. 83) as he argues naming is a political process and this chapter considers how naming and being named represents the political context in which we as teacher educators take up our lives. Taking up the demands of “becoming” a teacher educator in a space where we act as one is always a struggle. In a university context, teacher educators are a bridge between the university and its politics and the public schools and theirs. Our name as teacher educator marks that bridge as educators we share the designation that covers all faculty members and public school personnel, but the label of teacher marks our evolutionary responsibility toward teaching we hold responsibility to the teaching of teachers and our responsibility to teach them to teach others. Thus in our name we are simultaneously positioned politically as both inferior and superior. Inferior in that teacher education, as a department or entity, and teacher educators, within a university, are often portrayed as less than less scholarly (more connected to practice), less competent (since our field intersects with most disciplines but focuses on the practical), and often simply less intelligent. Superior in that we usually understand more about pedagogy and what is necessary to engage the students sitting in our classrooms not

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only in learning but also in educating them so that they can engage their own students. Superior in that we need to have knowledge not only of a single content area but also how to integrate the ethics, morals, dispositions as well as pedagogy our students will need to act as teachers and promote the learning of their students (see Crowe & Berry, 2007). This dissonance, inherent in our name and always present in our experience, makes it imperative that as teacher educators we have a deep understanding of our position and its value. It is important that we have a clear image of how we will meet the challenges we face. We must open space for others on campus (those who teach teachers the content of science, social studies, mathematics, and the humanities) and for those teachers who work to mentor teacher candidates in field experiences to see themselves as teacher educators (Orland-Barak, 2014). Ironically, as countries across the world face the challenges of improving the quality of education for the students in their countries, they seek to upgrade teacher educators to increase the status of their position and the enterprise of teacher education (Darling-Hammond & Lieberman, 2012). But just at this moment when across the world there is a recognition of the value and importance of teacher education, policy makers, educational researcher, business men, and economist seek to critique and reform and in the process usually represent teacher education and teacher educators as deficit. So while there is this attention on the worldwide stage, teacher educator identity-formation and our act of naming ourselves as teacher educators is an intimate and private act. Through our experiences and our understanding of the obligations, duties, responsibilities, and roles (of ourselves and others) in our action as teacher educators, we act as teacher educators. As we act we recognize those moments when we are most clearly “being” teacher educators. At that moment we name ourselves as teacher educators and we are immediately thrust into an awareness of what it takes to be a good teacher educator and we are suddenly in a space of identityformation again a space of becoming a teacher educator. Part of becoming a teacher educator involves taking up the name of teacher educator from the position and perspective of one who values and embraces the identity and the commitments, the obligations, ethics, and duties inherent in the name. This taking up the name of being a teacher educator (always in the process of becoming one as well) should be an act of agency and involve embodying that identity in accord with personally held definitions rather than an act of submission to the imposition of that name constrained by the institutional definitions and constraints in an act of self-positioning and assertion.

CHAPTER 3 PATHWAYS AND EXPERIENCE As Davey (2013) explains, teacher education is a “career on the cusp” (p. 1) with a marginalized status. Ironically, while teacher education may in some places appear to be endangered this very endangered nature coupled with the seductive quality of its potential to alter teaching makes it appear to some as a sexy profession. In the public discourse of blame and change focused on education, teacher educators become simultaneously potential villain and hero. As countries grapple with how to improve the quality of student learning, the quality of teaching and preparation for it swiftly become a focus of policy makers and politicians. Traditionally, teacher educators working at tertiary educational institutions began as teachers (Clifford & Guthrie, 1988). Indeed in some places the original path to professorship in a discipline began with teaching in public schools. In the current context, however, pathways into the position of teacher educator have diversified within and across countries and gotten more complex so that now not every teacher educator even those within a department focused on teacher education began as teachers in primary and secondary schools. This means that they began their career as teachers of beginning teachers as beginning teachers themselves still they act in teacher educator roles. While we may name ourselves as teacher educators, what that means, what kind of experience and education we bring, and who gets named in that role vary across settings (countries, states, provinces, and cities). In this chapter, we begin by exploring the implications for the narrative quality of naming ourselves as teacher educators for our experience as teacher educators and our process of becoming teacher educators the process of identity-formation. We consider the variety of pathways for becoming a teacher and the implications of those pathways for who might take up the name of teacher educator or act in such roles. We then explore the implications of the potential pathways and experiences of teacher educators for being and becoming a teacher educator and its relationship to the meaning of the identity of teacher educator. Finally, we return to the narrative nature of identity-formation. We consider Crites’ (2001) conceptions of the sacred and the mundane to explore the value and challenge of this increasing variety on identity-formation as teacher educator. 37

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Before we begin, however, we want to turn to definitions of teacher education from an international perspective because we know that the terminology and the concepts are not universal.

PREPARING TEACHERS IN DIFFERENT COUNTRIES From the various reports, we found general information that allows us an opportunity to compare and often generalize about similarity among countries. The next two tables describe the requirements to become an elementary teacher (Table 2) and a secondary teacher (Table 3) in some countries around the world. We prepared these tables from various sources to offer examples and selected countries based on the availability of information. There are other tables in other reports that address teachers’ lives and salaries and safety and classrooms and more, however, given the focus of this chapter, we think these tables provide a sense of similarity and difference. As we attempt to see small across this terrain, we see not the lives of particular cultures and teachers but a homogenous grouping. Looking at the tables we can see the potential for similarity, generalizability, and the expression of universality. For example, we were interested in how often it appears that teachers, whether elementary or secondary, can become teachers by only gaining a university degree. Yet we wonder if what appeared to be universal or typical across country really helps us understand the terrain.

WHAT IS TEACHER EDUCATION LIKE IN VARIOUS COUNTRIES? Seeing small across the terrain for teacher educators, we had less success finding sources but had our own current experience and understanding as teacher educators. Teacher educators are less the focus of studies sponsored by international organizations causing us to wonder about this absence on the terrain. We do know, however, that the term teacher educator can be defined in many ways across a variety of contexts. Several years ago during a visit to Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, one of us worked with Mieke Lunenberg and talked about the lives of teacher

Pathways and Experience

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educators. These conversations continued for two weeks face-to-face and via email for several months before we realized that who we labeled as teacher educators, what we identified as their roles, and what we asked them to do were quite different even when the words or definitions appeared similar, often we talked using the same words and came to discover the existence of differences. To help us think about it we created a simple table to identify the differences and similarities (Table 4). In Table 4, we added Brazil and Australia to broaden our understanding (Hamilton, Loughran, & Marcondes, 2009). Seeing small allows us to see difference in the ways countries generally consider teacher educators. Recently we were reminded of this desire to universalize the role of teacher education and teacher educators while reviewing a manuscript from a European author. In the well-written and well-presented text, the author continuously made claims about teacher educators as if all teacher educators had similar backgrounds and preparations. The focus of the work centered on strong preparation for teacher educators, a worthy goal, yet the lack of recognition of contextual differences is problematic. We recognize that the use of categories allows readers to look across the differences along our terrain as we attempt to understand our world. As we do, similarities emerge, among content areas, political positioning, and some characteristics of the teachers and/or teacher educators. In turn, we consider the ease with which we could universalize understandings and overlook differences. For example, in elementary programs where we have a stronger sense of the developmental process for children and what adults need to do in relation to those children, it seems easy to generalize. As those students progress in their schooling and develop into adolescents, comparisons can be more difficult. Still, seeing small across our terrain of teaching and teacher education, we see that context matters. While the questions about the teachers of children and teachers who educate our teachers are important, they fall beyond the constraints of this chapter. As we return to the question of preparing teacher educators (who prepare teachers) and the work that informs the knowledge base of teacher education, then issues of citation and publication need to be examine. For example, in a recent special issue on globalization in a prominent journal, we see the points we make here reinforced. While the articles are interesting and 50% of the authors are international, American authors and citations still dominate the issue. We do note, however, that the international authors, in comparison to the American authors, are far more likely to cite text published outside the United States. According to Gingras and Moshab-Natanson (2010), this represents imbalance and identifies those

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authors who are/are not European or North American-dependent. We wonder that if we prepare teacher educators to prepare teachers based mostly, if not solely, on the works found within a single country, are we preparing our teachers and teacher educators in a way that blinds them to the 21st century world and hinders their ability to even envision this world.

NARRATIVE QUALITY OF NAMING PATHWAYS AND EXPERIENCE The names we are given and the names with which we choose to name ourselves are sociohistoric. Names have a history and in asserting or taking up a name we place ourselves within a context and in relationship to others in the current milieu and within the past. We indicate genealogy, groups of belonging, privileges, and obligations to which we are subject. Thus, names position us within a storyline. In this way, as Harre´ and van Langenhove (1999) explain, naming has implications for the positions we take as teacher educators, the storylines we try to live out, and the intentions and purposes behind our actions. Just as a story brings into relationship characters, connections, events, incidents, conflicts, and intentions, a name contains within it similar seeds. In naming myself as a teacher educator, for teacher candidates, I am immediately identifiable as a character or actor within their typical and atypical narratives of their process and pathway to becoming a teacher (Pinnegar, 2005). The name, teacher educator can also represent storylines of power negotiations and differentials between schools, colleges-universities-teacher preparation institutions, as well as between policy makers and practitioners. Feldman (2002) in providing an analysis of an existential crisis of his own uncovers the nuances of meaning and his process of taking up the name of teacher educator. He says: My awareness of the existential nature of the crisis led me to change my way of being a professor in a college of education. The constraints that I felt began to evaporate. Their truthfulness were gone as I realized I had been living in bad faith and had been acting out of the fear and anxiety that led to my self-estrangement (Sartre, 1956). I chose to act to declare myself a teacher educator. I used my freedom that I was now aware of to choose to leave the doctoral area in math and science education and to fully ally myself with the education of teachers and teacher educators, and with research on teaching and teachers. (p. 69)

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In this selection we are confronted by Feldman’s (2002, 2006) articulation of negotiations and wonderings about the nuanced pathway in his act of taking up an identity as a teacher educator and his decision at a moment of “declaring” his being a teacher educator. In this act of declaration of his status as teacher educator he moves forward on his pathway to becoming a teacher educator. In that moment of naming himself, he reasserts his commitment to living out a narrative of that identity in a way that reflected the story of teacher educator he wanted to tell, rather than the one he had been living. He acted to retell and ultimately relive (Clandinin, 2013) positioning himself to live and tell new and different stories of himself as teacher educator. In our work (Arizona Group, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 2007), similar kinds of uncovering of our identity and identity-formation as a teacher educator can be found. Our explanations of the meaning we made of our name “teacher educator” contain threads and seeds of the narratives that present our process in being and becoming a teacher educator. Indeed, we return again and again to give voice to our pathway. We articulate the stories behind our identity-formation as an ongoing process of being and becoming. In these accounts we reveal how we wove together the names we could have called ourselves and the strands of our experience, our obligations, our duties, our commitments into a whole. MacIntyre (2001), in talking of the moral quality of coherent identity narratives for both representing and giving direction in living our lives, articulates the importance of the identity with which we name ourselves for directing our experience and animating our pathway in being and becoming. Like Feldman, when we assert ourselves as teacher educators, this assertion represents the storylines we have lived in the past but more importantly those we hope to live out and the moral commitments we made, make, and are making. Since names have a narrative quality, they capture holistically the stories we live by (Clandinin & Connelly, 1999). Yet, even when we continue to assert a name for ourselves, like teacher educator, the experiences we have and the storyline of our lives we strive to live out change in our act of living it. Like Feldman (2002, 2006, 2009), we make commitments about the shape our life will take, our orientation in negotiating challenges, and tensions we confront, but in the very process the pathways we take and the experiences we have shape our identity and though the name may remain the same and even as MacIntyre (2001) explains our commitments and values may remain the same in our process of becoming teacher educators what it means to take up that identity shifts and our experiences and pathways influence and shape that shift and are influenced and shaped by it.

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A VARIETY OF PATHWAYS FOR BECOMING A TEACHER Traditionally, most of those who work as teacher educators in post-secondary or tertiary educational contexts began as teachers (Clifford & Guthrie, 1988; Teichler & Ho¨hle, 2013). The pathway to being a teacher educator for many teacher educators involved being a teacher for 3 18 year olds in an educational setting. Sometimes through invitation from a university or sometimes by deciding to get advanced education or other life changes, they find themselves taking up the role of teacher educator in increasingly serious ways (Davey, 2013). An ongoing aspect of their identity-formation revolves around negotiating their fundamental identity as a teacher with their fundamental identity as a teacher educator. Their experience as a teacher and their pathway from teacher to teacher educator have implications for being and becoming a teacher educator and the meaning the individual makes of the phrase teacher educator. Often the tension around the meaning of teacher as a person who is also a teacher educator continually reverberates in their identity-formation as teacher educator. The pathway to teaching, just like the pathway to teacher educator, is not unitary. Thus, to consider who might take up the label of teacher educator and the experience they bring to their identity as teacher educator is understood better if we understand the diversity of pathways to being a teacher and the potential positions within that pathway that teacher educators might occupy. Regardless of the country, teacher preparation programs appear to have three components: academic coursework, coursework for teaching, and field experiences. Three institutions are usually the potential providers involved in the structure and design of pathways into teaching. These include universities, K-12 schools, and teacher preparation institutions, but this is complicated by the fact that each entity involved may be publicly or privately funded with some of the non-publicly funded institutions being for-profit. In considering the components in relationship to the providers, it offers a way to describe the constellation of pathways into teacher education as well as the positions from which someone might consider herself or himself a teacher educator (Table 1). In examining the chart, we argue that while one provider might most typically provide or be responsible for a particular component, we have observed programs where every provider has been in some way responsible for each component of teacher education and the people in those spaces could be considered teacher educators. Indeed, even when particular providers do not formally deliver particular

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Table 1.

National Definitions of Basic Education.

Basic Education Definitions (Number of Countries)

Countries

Primary education only (8)

Cape Verde, Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Maldives, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Portugal Albania, Bhutan, Botswana, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Ecuador, Guinea, Macao (China), Mexico, Niger, Panama, Tunisia, Zimbabwe Argentina, Brazil, Republic of Korea, Oman, Philippines, Slovenia, Santa Lucia

Primary education plus at least one year of pre-primary education (17)

Primary education plus lower secondary and at least one year of upper secondary education (7) Primary education plus some pre-primary and China, Kenya, Myanmar, Peru, Thailand lower secondary and some secondary education (5) Primary and lower secondary education (76) Remaining countries which use the terms basic education Source: UNESCO (2008). Education for all by 2015.

content they may informally do so. In addition, even if a teacher educator is not assigned responsibility for particular components because of their own commitment or their relationship to the preservice teachers they may deliver aspects of the curriculum informally (Pinnegar, 2005). In many countries (Tables 1 4) the pathway into teacher education involves the university providing some academic coursework. This involves general education courses for all education majors, which usually includes courses in science, humanities, mathematics, composition, social sciences for subject-specific academic preparation for preservice teachers in secondary education (who teach youth from 11 to 19 years old). However, elementary majors routinely draw on content knowledge developed during their own K-12 education to design lessons for and teach concepts to their students. Teacher preparation institutions (or segments of an institution such as Colleges of Education within a university) usually provide the methods, curriculum, management, child and adolescent development, school and society, multicultural education, foundations of education or other teacher preparation coursework. Secondary Education majors may take methods of teaching courses within the department of their subject matter specialization. However, experience as a student drawn from both university and

Becoming Elementary TEACHERS Gathered from UNESCO and Other Reports.

Academic Qualifications

Course of Study

Practice Teaching

Preservice Exam Induction for Teachers

United States

Uni degree + credential High school diploma

Basic studies and pedagogy Basic studies and pedagogy

1 semester (12 weeks)

Yes No

Korea

Uni degree

Japan

Junior college or uni degree

Australia

3-year diploma in teaching

Content area knowledge and pedagogy Content area knowledge and pedagogy Integrated subject matter and pedagogy

Field experience including classroom teaching (8 10 weeks) 4 6 weeks

The Netherlands

Bachelor’s in content area 3 years of Uni degree

China

Portugal

Germany

Uni degree

France

Uni degree

UK

Uni degree

Yes

No program

3 4 weeks

Prefectural certification

Compulsory one year for all new teachers

3 in-school practicums (16 weeks)

No

Required

48 72 weeks Culture, science, and pedagogy

Yes

One or more subject 2 years areas, plus pedagogy and didactics 3-year degree in Some teaching duty during the general studies 2nd year at national teacher training institution Math, English, Tech, & Pedagogy

New teacher induction programs (varies) Organized by individual professional bodies

Assessed classroom teaching (24 weeks)

No programs No

2 state exams

Competitive national recruitment exam No

Mandated by law but no real work with teachers to support PD 18 24-month introduction practice, including seminars New teachers monitored by senior teachers during their first 2 years Individualized for new teachers based on government standards

KNOWING, BECOMING, DOING AS TEACHER EDUCATORS

Elementary

44

Table 2.

Becoming Secondary TEACHERS Gathered from UNESCO and Other Reports.

Secondary Academic Qualifications

Course of Study

Practice Teaching

Preservice EXAM

United States Hong Kong China

University degree and credential

Subject-specific and pedagogy

One semester

State cert exam

Subject-specific and pedagogy

8 weeks

No

Japan Australia

University degree + certification in education Lower associate degree Higher University degree Uni degree 4-year uni degree

Portugal Germany France

University degree graduate university degree University degree

2 subject areas 2 or more subject areas plus pedagogy 3-year focus on a discipline followed by 2-year subject area study at national teacher training institution

UK

Uni degree

Subject-specific

Subject-specific and pedagogy Subject-specific and pedagogy Major discipline and pedagogy

Pathways and Experience

Table 3.

Yes 3 4 weeks 3 sessions of several weeks duration 490 750 hours 8 weeks Some teaching during second year at national teacher training institution Assessed classroom teaching

Prefectural exam No No No Competitive national exam on specific fields No

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Ways to Define Teacher Educators Adapted from the Work of Lunenberg and Hamilton (2008).

• Teaching certification, teaching experience, coursework beyond certification • They have expertise as a teacher but little if any preparation as a teacher educator The Netherlands Experienced teachers; limited (often not compulsory) training as teacher educators. United States

Brazil Australia

Teacher Educators for Students Preparing to Be Primary School and Junior High Teachers

Teacher Educators for Students Preparing to be Senior High Teachers

Teaching certification with teaching experience, usually in public schools, and a doctorate general teacher education or specific content-teaching area. (In the United States there are a variety of institutions that prepare teachers, some are research-extensive institutions, some institutions focus more on teaching.)

Mostly experienced, excellent teachers Mostly experienced, excellent teachers with a master degree in a specific with a master degree in a specific subject or a doctorate; some of these subject; seldom involved in research. teacher educators may be expected to (They work at institutes for Higher fulfill research tasks. (They work at Vocational Education. That is, universities.) institutions that prepare only teachers and offer bachelor degrees. These institutions do not prepare teachers for careers in academia.) The majority of teacher educators have Master’s level degrees. However, when teacher educators teach at the university level they have doctorates in education or in related areas. The traditional route to being a teacher educator was that an experienced successful teacher moved into teacher education as a curriculum method lecturer from which part-time enrollment in a doctorate might follow in order to pursue an academic career.

KNOWING, BECOMING, DOING AS TEACHER EDUCATORS

School-Based Teacher Educators (Cooperating Teachers, Teachers Who Support Students during Practice)

46

Table 4.

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K-12 experience is the backdrop against which knowledge of teaching emerges. Therefore, the practices of all the classrooms students have been in are drawn into their preparation to teach (for an examination of the impact of these on learning to teach, see Holt-Reynolds, 1992; Britzman, 1991). Finally, K-12 schools typically provide field experiences in the form of observations, experiences tutoring students or in after-school programs, and foremost in student teaching experiences. However, even in a typical pathway some programs provide virtual teaching experience as well as media or written cases (another form of field experiences) and many teacher candidates work as teaching assistants during their undergraduate experience. In this way, university and teacher preparation institutions can also provide experience with this component. In addition, the context that frames and the knowledge source that is the basic shape the experience. Table 5 presents a matrix of the components of teacher preparation generally and indicates which institutions might contribute. Whether and how each partner in the education of teacher contributes to teacher preparation and how that participation is orchestrated in an individual program again shapes and forms teacher education. We are aware that in some programs, K-12 schools are the primary site for learning to teach. In these settings non-certified teachers are hired to serve apprenticeships as teacher sometimes with a teacher, but most often as the teacher of record. The K-12 schools in these situations serve as apprenticeship sites. However, in some, if not all, of these programs during the apprenticeship, K-12 teachers or sometimes university faculty or paid consultants or state departments of education provide mentoring or coursework in teacher preparation. In some situations, secondary K-12 teachers begin their apprenticeship by working alongside a teacher in the discipline they plan to teach as aides and through this experience they develop content knowledge for their teaching and then later enter the university as students and take academic and teacher preparation coursework as well as Table 5.

Interaction of Components and Providers.

Components

Academic coursework Teacher preparation Field experiences

Providers/Partners University

K-12 Schools

Teacher Preparation Institutions

Yes Yes Yes (TA’s)

Yes Yes Yes

Yes Yes Yes (virtual)

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being engaged in additional field experiences. We are also aware of programs where teacher candidates’ academic coursework and teacher preparation coursework are mainly provided by the university alone without the use of colleges of education. In the United States (Clifford & Guthrie, 1988), when most teacher candidate were educated in normal schools, those schools potentially delivered all of the content since many of them included as part of the structure lab schools. All but one or two of these entities have disappeared from the U.S. context, but in many countries around the world entities like normal schools (teacher preparation institutions staffed by teacher educators who may or may not have advanced degrees) prepare the country’s teachers. In other countries, universities and teacher colleges partner with the academic content for teacher preparation provided by the university with colleges of education, responsible for advanced degrees in education fields, monitoring and mentoring the faculty at the teachers’ college whose primary responsibility continues to be teacher preparation coursework and supervision. Even when a person pursues a completely alternative route to teaching, analysis of their pathway to teaching and their experience in becoming a teacher will almost always involve the three institutional entities named. There are multiple pathways into being a teacher and enacting teacher roles in preK-12 school settings. Each of these pathways and the experience as a teacher they represent can be the embodied and lived experience from which teacher educators develop their identity as a teacher. Thus, teacher educators who were preK-12 teachers first are not unitary in their experience of what constitutes teacher education or their understanding of how teacher candidates stand in relationship to teacher educators. This also means that what teacher educators identify initially as their obligations, duties, and responsibilities toward the teachers they educate vary. The lived experience of all preservice teachers and even teacher educators includes being taught by teachers from a wide range of paths into teaching and experience in their preparing to teach. Usually, it is experience with a teacher that leads people to choose teaching as a career. However, these are not always positive, rewarding, fulfilling experiences with teachers or teacher educators but often included negative and conflicted experiences as well. Understanding of what it means to be a teacher and teacher educator is based on experiences with teachers and teacher educators along with the individual’s perceptions of the meaning of those experiences. As we articulate in our own exploration of pathways into teaching (Arizona Group, 1995, 1996, 1997), we make visible our identity-formation and the tensions in our being and becoming that continue to challenge us.

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One of the challenges we face as teacher educators who were teachers before we became teacher educators is negotiating the competing stories of teacher and teacher educator. This tension emerges and re-emerges in our identity-formation as a teacher educator (Ritter, 2007). We work to keep the story of teacher and teacher educator as competing stories (Olson & Craig, 2005) and frequently assert our identity as teacher within our role as teacher educator. The challenge we feel is based in a central commitment in our identity as a teacher educator our obligation to unseen children (Arizona Group, 1997). When preservice teachers struggle to negotiate successfully their pathway in becoming a teacher, we may be able to imagine ways that as their teacher we could simplify the content, reduce the requirements, assign them to teach in a more controlled field experience, or limit their responsibility there. We find ourselves in situations where we know we can help them progress and become a teacher, but underneath our imagining is a fundamental question, “If we save them in this instance, will they become the competent qualified teacher their future students deserve?” Similar to this tension are others that have to do with our concerns about quality, content, ethics, experience, all of these emerge and are shaped by the simple fact that we began as teachers and our experience in being and becoming a teacher shapes our experiences as a teacher educator.

IMPLICATIONS OF PATHWAYS TO TEACHING FOR WHO IS A TEACHER EDUCATOR If teachers are asked about the structure of their teacher education experience, as indicated earlier, we soon uncover the range of opportunities to name oneself a teacher educator. Variation in teacher preparation is not always unitary by country while some countries employ only one pathway for preparation as a teacher, others have multiple pathways. We recognize, though they may not, that faculty members located in the disciplines and housed in other colleges who teach content related to mathematics, humanities, science, history, art, are potentially teacher educators. Often the content taught, pedagogy modeled, or values shared are drawn by the preservice teachers into their development as teachers and taken up and integrated into their personal practical knowledge for teaching. Thus, a person teaching a dance class, an introductory history course, a life span development course, a beginning biology course may be the basis on which preservice teachers build their curriculum as teachers.

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Yet, university faculty teaching such courses would resist being named teacher educators nor take kindly to suggestions that they had ethical obligations to the future teaching of their students. As we began to take up an identity as a teacher educator, we also began to recognize the ways in which during our teaching experience we had acted in the role of teacher educator. The obvious situations are those in which we supervised student teachers, intern teachers, alternative route to teaching people, or practicum students. We may not as clearly recognize our role as a teacher educator when we provided professional development for other faculty members. We would be even less likely to have named ourselves teacher educators when we involved our preK-12 students in teaching their peers or provided guidance to mothers or business people or others who volunteered in our classrooms. Most of us as teacher educators have had an experience when a former student, who we taught when we were a teacher or a classroom volunteer, contacts us to let us know that because of their experience in teaching with us, they had determined to become teachers. In the more common roles of mentors, student teaching supervisors, practicum advisors, or professional development providers, preK-12 teachers rarely conceptualize themselves as teacher educators and would resist being labeled in that way. In terms of our pathway and experience in being and becoming a teacher educator, as we consider the many ways in which our university and public school colleagues are actually teacher educators, it broadens the meaning and conception of that identity. We often wonder about the impact on teacher education and identity-formation as a teacher educator if we could enable this this diverse and wide ranging group to conceptualize themselves as teacher educators. What if we animated within them a moral commitment to the preparation of teachers and a recognition of their value and role in preparing teachers, what might be the political, educational, and moral implications of this.

PATHWAYS AND EXPERIENCES OF TEACHER EDUCATORS IN BECOMING TEACHER EDUCATORS As we considered the pathways that teachers take through teacher education (of some variety) and on their journey to become teachers, we argued that teacher educators who move from being teachers to being teacher educators bring collectively this wide range of experience in becoming a teacher

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into their identity-formation and understanding of being a teacher educator. The teachers in Davey’s (2013) study of teacher educators’ development of professional identity all began as teachers. What is of interest here is, just as we have argued, their pathways into being teachers and their experience as teachers and their pathways into becoming teacher educators were not unitary. What is also of interest is that many teacher educators come into being teacher educators without teaching experience and this impacts their identity-development as teacher educators since “being and becoming a teacher” is not a foundational feature of their identity-formation that proceeds their becoming a teacher educator but identity-formation as a teacher is embedded as part of the process of identity-formation as teacher educator (e.g., Newberry, 2014). Teachers who move from teaching into teacher education may make the move through roles and responsibilities they assume in supervising student teachers either in the schools or in the university. Other teachers may be assigned to mentor beginning or stumbling colleagues and this opens opportunity to move into teacher educator roles with advance education following the move. Teacher educators who move from roles of teacher into experience as teacher educators may begin with half-time assignments bridging both arenas of influence. Some teachers determine that they want advanced education and decide to pursue graduate studies. Often, for these, teachers (even if they had not acted in teacher educator roles or named themselves as teacher educators) fund their graduate education by working as student teaching supervisors or teaching assistants in teacher education programs. While we think that the knowledge we gain from being teachers in preK-12 settings has huge implications for identity-formation as teacher educators and the kinds of personal practical knowledge as teacher educators (Clandinin, 1985; Connelly & Clandinin, 1984) we develop, we assert here that the differences in our pathways into teaching, our experiences as teachers, and our pathway from teacher to teacher educator have implications for how we take up our identity as teacher educators and the meaning of that identity. It also has a significant influence on the meaning we make of our practice as teacher educators and the things we know and understand about teaching, becoming and being a teacher, and in our role as teacher educator. Currently increasing numbers of teacher educators come into teacher education and take up an identity as teacher educator who have never taught in preK-12 schools. Some have university teaching experience, some have worked in museum education, some have worked on educational research projects, some have worked as business men or economists, some

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desired to be policy makers and as a result their identity-formation as a teacher educator and their conception of what it means to be a teacher educator may differ drastically from those who came to teacher education through teaching. Just as individual experience makes a difference in both the identityformation and the process of being and becoming a teacher educator, differences in the ways in which countries educate and position people as teacher educators result in differences in how identity as a teacher educator is formed. At this point in time, many countries are upgrading teacher education by merging the teacher colleges with universities requiring the faculty in teacher education to obtain advanced degrees and take on responsibilities for doing research as well as teaching and service time (Davey & Ham, 2010; Davey, et. al., 2011; Geursen, de Heer, Lunnenberg, & Zwart, 2010; Lunenberg, Zwart & Korthagen, 2010; Reynolds, Ferguson-Patrick, & McCormack, 2013; Smith, 2011; Tuvala, Barak, & Gidron, 2011; Walkington, 2005; Zahur, Barton, & Upadhyay, 2002 as examples). Hopefully as Davey (2013) articulates in her study, while background, experience, knowledge, and pathway into teacher education may differ among all our colleagues in teacher education, those who label themselves as teacher educators will share a commitment to preparing teachers to meet the needs of the children they will educate, a concern with social justice, wonderings about what would be the best constellation of coursework and experience for preparing teachers, and a desire to contribute to research conversations about these issues.

RELATIONSHIP OF PATHWAYS TO THE MEANING OF BEING A TEACHER EDUCATOR Importantly, for our exploration of the relationship of pathways and experience in identity-formation is an acknowledgment that context, agency, experiences, and knowledge all vary by individual and all contribute both to our becoming a teacher educator and our action in that role. Though teachers educators’ pathways into teaching and then teacher education may share similarities in any of these features from which our personal practical knowledge is constructed, each teacher educator’s identity-formation (their process of being and becoming) will differ. As Erikson’s (1968) theory of identity suggests, biology (our physical characteristics, talents, abilities, and predispositions), psychology (our intentions, interests, knowledge), and sociality (contexts, cultures, interaction,

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relationships) will form unique constellations and result in both personal and shared meanings behind the identities we take up. The meaningful quality of these differences is evident in the work of the Arizona Group (1995) each of whom were teachers before they became teacher educators. In their study of their process in becoming teacher educators (Arizona Group, 1995), they articulate common themes across their experiences (the role of questions and biography, the influence of images, memories and metaphor, and the recognition of process in their learning); these themes make secret in some way the variability in their pathways and experiences. The contrast in the ways differences play out is evident when we consider Mary Lynn’s and Stefinee’s accounts. Mary Lynn says: When I ask myself how I became a teacher educator, I am left puzzling about the first time I thought about doing that or left wondering if I ever really initiated a learning-tobe-a-teacher-educator process. I suppose though that I first began the process long before I became conscious of it. In the unconscious moments, I worked hard to train teachers to integrate their curricular with multicultural perspectives or gender concerns. I spent long hours designing materials to be presented to teachers for use in their classrooms. But who taught me how to do that? Really no one taught me. I learned by watching those people around me, by reminding myself about what happened in my own classrooms with high school students, by trying to remember that stage of development and how these might fit with what I needed to do. (p. 40)

Notice that Mary Lynn acted in teacher educator roles long before she thought to take up the identity. She developed materials and provided mentoring for teachers focused on how their curricular materials could engage students in understanding multicultural perspectives or addressing gender concerns. She learned to be a teacher educator by watching herself and others as she acted as a teacher. Thus, her sense of her identity and her values, commitments, and obligations as a teacher educator is founded in her identity and experience as a teacher. In contrast, Stefinee says: My method of becoming anything is to get a glimmer of what that thing is and then begin walking in that direction. This particular walk began on the playground of the East Elementary School … we learned what the abbreviation “Ph.D” meant. I remember standing on the playground and looking up at the sky and promising myself … one day I would get a Ph.D. When I entered a doctoral program … I was fulfilling the vow of that ten year old child. I was in some ways being a dilettante. I had left the vocation of teacher, unsure whether I would ever return … I came to my doctoral program to learn what had troubled me most as a teacher how to teach all students … At the University of Arizona, a group of professors … changed my ideas. They (and others) taught me about research on teacher thinking and practical inquiry. I realized that if I wanted to re-experience the process I wished to study, I would need to work in teacher education. Even then I did not label what I was choosing to do as becoming a teacher educator. (pp. 40 41)

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Notice that Stefinee locates the beginning of her move to become a teacher educator in commitments she made early in her life. She left teaching behind to learn about teaching and learning more thoroughly and what she learned at the university and from her professors pushed her into taking up the role of teacher educator out of a curiosity about how it was teachers became teachers even then she did not think of what she was doing as taking up an identity as a teacher educator. Like Mary Lynn, Peggy’s path to becoming a teacher educator began in her experience as a teacher but not in successful experience but in experiences where she felt she was inadequate. In contrast to the other three, Karen came into teacher education out of a commitment. She was focused always on improving the quality of literacy instruction for minority and ethnically diverse students. She says that her “… purpose in entering teacher education is change by promoting justice and equity for all learners” (p. 44). While ultimately all shared common commitments and their definitions of teacher educator identity might seem deceptively similar on the surface, the name of teacher educator left hidden the individual range of meaning and meaning making in their identity-formation as teacher educators. The process of being and becoming a teacher educator for the Arizona Group, the teacher educators in Davey’s study and in Feldman’s discussion of his identity-formation began in their experiences as teachers. However, among teacher educators there are faculty who did not begin their career as teachers. Newberry (2014) explores her identity-formation as one who entered teaching from a position other than experience as a teacher. As her study indicates, our pathways and experience in our process of being and becoming a teacher educator impact our experiences and shapes our identity-formation.

SACRED STORY OF TEACHER EDUCATION AND IDENTITY-FORMATION AS A TEACHER EDUCATOR For most of those in higher education the role of teacher as a faculty member in higher education while not simple is straightforward. It is not simple because teaching is never simple and the teacher at every level must grapple with the relational and ethical obligations that teachers owe their students. However, in general the teaching obligation of a chemistry professor is to educate students about the content that the course description outlines and his/her accountability is to making certain that students if they pass the course have acquired the requisite knowledge. We recognize that other

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faculty members who are not teacher educators may have a long-term commitment to the life experience and development of their students, but we feel that no matter how deeply held that commitment, it may not be as layered and nuanced as our commitments as teacher educators. Our responsibility as faculty members in teacher education is not just to the student who stands before us and participates with us in our classroom, our commitment is also to ensuring their knowledge of content and pedagogy, their ability to design curriculum, to assess student learning designing new curriculum to develop skills, their ability to have open, intimate, appropriate and productive relationships with students so that they will be able to support the continued learning and growth of each of their future students. Crites (2001) in articulating the narrative quality of experience explains that persons living within cultures are shaped and guided by the sacred stories inherent in that culture. As Schalock and Luckasson (2013) and Wehmeyer (2013) explain concerning the naming of “disability,” that names not only shape identity but they also link us to particular groups and call forth the obligations and commitments we feel, thus in being and becoming teacher educators we feel the tension that comes from the sacred story of teacher education we are aware of. Crites (2001) contends that our sacred stories of our culture and our identity are revealed to us in the mundane (everyday) stories we live and tell about our lives. These mundane stories live alongside often in tension with the sacred stories. These mundane stories have the potential to shift sacred stories, because it is in our day-to-day resistance to or instantiation of sacred stories in our mundane narratives and experience that such shifts are made. In taking up identityformation as teacher educators, we may feel the pressure of the sacred stories of university faculty member or public school teacher impinging on our commitments and values as teacher educators. In our process of identityformation as teacher educators, we have power to resist and embrace in our mundane stories lived experiences that reify or alter and are oppositional to sacred stories. We have the ability to shift not only our individual identity-formation as teacher educators but collectively we can shift the sacred story of what it means to be a teacher educator. Clandinin (1995) discusses this phenomenon and her experience in trying to live and bring into being a different sacred story for teacher education. She explains: Recognizing the threats that emerge from living and telling a competing story seems particularly important. In our recent work, we understand that telling and living stories

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KNOWING, BECOMING, DOING AS TEACHER EDUCATORS that compete with the sacred story result in tensions that lead to questioning, awakenings, to transformations. When these tensions appear, we often tell the stories only as accounts of our attempts at re-storying ourselves. Yet these tensions also call us to consider how our re-storying can change our professional knowledge landscape, as competing stories that challenge the dominant plot line are told as viable stories that can survive in a new landscape …. Without imagining, living, and telling new competing stories that question the plot line of the sacred story, little in my lived story as a teacher educator … can change. (pp. 30 31)

We argue here that our identity as teacher educators emerges as we move along the pathway(s) that brought us to teacher education. Such pathways vary by individual, by country, by institution. The variation around the pathways and the meanings of the process and the context are rich sources for productive mining to generate intimate scholarship that can inform teacher education. In this work, more than any other, clearly exploring the context of the work and the experiences along the pathways not only shape the findings of such explorations but also serve as a potential contribution to developing understandings of becoming teachers and teacher educators. As our introductory chapter exploring the arguments from Deleuze makes clear, living our lives along the pathways are neither linear nor singular. Moreover attempts to represent the complexities of potential multiplicities add depth to our understandings of teacher education. Explorations of these processes, assemblages, and multiplicities add much to our knowing in and of becoming teachers and teacher educators.

CHAPTER 4 KNOWLEDGE AS A TEACHER EDUCATOR In considering questions about teacher educator knowledge (how do we know, what is the basis of our knowing, what do we know, and what must we know), we recognize that the answers to these questions are political and depend on our personal orientation toward the goals, purposes, commitments of teacher education, and acting as teacher educators. The answers to questions of knowledge in teacher education are located within our identity of what it means to us to be teachers of teachers, a teacher educator, and what counts as knowledge as we negotiate and enact that identity. Our answers to questions about knowledge in teacher education have emerged in our experiences and understandings that developed and are developing as we engage in becoming teacher educators. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, researchers took an intense focus on developing a knowledge base for teaching (Murray, 1996; Reynolds, 1992, 1989; Shulman, 1987). The idea was that we know a lot about teaching and that all we needed to do to prepare better teachers was to codify and categorize the knowledge and then specify the needed knowledge and try to constrain teacher education programs to deliver particular knowledge. Recently, a concern with developing the knowledge base for teaching and prescriptions for that knowledge base and what teaching knowledge would look like has re-emerged (Ball & Forzani, 2007, 2009; Hiebert, Gallimore, & Stigler, 2002 as examples). The general idea posited by each of the researchers referenced is that if we can codify the knowledge that teachers need to have or in other words construct and present it as formal knowledge (Fenstermacher, 1994) and in this process validate it as generalizable, then preparing teachers can look more like training. Once teacher preparation is reduced to a “training” model, teacher educators become less involved (if they want to be) in the one-on-one labor intensive quality of teacher education. Optimum practices and the knowledge requisite in enacting them can be carefully described and reliable instruments for assessing performance can be specified and validated. Observation protocols for documenting, providing feedback, and evaluation will be straightforward and the ability and power to certify 57

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teachers as “good” in terms of their ability to reproduce best practices becomes the province of teacher education but can be less labor intensive (Bullough, 2008, 2012a, 2012b for critique). If we can codify the knowledge and practices needed for powerful teaching and learning then we can design instruments to assess. This form of teacher preparation as training allows teacher educators to have and maintain emotional distance from the judgments about a particular teacher candidate’s fitness for teaching. Our courses can be more scripted and interchangeable. In contrast, teacher preparation constructed as teacher education focuses, instead, more on educating teachers to teach themselves to teach (Arizona Group, 1995). Such an orientation recognizes that teachers come to teaching with experience and knowledge that is relevant and that this knowledge can be a basis for learning to teach (Bullough & Gitlin, 2001; Clandinin, Davies, Hogan, & Kennard, 1993). The content of teacher education does not rely on “reproducing” specific actions and thinking or emotional response but instead it teaches teacher candidates principles, ideas, theories, and practices and then provides them with experiences which allow them to respond to the problems of teaching and use what they have learned to form themselves as teachers. As Clandinin’s (1985) work demonstrates the embodied knowledge that teachers utilize to make and enact their classroom curriculum is based in the personal and practical (Clandinin & Connelly, 1992; Connelly & Clandinin, 1988). Teacher education from this perspective educates teachers’ judgment equipping them to reason about the issues they confront in the specific cultural milieu and context where they teach acting and developing as curriculum makers (Clandinin & Connelly, 1992; Connelly & Clandinin, 1988). From this position, teachers are embedded in the practice of their teaching the content to be taught, the relationships to be developed among learners, teachers and the process of learning, and the opportunity for students in their classrooms to reach their potential as humans. Indeed, the prescriptions for a knowledge base, those produced earlier and those produced more currently, while acknowledging existence of teachers’ knowledge, in their descriptions of what the knowledge base should be they seem ironically to ignore the experiential, holistic, embodied qualities of such knowledge uncovered in research on teaching. Even though all of these attempts to catalogue a knowledge base for teaching nod to practice and the importance of practice, most take an orientation similar to what Scho¨n (1983) labeled technical rationality. An orientation of technical rationality is one in which the embodied knowing of a human being is eviscerated from his or her practical knowing. As Polanyi (1967) explains, when we attempt to make such knowing explicit and therefore offer it as a product for technical rationality with

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neat categories of propositional knowledge what we can say is far less than what we know and therefore what we present as knowledge is always partial and cut off from the connections and inner connections available to us implicitly in experience. In addition, when we do make our tacit knowledge explicit, it becomes available to us in new ways and connection to our formal, propositional and theoretic knowledge results in our developing new tacit knowledge with potentially more interconnections between our embodied and tacit knowing and our more formal and theoretic knowledge. Both then in relationship to each other shift, expand, and constrain each other (Brubaker, 2010). In this section, we explore our understanding of the kinds of knowing that guides us as teacher educators, what the knowledge is comprised of, and how we gain it. In our consideration of the knowledge of teacher educators, we will explore embodied knowing revealed in our acting in concert with our identity within our practice as teacher educators. We will examine what we know about practical knowledge as revealed in our understanding of practical arguments and the tensions between theoretical knowledge and embodied knowledge revealed in action and practice. We will examine how the knowledge we have can be characterized as personal practical knowledge. Finally, we return to what we know from our experiences in identity-formation and the implications it has both for the knowledge we offer preservice teachers, the character of that knowledge, and the need for each teacher to build their own knowledge base for teaching (their own personal practical knowledge).

KNOWING AS TEACHER EDUCATORS Teacher educators have, pretty much, been left free to develop our identity as teacher educators, to exist in an ongoing space of becoming teacher educators. We have taught ourselves to be teachers, drawing on our experiences and knowledge. In fact, like our teacher candidates, the Arizona Group (1995) argues that no one ever taught them to be teacher educators. Thus, a fundamental characteristic of our knowledge for being and acting as teacher educators is, as Clandinin (1985) might label it “personal practical knowledge for teacher education.” We do not claim that research on teaching, learning, and teacher education is not part of this embodied knowing. Indeed our knowing as teacher educators and our understanding of the meaning of being and becoming a teacher educator shifts in the interaction between learning about learning, teaching, and teacher education and our experience in enacting our identity as a teacher educator. As Stern (2004) indicates, it develops and builds in the present moments of our living

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and acting in particular roles, in particular situations, and in responding moment-by-moment to the typical and unique day-to-day events of our lives. As teacher educators, we recognize that our deepest knowing about educating teachers is embodied, practical, holistic guided, and organized by our commitments, ethics, and relationships. Merleau-Ponty (2013) articulates clearly how such knowledge is present in the intuitive and unarticulated ways we move in the world and act in relationship to others. Such knowledge, he contends, is there in the way we lean forward in conversation, move into a room, respond in interaction with others, gesture, raise an eyebrow, speak, or remain silent. Such knowledge is fundamental to who we are and who we take ourselves to be as teacher educators. Like the categories of teacher knowledge Shulman (1987) articulates, teacher educators have similar stores of knowledge. But in contrast to Shulman, we would argue that all of these categories of knowledge integrate and are available as we act and think upon our action as teacher educators. In addition as we have argued earlier, we also develop knowledge of how to educate future teachers in the kinds of knowledge they will need to teach others. It is this kind of practical knowledge and our attendant moral commitment to preparing good teachers that further integrates our knowledge for teaching and teacher education. It is this kind of knowledge that lies under our identity as a teacher educator. Even when we seek to acquire propositional knowledge about a new learning theory, pedagogy, or practice for teaching, or information about our content, this search for propositional knowledge related to our practice as teacher educators is purposive guided by our needs and concerns based on our action as teacher educators. Thus, this new knowledge is always fairly rapidly moving from its status as propositional knowledge to embodied knowing integrated in the practical knowledge we hold as teacher educators. As it integrates, the embodied knowledge we have shifts as it is shaped and shapes our practice in our ongoing process of becoming. The knowledge we develop for teaching is practical knowledge and as we deliberate and enact our identity as teacher educators, we integrate the propositional knowledge we acquire from academic texts (oral and written) into the tacit and practical knowledge that guides us in our moment to moment action and decision making. Schwab (1978) argues that in deliberations about practical problems we use this integration of the practical and propositional to generate alternative solutions, review the consequences of undertaking these solutions and choosing among them. We would argue that it is in such deliberations that our practical knowledge is deepened and our wisdom as teacher educators develop. We may not

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always deliberate, but as we develop practical knowledge in many cases we simply act intuitively upon it. However, when such action goes awry or when the context or person we are engaging with presents a variation that is new to us, we are presented with new experiences in developing practical knowledge as teacher educators. In these situations, we engage in reflection reconsidering what we know, believe, or think sometimes seeking out the knowing of others or academic sources and insights.

IDENTITY REVEALED IN OUR EMBODIED KNOWING Stern (2004) argues that the basic building blocks of experience and meaning making within it are the moments of everyday life. As we move into and out of awareness in relationship with others, we reveal and develop our understandings of life. Stern presents studies in which through charting and analyzing a person’s experience in moving in an out of consciousness as they eat breakfast, he uncovers how his participants know and experience the world. He contends that the implicit understandings we have about life as well as the development of that understanding occur moment to moment as we live and interact with others. This knowing is implicit and embodied. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) argue, further, that the language we use to talk about our life and our experience is fundamentally metaphoric and embedded within it are the meanings we make of our life and our orientations to action. Clandinin (1985) provides clear evidence of the way in which the images that guide our action are embedded within that action and guide our decision making and teaching practice. Careful observation of and reflection on our actions, our talk about our teaching, and our moments of consciousness rather than non-consciousness can make visible to us our identity and our knowing as teacher educators. Polanyi (1967) similarly argues that much of what we know is tacit. He claims it is built up as we attend to signals that call forth responses that we have enacted in the past. He suggests that as we interact with others we observe their actions with an orientation to our response to those actions rather than what proceeded those triggers. He contends that we are often unaware of the embodied understandings we have about human interaction because our implicit knowledge emerges in response rather than in knowing explicitly what understanding of human relationship and human interaction will trigger responses. As Stern (2004) argues, watching what we do and attempting to uncover what we were attending to reveal our tacit and embodied knowing as we

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act and reflect on it. What we might know is revealed in our actions when we pause to consider them and observe more carefully what led to them. As we develop embodied knowing that allows us to respond smoothly in the moment, our knowing becomes increasingly holistic and relational. When we attempt to extract and make explicit this embodied knowing, we cut it from the more holistic network of embodied meaning of which it is a part. As we study the aspects of our embodied knowledge that we make explicit, we shape, deepen, and often transform our practical knowledge. In our automatic responses to the experiences of our lives, we reveal our identity as humans. We, also, reveal what we know and what we value. Our argument here is that who we take ourselves to be is both revealed in our action and is shaped in the moment as we act and interact with others. In the moments of our experiences, our action and our interaction, we reveal our understanding and we develop new embodied knowledge. Thus, in our embodied knowing captured in our action and automatic responses we reveal who we are and yet it is in the same space that we develop who we are becoming. When we stop to reflect, observe ourselves, or explore what particular actions or statements we have mean, we make explicit this practical knowing but in the very process of making it explicit, we alter our knowing. We may become more intentional in our practice and our beliefs, and our actions may become more aligned but always when we make our embodied knowing explicit our personal practical knowledge adjusts, shifts, reintegrates, and alters itself. As we enact our understanding of identity as teacher educators in our teaching of courses, in the syllabus and assignments we construct, in the programs we develop, in our interactions with colleagues and students, we reveal what we know about teaching and teacher education and who we are becoming as teacher educators. We reveal what we know about teaching, learning, and learning to teach but also our commitments to teacher candidates, their growth and development as well as the growth of their students. Observing, examining, reflecting on our actions and interactions reveal our identity as teacher educators, push identity-formation deeper and further, and lead us to uncover our embodied knowing about being and becoming a teacher educator as we simultaneously shift and alter it (see, e.g., Akkerman, & Meijer, 2011; Cheung, 2014). Our knowing as teacher educators like our identity is always in progress, partial and incomplete. The status of our knowing (as emerging) means it is an ongoing and never-ending source that can be explored and re-explored to develop knowledge about teaching and teacher education.

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PRACTICAL REASONING Teacher educator identity and the embodied knowledge on which it is based can be uncovered through examining what is revealed in our embodied knowledge. Stern (2004) suggests a method for unpacking our embodied knowledge by asking ourselves to create careful accounts of a routine event when we come into and out of consciousness. For teacher educators, the beginning of class, or observations of a student teacher might be sites for such investigation. Following Stern’s strategy, the teacher educator would create an account of what he/she attended to as she/he moved from a nonconscious to a conscious state. A careful analysis of this account would uncover what the teacher educator was attending to and what he/she was thinking in the moment of that movement into consciousness. Just as interesting might be carefully attending to the actions and interactions that occur during the non-conscious moments. Another strategy is to consider your personal response in various situations and interactions with students. Attending carefully to how you respond, seek out potential triggers for the response and the possible relationships between these. Such work could reveal important insights about how the teacher educator enacts their embodied knowledge and what that response indicates the teacher educator knows. Both strategies could contribute new understandings about the processes of being and becoming a teacher educator. Fenstermacher (1986) suggests the use of practical arguments as a strategy for unpacking and developing understanding of teachers’ thinking and their practical knowledge. He argues that practical arguments end in action. To uncover our embodied knowledge, teacher educators would consider an action they took and work backward from the action examining the beliefs revealed, knowledge held, reconciliations of differences in beliefs. Through this process, teacher educators then not only make visible understandings about being a teacher educator and the actions involved but also develop more coherent practices.

TEACHER EDUCATORS’ PERSONAL PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE Clandinin (Clandinin, 1985; Connelly & Clandinin, 1984, 1985) argues that it is teachers’ personal practical knowledge that informs their action as a teacher. She provides the following explanation of the term:

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KNOWING, BECOMING, DOING AS TEACHER EDUCATORS What is meant by “personal” as defining knowledge is that the knowledge so defined participates in, and is imbued with, all that goes to make up a person. It is knowledge which has arisen from circumstances, actions and undertakings which themselves had affective content for the person in question. This use of “personal” draws attention to the individual local factor that helps to constitute the character, the past, and the future of any individual. By personal as defining knowledge, is meant that knowledge which can be discovered in both the actions of the person and, under some circumstances, by discourse or conversation. By “knowledge” in the phrase “personal practical knowledge” is meant that body of convictions, conscious or unconscious, which have arisen from experience, intimate, social, and traditional, and which are expressed in a person’s actions. The actions in question are all those acts that make up the practice of teaching including its planning and evaluation. “Personal practical knowledge” is knowledge that is imbued with all the experiences that make up a person’s being. Its meaning is derived from, and under-stood in terms of, a person’s experiential history, both professional and personal. (Clandinin, 1985, p. 362).

Just as teachers’ practice as teachers is guided by their personal practical knowledge, it is such knowledge that animates their identity as teacher. In Clandinin’s (1985) study of Stephanie’s personal practical knowledge, she articulates how Stephanie’s images of classroom as home and teacher-asmaker capture holistically Stephanie’s identity as a teacher as well as the moral commitments that guide her action as a teacher. These images shape and goad Stephanie’s practice and the way in which she lives as a teacher. It leads her to sacrifice her time and resources to act in particular ways in her classroom and in her preparation for her teaching as well as her in the moment responses to the students she is teaching. We argue that teacher educators’ personal practical knowledge is evident in the images that shape and guide it and the tacit and embodied knowledge that comprises it. The Arizona Group (1996) argue that that the embodied and tacit knowledge that comprises our identity as teacher educator as well as the images that shape and guide our action provide narrative frames that guide our action as teacher educators. These frameworks weave together and make coherent our background knowledge of students, our understanding of content, our sense of rhythm concerning the ebb and flow of the day, week, semester and year, the commitments and sacrifices we make, and guide our ability to respond in the moment to the issues and concerns we face as teacher educators. We recognize that our ability to design curriculum for our students is based in our personal practical knowledge as a teacher educator. In addition, our understanding of the politics within universities, colleges of educations and public schools and the tensions at the crossroads and borderlands of these institutions is based in the practical, tacit, and embodied knowledge we have as teacher educators.

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The personal practical knowledge we have grows, shifts, is integrated and shaped in the experiences we have. Learning from experience as teacher educators adheres to Dewey’s (1938/1997) description in Experience and Education. The experiences we have in interaction also exhibit continuity as one experience and our learning from it guides and shapes new experiences and new interactions. In seeking to form our identity as a teacher educator and develop an understanding of what it means, we begin at the boundaries of our knowing. In our case out initial personal practical knowledge as teacher educators was based on our personal practical knowledge drawn forward from our experiences as teachers, our work in supervision and teaching assistantships, our exploration of learning, teaching, teacher education, and research on teaching and teacher education garnered during our graduate coursework, and the practices of research contributed by the research work we participated in as graduate students, and our work on our dissertations. As we entered teacher education, the experiences we engaged in positioned us to learn more about teacher education and what it means to be a teacher educator. Since we took up studying our own practice, we were able to learn from our experience, and each new experience provided a continuity of experience that enable our tacit, embodied and even our more formal knowledge of being and becoming a teacher educator to grow and flourish. However, a crucial element of our learning emerged in the social interactions we had. Of course this included the formal and informal interactions in the institutional contexts in which we work, but as critical to our learning was the dialogue we shared as we explored what our experiences meant. Because we were located at different institutions different contexts, because we took up different graduate school majors and taught different courses developed different formal knowledge, and because our background and experience differed, then our learning from experience as teacher educators and our development of identity and understanding of what it means to be a teacher educator was enriched rather than impoverished. As participants in the S-STEP community, we were positioned to learn from and about the experience and personal practical knowledge of other teacher educators. We were able to take the particular understandings developed by others and apply them in our context and to the instantiation of the intractable problems of teacher education in our own settings. However, we also learned through these experiences that while teacher educators working to understand teacher education and engaged in the process of being and becoming a teacher educator develop personal practical knowledge as teacher educators, the knowledge developed is neither unitary nor directly generalizable to new contexts.

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We uncover our knowledge about teacher education in the particular contexts and situations of our actions and practice constrained by them and informed by how teacher education is shaped in the institutions where we work. We are constantly informed by how teacher education might be engaged in differently both as we wonder about our own knowing and action and as we read about teacher education in other international contexts. Studies conducted in different countries or contexts, even focused on similar practice, expand what we can know and understand about teacher education. Thus, variability in the experience we bring to teacher education and in the institutional contexts where we practice teacher education, as well as differences in our choices in taking up teacher education lead to real differences in the explicit and implicit knowing we develop and enact as teacher educators. Because our identity is always in a state of becoming our knowing and our knowing of our practice resides in this same emerging status and forms therefore a fruitful site for building knowledge of and contributing to the research base of teacher education.

CONCLUSION We have argued here that the knowledge we hold about teacher education is part of our identity and identity-formation as teacher educators part of our becoming teacher educators. We characterize this process as one in which through our experience, knowledge, and choice we develop embodied knowledge of what it means to be and become a teacher educator. This knowledge that we name as embodied, tacit, practical, and integrative is an individual knowledge base upon which we depend to guide our action as teacher educators. While this knowledge is hugely idiosyncratic, because experiences as teacher educators share features and because rich descriptions of context and practices allow teacher educators to think how what they learn is applicable in their own settings, there is also the potential for what we learn to be shared knowledge. Teacher educators’ personal practical knowledge whether individual and idiosyncratic or collective and shared has the potential to contribute much to our understanding of what it means to be and do teacher education. Because our knowing and our becoming as teacher educators is always in process, this knowledge is dynamic rather than static, capable of being informed by formal propositional knowledge as well as practical experience. Thus, studies into our own practice and our knowing in that practice are a limitless source for developing new understanding and knowledge of teaching and teacher education.

CHAPTER 5 IDENTITY CONCLUSION For us identity-formation is a process that is best characterized by BECOMING. Central in our conceptions of identity-formation as a teacher educator is the understanding that identity shifts, emerges moment-tomoment as we act upon our agency, which is constrained and expanded by the contexts, we practice in as teacher educators, the experiences we have, and the knowledge we hold (both embodied and formal). While our teacher and university colleagues may act in teacher educator roles, our identity as a teacher educator is established when we name ourselves as teacher educators. Naming ourselves has consequences for the contexts of teacher education we seek to construct and participate in, the kinds of knowledge we seek and deploy, and the experiences we value. We recognize that we have many pathways to identity as a teacher educator. Differences in the pathways result in potentially wide variation in the meaning individuals ascribe to identity as a teacher educator. This results from the constellation of experiences, contexts, knowledge, and moral/ ethical commitments and their integration of these issues into a particular teacher educator identity. Knowledge we hold as teacher educators comes in narrative form and in many ways can be characterized as event structure. This knowledge is embodied, tacit, and can be described as personal practical knowledge for teacher education. In our action within our identity as a teacher educator we both act on this knowledge and enrich and expand it. Thus inquiry into our identity-formation, the meaning of our identity, and the embodied knowledge that animates it become important sites for inquiry into new knowledge that can guide the preparation of a new generation of teachers as well as enrich and enliven the research conversation in teaching and teacher education. In 1995, we as members of the Arizona Group using Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices methodology (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009), engaged in an explicit study of our processes in becoming teacher educators. We identified three salient features in our accounts: (1) Questions and biography, (2) Memories, images, and metaphors, and (3) Process in our learning. After completing our study, rather than being able to communicate how identityformation occurs we realized instead that we had critical elements from which 67

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we constructed our identity as teacher educators. We also recognized that these elements differed in the details of our own experiences and the understandings we developed. Our findings honored our understanding that the questions we had as well as our past experiences shaped our doing and being a teacher educator and were revealed in our identity as teacher educators. We realized that as Clandinin (1985) demonstrated in her study of Stephanie’s image of teacher, our own memories, images, and metaphors served as guides and goals as we negotiated the process of identity-formation. We recognized and continue to recognize that identity-formation is a process that supports the development of our understandings as we unpack and uncover our own process of becoming teacher educators and the ethical-moral-relational commitments inherent in that identity-formation. In this moment, we invite you to reflect upon your identity-formation as a teacher educator and consider the critical elements we identified. Engaging with our text and your own thinking may lead to new developments in the embodied knowing that stands behind your emerging identity as a teacher educator. This reflexive activity allows you to situate yourself in your own being and becoming as a teacher educator in relation to these understandings. Whether those understandings and your experience are in contrast or coherence, exploring your own process will enliven your understanding of who you are being and becoming as a teacher educator and the relation to the choices you make, the contexts that constrain and open possibilities to you, and the knowledge you have and value you hold to bring new meaning to your own experience. Allow our explanations and ideas about being and becoming a teacher educator presented in this section to resonate with you as you reflect on your own experiences and thinking. • Who are you as a teacher educator? How do you name yourself ? • What questions shape your experience? • How has your biography contributed to your being and doing teacher education? • What critical events, experiences, triumphs, or tragedies contributed and how? • What memories are most salient as you act as a teacher educator? • What images and metaphors shape your thinking and action in teacher education? • What is the process you undertook in becoming a teacher educator? • What was your pathway into teacher education? • What is the storyline you are taking up? Resisting?

DISRUPTION BETWEEN IDENTITY AND INTIMATE SCHOLARSHIP As we explained earlier in this section, identity, as recognized in educational research, lives in Becoming fluid and generating. At the beginning of our text, we noted that Deleuze sees identity as reductive and averse to critical thinking. Still, we decided to use this term as it is used so frequently in the literature on teaching and teacher education. Within this text, we invite you to take up identity as Becoming and wonder, along with us, about the ways that Becoming enlivens previous understandings of identity and encourages us to critically examine understandings of what we present. While exploring our formation as teacher educators, our developing interest in our Becoming accompanies us. This interest fuels our inquiry into teacher education. We seek to understand how and what we experiment within our practice. We listen curiously as we seek out understandings of relationships in which we engage. We are interested in our pedagogical practices: how pedagogy shapes us and our practices (e.g. Crowe & Berry, 2007).. We seek to uncover our thinking regarding certain practice choices, how we refine them, why we reject them, and what it looks like when we embrace them. We insistently explore our institutional negotiations, collegial intra-actions, curricula, programs and the other institutions that we shape and that shape us. We delve into our thinking about our practices and apply the research on teaching and teacher education we read. We unsparingly scrutinize our memories of teaching, teachers, and life in relationship to who and what we are and know. As we engage in these explorations our everyday acts as teacher educators—not only are we evolving as humans but our tacit and implicit knowing grows and develops. As we do this, what we know about teacher education emerges and can best be studied and accounted for in the design of studies that allow us to explore it from our own perspective, through the theoretical lenses we value and develop. Such scholarship is based in a relational ontology and oriented toward the particular. Because of its particular orientation, the foundation in our personal practical knowing (e.g., Clandinin, 1985, 1995) and how it positions us as vulnerable within our 69

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practice and within the research community has a quality of intimacy, thus we label it intimate scholarship. Scholarship of this sort orients us to uncover and reveal what we learn as we engage our ongoing work in becoming teacher educators. In doing this work, we have embraced selfstudy of teacher education practices as our methodology, but other methodologies (e.g., narrative inquiry, narrative research, autobiography, autoethnography, reflective inquiry, action research and arts-based research, to name a few) can also be employed. What is fundamental to this work is an orientation to making visible the personal knowing of the particular experience or understanding being studied from the perspective of the teacher educator his/herself. We have made clear our understanding of aspects of identity formation as socially constructed, fluid and as a state of becoming. Before we take up a study of intimate scholarship, we turn to a demonstration of how questions might be formed and framed. We make explicit the role that research methodology has on the questions we ask and the insights we might gain. The report of the study we present disrupts the flow of the book from chapter to chapter and makes explicit how inquiries into Becoming from different methodologies share an orientation to intimate scholarship and contribute to research on teaching.

COMMENTS DISRUPTION WHAT’S IN A NAME? EXPLORING THE EDGES OF AUTOETHNOGRAPHY, NARRATIVE AND SELF-STUDY OF TEACHER EDUCATION PRACTICE METHODOLOGIES ABSTRACT The purpose of this chapter is to make visible the similarities and differences among narrative, self-study of teacher education practices, and autoethnographic methodologies to generate clarity about when each methodology might be most appropriate. Using Margery Wolf’s (1992) A Thrice Told Tale as a heuristic to support our exploration, we look at a selected slice of data as if standing within each methodology. As we do that we consider ways that we might engage each methodology to push forward our thinking about powerful research. Our goal is to critically examine the processes that researchers use for the study and to explore the ways using particular methodologies in appropriate ways that can strengthen our thinking about professional knowledge.

Juliet: O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name; Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, And I’ll no longer be a Capulet. Romeo: [Aside] Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this? Juliet: ‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy; Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part belonging to a man. O, be some other name! What’s in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet; So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d, Retain that dear perfection which he owns without that title…

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Every review of research on teacher education published in the last decade has argued the need for a stronger research to guide teacher education (see e.g., Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005; Cochran-Smith & Zeichner, 2005). However, such reviews usually promote quantitative research models with randomized trials and controlled experimentation and the use of large data sets as the research that needs to be done. In contrast, other researchers who focus on teacher education and teaching (see Bullough, 2008) argue that research on teaching and teacher education that will be most helpful for preparing new teachers will emerge from careful studies of the particular and the local. In the same vein, Putnam (2005) asserts that it is in careful study of the particular that insight that will guide us in responding to recurring difficulties such as education and poverty are most like to emerge from careful study of the particular and the local. Greene (1999) argues for both approaches coming together with large-scale quantitative studies (seeing small) providing a horizon against which qualitative studies that allow us to see more clearly the individual event, person, or context (seeing large) release the imagination and allow us to develop better responses to the difficulties of this time and place. In the current era of teacher education reform, research on teaching and teacher education located in the subjective and focused on developing understanding of the particular continues to hold great research promise. Indeed, preparing new teachers to engage in the complex classrooms of this country where minority populations of the past are becoming majority populations, where as a result of law, regular teachers must juggle meeting the learning needs of English learners, children with disabilities, talented and gifted students, and multicultural ones while also supporting regular education students is an ongoing challenge. Studying teaching, learning, and educating teachers to meet these challenges is an exciting adventure for all educational researchers. For teacher educators deeply engaged in designing and enacting practices that will support the development of new teachers and simultaneously studying teaching and teacher education, subjective research methods allow them to develop understandings and contribute to the research conversation. Indeed, utilizing more subjective methodologies allow such researchers to uncover and excavate their tacit (Polanyi, 1967) and practical knowledge (Clandinin, 1985) developed in the present moments (Stern, 2004) of their practice that may remain hidden from those using other forms of research. As pointed out in the recent work on complexity theory (Mason, 2008), regardless of our educational practices, what future teachers learn from teacher educators will always be filtered through the lenses of their own

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understanding and experience. They take up the understandings and curricular practices that most resonate with their vision of what it means to teach and their developing and evolving identity as teachers. Just as we did, when we became teachers and then teacher educators, this new generation of teachers integrates the understandings and practices they are educate about into their own emerging repertoire as teachers. Exploring stories of our experiences as teachers and teacher educators allows us to develop deeper understandings of research, education, and poverty as it relates to teacher education and teaching. Such research is intimate because it always involves our own understandings of ourselves and our experience in relation to those we educate and our imaginings about those they will educate. Researchers capture these emergent understandings through methodologies that allow them to consider their practice and experience more carefully. Narrative research, particularly narrative inquiry, S-STEP research, and variations of autoethnography can be characterized as these kinds of intimate inquiry methodologies that allow researchers to position their research in the ontological space between self and other, where examination of what we know about teaching and being a teacher educator is most profitable for the larger research conversation on teaching and teacher education. Each of these methodologies involves attention to both the self and the other. Each of these methodologies can begin in stories of self; yet also involve stories of others engaged with us in teacher education.

EXAMINING METHODOLOGIES Within the past few years narrative research and self-study of teacher education practices (S-STEP) have gained status as genres of educational research (Borko, Liston, & Whitcomb, 2007); yet there continue to be challenges to the quality and rigor of this work (Zeichner, 2007). Autoethnography has received similar acceptance and challenge across the social science disciplines (Davis & Ellis, 2008). Tensions around the viability of these genres as research and confusion among the methodologies inspired us to explore the commonalities and differences among these methodologies. In order to more clearly make the case for similarities and differences, we determined to use as an example Wolf’s (1992) Thrice Told Tale as a model and therefore rather than looking at examples from the studies of others we selected a slice of data from our work, shaped it into an example of how it might be represented within a published work according to

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these genres and then use it to make clearer our examination of these three methodological perspectives a narrative inquiry, an S-STEP project, and an autoethnography. We used the three distinct representations of the data slice selected from our published work to illuminate potential benefits, tensions, and confusions that can emerge and provide guidance for researchers who are examining or selecting among these methodologies. In presenting our analysis we demonstrate the overlaps, edges, and gaps among these methodologies. In 1992 Margery Wolf considered three ways to study the same site of research. At the time Wolf hoped to disrupt the challenge to ethnography that came from within the discipline and the tensions around the understanding of ethnography as a methodology and the role of research within that methodology. Wolf looked at three writings she had prepared thirty years earlier a short story, a set of field notes, and a piece published in a well-respected anthropological journal. Each text offered “a different perspective … written in a different style … [with] … different ‘outcomes.’ Yet all three involve the same set of events (p. 7).” For us, this text offered a perfect model that we could use to guide us as we explored the different methodologies we selected. Wolf critiqued the role of “I,” the “Other,” and messiness of experience arguing that the world observed can be open-ended, ambiguous and fluctuating (Wolf, 1992, p. 55). Like Wolf, we use variations in our representations of the data slice we selected to reveal confusions in methodology, strategy, and understanding. In her work, Wolf draws attention to and highlights “the pleasures and dangers of blurring genres in ethnography (Rofel, 2003, p. 598) and points to the ambiguities of life (Rofel, 2003, p. 602). Wolf (1992) suggests that her return to her work caused her to reconsider her methodology, strategies and the role of the researcher and how ideas about this work might be communicated. For this study, using Wolf’s work as a model, we examine carefully the overlaps and gaps, continuities and discontinuities, similarities and disparities among three research methodologies (narrative inquiry, S-STEP, and autoethnography) and how these differences influence the study, the strategies utilized, and potential understandings of experience and practice.

LABELS Narrative inquiry, S-STEP, autoethnography, narrative research, autobiographic self-study, co-autoethnography, narrative self-study, self-study

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narrative are some methodological descriptors used by researchers to express the ways they undertake studies based in subjectivity and ontology (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009). Researchers reporting their use of these methodologies often use these names as if they were interchangeable or were simply strategies within a particular methodology, yet our own experience in engaging with these methodologies suggest that they are distinct, offer different potentials for developing understanding, and require different strategies, respond to differing questions and establish claims in different ways. Arizona Group (1996) explores the commonalities and differences among the three methodologies: narrative inquiry, S-STEP, and autoethnography. In pursuit of clarity about the relationships among these methodologies and distinctions related to their use as well as a desire to deepen our thinking about research on experience, practice, and curriculum-making in teacher education, we take up this work. Guided by Wolf’s framework of the Thrice Told Tale as a heuristic, we selected a slice of date from one of our published studies (Arizona Group, 1996) and constructed a representation of that piece of data that reflected each of the methodologies guided by texts that articulated each methodology (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Ellis, 2004; Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009) and criteria adapted from Pinnegar and Hamilton (2009) we uncover actual similarities, pseudo-similarities as well as draw distinctions across and among these research methodologies. We were guided by these questions: • Ontology and how claims are made about knowing? • What is the researcher’s methodology in relationship to the “research puzzle” and the researched? • What is the researcher’s methodology in relationship to the analysis of evidence? • How is trustworthiness established? • How are the findings presented? Then we identify aspects from the data slice that probe these questions. Finally, we examine our analysis to uncover what it reveals about issues for each methodology and the relationships, if any, among the methodologies. Fig. 1 represents how we thought about these methodologies as we began our inquiry. In Fig. 1, we initially identified several commonalities shared by these research methodologies. These include a commitment to the production of good research and an orientation toward contributing to the research conversation in education. Because they investigate particular experience all

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Narrative Inquiry

S-STEP

Focus: Experience Stance: Ontological Research Design

Focus: Practice Elements of Good Research Commonplaces (Social, Temporal, Place)

Stance: Ontological Commitment to Improvement Research Design

Use of narrative/story I-subjective Vulnerability Knowing the Other

Autoethnography Focus: Cultural Context Research Design Stance: Epistemological

Fig. 1. Venn Diagram of Three Methodologies. Note: This diagram is an elaboration on the Venn Analysis Pinnegar & Hamilton 2009 and Hamilton, Smith & Worthington, 2008).

take seriously consideration of the common places of place, temporality, and the social however this similarity became obvious to us in S-STEP and autoethnography because of their more formal identification and explication in narrative inquiry (see Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). All use narrative or story data fairly consistently; however, within S-STEP research the data may emerge from interviews or journal writing and therefore may not be as clearly narrative in character. Because of the role of the researcher in relationship to the researched which is almost always represented with an I, rather than the third person used more typical other research forms, the researcher using these methodologies stands in a space of greater vulnerability. Each of the methodologies has commitments of various kinds toward the other in their research. S-STEP work is located in the space between self and other and the two are consistently in tension with each other (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009). Narrative Inquirers live alongside their participants, construct field texts, interim texts, narrative accounts and negotiate interim and final representations of these with their participants (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). While autoethnographers construct their

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accounts as autobiographical narratives and assert the accounts and interpretations as emerging from their perspective rather than that of the others in their research but acknowledging that others might construct meaning differently (Ellis, 2004). These are common features of all these subjective methodologies but as the explication of them already suggests there is variability and important distinctions and differences among them. Having articulated what we initially perceived as similarities, we now explore each methodology independently beginning with S-STEP research, followed by Narrative Inquiry and ending with Autoethnography.

A LOOK TOWARD S-STEP In S-STEP research, the focus of the research is an exploration of practice from an ontological stance anchored in a commitment to improvement. The researcher conducting research within this methodology devotes careful attention to ontology (what is) in order to garner judgments of trustworthiness for the work. This orientation is clearly evident in that a study labeled as S-STEP research names the self as the person responsible for the practices being studied and the person doing the research on it. In addition, the purpose of the project, either explicitly and directly or implicitly and indirectly, is always toward improvement of the practice of the researcher either because of the new understanding or the honing of the practices being studied. In representing the study the researcher voice, the readings, and the researcher’s sense of the socio-political aspects of their world comes into play as the researcher engages in the systematic study of practice. All aspects of the study the question, the data collection, the data analysis, the understandings presented, and the conclusions drawn are oriented toward uncovering what is (the ontology) and what that reveals about what is and can be known about teacher education practice particularly as it relates to the larger conversation around research on teaching and teacher education. In careful research, S-STEP scholars contribute, “to the professional knowledge base of teaching as well as generat[e] understanding of the world” (Hamilton, 2004, p. 402). We have Hamilton and Pinnegar (1998a, 1998b) described the work of S-STEP research as: the study of one’s self, one’s actions, one’s ideas, as well as the ‘not self’. It is autobiographical, historical, cultural, and political … it draws on one’s life, but it is more than that. Self-study also involves a thoughtful look at texts read, experiences had, people known and ideas considered. (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 1998b, p. 266)

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As this quote suggests, it is as much about being and becoming and revealing what is known from that as it is about making knowledge claims. SSTEP has a commitment to creating living educational theory theory that lives because as we examine practice to reveal our knowledge and being in the world our knowing and practices shift like organisms exposed to light and it is living because it is visible in our practice. In terms of research design, LaBoskey (2004) outlines five elements of SSTEP: it is self-initiated and focused; it is improvement-aimed; it is interactive; it includes multiple, mainly qualitative, methods; and it defines validity as a process based in exemplar validation. In focusing on practice, engagement of self-in-relation-to-other(s), S-STEP research has the potential to reveal the professional identity as well as evolving knowledge of what is being studied. As we articulated earlier, distinct in the work of S-STEP research is the focus on ontological stance. Recognition of stance with regard to understanding holds a critical place in this methodology. S-STEP research explores practice, the self-in-relation-to practice and the self-inrelation-to-other. The interactive quality of the study wherein the nature of research design requiring attention to collecting data that captures the practice, the understanding and actions of the self, and accounts of the others involved in the practice are evidence of how dialogue is the process for coming to know in this work. For S-STEP researchers, the self has a place in the foreground of the study but it is never the exclusive focus or purpose of the study. The stance guides the work and attention to integrity in accounting for ontology brings dialogue into the research design. We selected a data slice from our early work and in examining S-STEP research we chose to use a representation of it from an Arizona Group article published in 1996 in Teacher Education Quarterly. The segment of the chapter where the data slice we use comes from the emergent theme of walking our talk and finding voice and can be found toward the end of the chapter.

One of the four of us most specifically reveals the focus of walking her talk in her letters. She often talked about codes, traditions, and finding voice. She spoke about what we know as outsiders and what others know as insiders and the complications of interpretation as a result. We examine one of the passages from her letters that reveals the creation of voice (talk): In order for this description to have the proper impact you have to imagine the scene. Here we are, my class and I, in an oversized room with too many school desks. It is the end of the football season, we are

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playing our serious rivals. My students mostly look like Barbie and Ken dolls lost in a west-coast daze …. So there they are, arriving in class precisely on time. In front of the room is their teacher. Me. I look like I have studied the conservative republic book of dress …. Today is our first whole group meeting in weeks …. I begin by asking if anyone has any management miracles from their observations …. Quickly the issues turn to human dignity … just as quickly I begin to talk about revolution in the schools. But, I did not begin the discussion before I, unconsciously, walked over and closed the classroom door … you would have been proud. There I was professing revolution. Their little eyes wide, there was a lot of whispering. I used my favorite quote from the Mohawks in Quebec … today is a good day to die …. I asked them to consider the issues for which they were willing to take a stand. They were mesmerized. I, personally, was scared …. We talked about this in a backdrop of censorship, first years of teaching, and what freedom a teacher has. I ended the discussion by beginning a reading of “Repent, Harlequin, said the Ticktockman” by Harlan Ellison (1979). It too discusses revolution and how sometimes it may look like your cause is lost, but it isn’t. I had some students leave class numb …. One important note, though, I am clear that the students are ready to hear it or I wouldn’t be saying it. This incident is a celebration of finding voice, of developing the courage to speak the truth we knew and understood to our students. This represents efforts to (re)story teacher education in several ways. It focuses on the themes of revolution, of valuing human beings, and of being willing to continue to work and fight even when it appears to others the cause is lost. While this may seem like a story of classroom triumph, several other things are embedded in the story. One is the understanding signaled by the closing of the door, admitting being scared, and referring to the students as “Ken and Barbie dolls” that what the teacher educator has chosen to do brings her in opposition to the traditions and preferred talk of the university. It is there in the mention of the weekend football game as well. We are invited “you would be proud of me” to watch her teach as she gives voice to a story which brings into harmony many of the disparate elements of her life: her private life; her public life as teacher; her concern over her students and the community of students her students will teach; a commitment to giving voice to what she knows even though it may cost her points on her own tenure review. Excerpt from Arizona Group (1996).

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Ontology and Claims about Knowing In S-STEP work, there is a commitment to an excavation and examination of practices for both understanding and improvement from the perspective of the person constructing and conducting the practice. The value of the work is attributed to the potential it provides for improving practice and the potential it affords to contribute nuanced accounts of practice as lived and understood by the person conducting the study. In the work of SSTEP research the researcher takes an ontological stance. This means the researcher focuses on providing an accurate account of learning about and understanding what is in practice while working to shape practice to conform more closely with what is valued. In addition, insistence on an ontological stance signals our understanding that this is not the practice of someone else we are researching but a careful investigation of our own practice. In this text, we find evidence of the ontological stance most clearly in the text after the quote with the statements about “re-storying teacher education” followed by a list of the things we value. In this piece the commitment to taking an ontological stance is also present in the invitation to “imagine the scene” and followed by a careful, detailed description that catalogues the elements important to understanding the meaning of the practice on that day in that class. While S-STEP researchers do not pretend to be distanced researchers and do bring themselves into the research self-studies, the self is always held in tension with the other. The potential for self-bias leads researchers in engage in dialogue as a process for coming to know. As researchers, we attempt to view the self as it is in tension with the Other. And the Other can be students, other researchers and so on. LaBoskey (2004) labels this characteristic “interactive.” Strategies such as the use of critical friends (see Schuck & Pereira, 2011) and careful attention to the interrogation of understandings developed are elements in using dialogue as a process for coming to know. In this study, the researcher’s cataloguing of the interaction between herself and her students and her assertions to us as audience you will be proud of me provide a vivid account not only of the event but also of dialogue as a way of knowing. In S-STEP research, the exploration of the self is not as vital as the exploration of the knowledge the self holds of the practice since the practice belongs to the researcher (the self) engaged in the study the ontological stance and the commitment to dialogue as a process for coming to know for establishing trustworthiness are vital. The S-STEP researcher after

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collecting data that captures what is, then returns to unpack the understandings of practice present in those accounts the interpretation and analysis is an uncovering of the knowing that emerges through examining the practices. In this representation of the data slice, the shutting of the door, the disconnect between the researchers conservative appearance and her profession of revolution and her assertion that students are ready to know are details to be unpacked so that her understanding of teaching and teacher education is enriched and through the publication of the research so is that of the larger research community. The self is central to uncovering knowledge but not the central focus nor is it privileged in the same way it is in autoethnography.

Methodology in Relationship with “research puzzle” and Researched When designing a self-study of teaching and teacher education practices the focus of the work would be on teacher education and/or the practice of the teacher educator and this orientation shapes the questions or “research puzzle” that will be investigated. Given that this work usually takes place in a university setting along with an examination of teacher education practices both in and beyond the university classroom, the interactions of politics and their relationship with the academy is text and subtext in the work. All of this is visible in this excerpt. For example, the reference to the last game of the season, the return to the teacher education classroom after time spent in field experiences, the concern about professing revolution coupled with the references to conservative dress and shutting the door are evidence not only of the teacher educators understanding of the practice but also her understanding of the relationship of the context in shaping the practice, the knowledge of practice and the study and interpretation of it. As this suggests, for a teacher educator engaged in S-STEP research the academic setting and the practice of teaching teachers within a classroom cannot be separated. The cosmopolitanism the recognition that there are varied views that need to be respected of the piece is visible in the details identified. The details from the data and the articulation of the interpretation in response to the question posed allows for another important feature of SSTEP research to emerge here. That is the turn back to the self. Strong self-study of teaching and teacher education practices research always turns back to the self, from what is understood from the research project guided by the research question to what the study reveals to the teacher educator.

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The turn back to the self provides space to explicate both personal and further meaning of what has come to be known raising questions about navigating and constructing and contributing to the academic politics and pedagogical processes. Thus, the personal questions of practice that guide the study need to have value to the larger community and the data collected and the analysis of it need to lead to this turn.

Methodology and Evidence The research design of an S-STEP project often follows what we identify as a traditional qualitative design. Thus, the analytic process engaged in the researcher utilizes any number of qualitative processes that support the systematic examination of data gathered. In S-STEP research care is taken to collect data that will be perceived as trustworthy and creditable (and in some sense objective). The data collected needs to be able to call into question as well as provide evidence for the interpretation developed. This means that the data collected needs potentially to include artifacts from practice, data about the thinking and learning of the teacher educator from the practice and about the artifacts as well as data from participants in the practice. The appropriateness and depth of the data are what allow the researcher also the researched to be able to search for negative cases, triangulate understandings, negotiate meaning by examining and re-examining understandings reached, actions taken, and assertions made. Indeed empirical evidence is a critical aspect of self-study of teaching and teacher education practices research. As a part of any rigorous study, researchers are expected to provide evidence. In S-STEP work it is most critical because we are not offering warrants for a Truth but rather evidence from experience our own experience of our practice. Because of the more traditional qualitative format of this research, general qualitative methods and strategies for data collection and analysis are those most frequently employed. In this case the study used excerpts from letters in which we recounted our experiences at the academy and we analyzed the data using analytic strategies suggested by Miles and Huberman (1994). In other studies, we have used ethnographic methodologies and others S-STEP researchers use grounded theory or other techniques. What makes S-STEP methodology similar to the other three methodologies discussed here is that the researcher may simultaneously stand in the role of the researched. To counteract this challenge S-STEP researchers not only use tools of analysis of various qualitative methods but they also engage in

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the use of dialogue at the center of the coming-to-know process. Throughout any self-study of teaching and teacher education practices study dialogue remains constant with self, with Others, and with critical friends. In fact, since dialogue is central to developing assertions for action and understanding about the practice of the self, collaboration is key. Establishing Trustworthiness To establish trustworthiness S-STEP researcher, in addition to answering the “so what?” question of good research and demonstrating the turn back to the self, attempts to establish within the text evidence of their authority of experience. There are several places in this text fragment that communicate the researcher as one who knows and understands experience the closing of the door is one such detail . The use of the pertinent detail of the meaning of time of year (the last game of the season) and the straightforward assertion of knowing that the students are ready for this are others. These details in this text communicate the authority of experience and the reader of the piece recognizes that authority because these details in the text and other quotes in the larger article demonstrate the authors as having authority because of understanding the meaning of practice and of having experience in teacher education. While all good research provides a response to the “so-what” question, this is imperative in S-STEP research because its subjective contribution. Through connection to the larger research conversation and the perusal of significant understandings of practice, the so-what question is answered and the authority of experience is developed. A final and important characteristic of strong self-study of teaching and teacher education practices research is the phenomenon wherein the study turns back on itself. In this case, the text surrounding the quote reveal to the audience what the research came to understand and thus can contribute to research on teaching and teacher education. It is one of the most powerful and yet most subtle indicators of what makes self-study of teaching and teacher education practices research unique.

Presenting the Findings Findings from S-STEP can be represented as assertions for action or understanding and typically, are presented and argued in a traditionally

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qualitative manner with the assertions by the researchers contextually embedded just as they have been here. The quote is framed by a statement of what it means, followed by a quote which is followed by an overt analysis of the quote that links it to the meaning and often connects it to the larger research on teaching or teacher education that it informs. This analysis supports teacher educators in understanding their work, questioning the possibilities of practice, and exploring practices so more can be learned by future teachers and by teacher educators. From the excerpt above, teacher educator researchers are prompted to ask themselves: How do we become teachers and teacher educators? What do our data describing our actions and our experience reveal to us about what we know about practice? What does the iconography of our data texts reveal to us about what we know? From the text we might wonder, as teacher educators, why do we know to close the door and why does that resonate as authority of experience to others who read it?

A LOOK TOWARD NARRATIVE Narrative research, in the social sciences and in education (Clandinin, Huber, Huber, Murphy, Orr, Pearce, & Steeves, 2006; Polkinghorne, 1988), can be described as a study of experience as story or as stories of experience more generally. The narrative inquiry as presented situates participants in the context of the study and the research and theoretic literature concerning the phenomenon under study and narrative methodology. Narrative inquiries share experience, uncover phenomenon as lived, and contribute to the methodology of narrative research. For researchers, narrative encompasses the creation and analysis of stories about life experiences and in this form the design can be described, “as a spoken or written text giving an account of an event/action or series of events/actions, chronologically connected” (Czarniawska, 2004, p. 17). For others, a focus on narrative evolved into narrative inquiry where more attention to personal understandings of experience, practical knowledge, and attention to the ethical and relational could be taken up. Drawing from Dewey’s (1916, 1922, 1938) emphasis on lived experience, Clandinin and Connelly (1990) applied his ideas about experience and their understandings of the embodied nature of knowing as well as their commitment to the relational and to deepening understanding of the personal, to research and developed the methodology of narrative inquiry. This research

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focuses on capturing lived experience from the perspective of those who live it uncovering multiple perspectives on the phenomenon under investigation. The researcher lives alongside the participants attempting to understand experience from the perspective of the persons in the experience they are living alongside (Lugones, 1987). These researchers carefully explore identity landscapes to capture the experience of those that live there (see Clandinin & Connelly, 1995).. The inquiry attempts to make visible through written accounts the embodied as well as articulated knowing of the participants. Recognizing that the voice of researchers cannot/should not overpower the voice of others, the stories are placed in relation (both in analysis and in presentation) to make clearer and more visible what happens on the knowledge and experience landscape. Narrative inquirers deepen their understandings of experience through the use of the three-dimensional narrative space and engage three commonplaces temporality (issues of time, always in transition), sociality (social elements and what forms the individual context), and place (the location of action). They intentionally place the narratives and experiences they consider within this space pushing on the three dimensions to guide and develop their analysis. These commonplaces allow researchers to situate narrative in a particular place while engaging in wondering about the potential ways the experience might be different if this common places differed. They wonder about what happened before and how it relates to now or how it might be different if it occurred at a different time. They consider the meaning of the context and place where the experience occurred in relationship to the possibilities if this had been otherwise. They push inward and outward in terms of the individual and collective meaning making and relationships. In doing this, narrative inquirers deepen their understanding of the narrative, the experience it represents, as well as both the phenomenon they are investigating and their understanding of narrative inquiry as methodology. In their research, narrative inquirers live alongside participants within an experience and explore and uncover the meaning of that experience in terms of their understandings and that of their participants Thus, identification of experience as story is a distinct aspect of narrative research generally but even more deeply and fully in narrative inquiry. The recognition that people shape their lives by story and story is a way in which we understand our world and make meaning of it (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006), makes narrative inquiry distinct as a methodology. While this representation of the data slice is constructed from the one presented above, it has been shortened and adapted for use in a chapter

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about interpretation in narrative inquiry from the perspective of the social and personal within the three-dimensional narrative space.

Please imagine the scene with me My class and I together in a drab, dimly lit, oversized room with too many school desks. Desk distance separates us all as if to represent the spaces between points of view. It is fall; the leaves are turning into falling paint splotches brightening the dirt windows. It is the end of the football season; we are playing our rivals. The world beyond those windows seems agitated and noisy. My class includes students who mostly look like Barbie and Ken dolls and seem to animate themselves in doll-like ways. There they are, arriving in class precisely on time. In the front of the room is their teacher Me. I look like I have studied the conservative republic book of dress dark pants suit, severe shoes and restricted hair. Today is our first whole group meeting in weeks because they have been out in the schools observing classrooms. I begin the class by asking if anyone has any management miracles from their observations. Quickly the discussion turns to human dignity. And just as quickly I begin to talk about revolution in the schools. However, I did not begin the discussion before I, unconsciously, walked over and closed the classroom door. You would be proud. There I stood professing revolution. Their little eyes wide; I heard lots of whispering. I spoke a quote I associate with the Mohawks in Quebec today is a good day to die. And I asked them to consider the issues for which they would take a stand. They seemed mesmerized. Personally, I was scared. Examining Interpretation When [one of the authors of the piece] begins to apply the social/personal dimension, she is immediately struck, by how although she constructed this research text and it has actually been a long time since she participated in this experience, the story resonates with her. It calls forth memories of other late fall and early spring days when she has invited her students into revolution and challenged them about what they are willing to die for. This sense of time collapsing wherein similar events across many years flood her memory making her aware of the permeability of the dimension of time and the way in which

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even when an event is written down and published time somehow remains fluid. As she experiences this sense of fluidity of time, she recognizes that this story represents only a fragment of her experience; however, the whole of the experience as well as the echoes of other experiences are still in her mind as she takes up interpretation. Thus, she reminds us that in analysis, we often lay stories of our past experiences alongside our work to help us make meaning of the analysis or to explain the meanings we are making. In that moment, our past stories become open for retelling and reinterpretation and our experiences as well as their meanings shift or are deepened since what appears settled and done is now open. This brings forward the quote with which we began this chapter and we remember that narrative inquiry is a form of living. Source: Adapted and excerpted from Pinnegar and Hamilton (2012).

Ontology and Claims about Knowing The primary orientation of Narrative Inquiry is toward understanding experience and it is from this commitment that inquiries based in this methodology often deepen our understanding of embodied knowledge about the phenomenon generally but also particularly in studies of teaching and teacher education, the personal practical knowledge of the participants and as well as the researcher (Clandinin, 1985). Clandinin and Rosiek (2007), in their exploration of the shared, distinct and blurred boundaries between narrative inquiry and the theoretical and methodological commitments in research conducted from other paradigms indicate that narrative inquiry departs from other research because the focus of its study is experience Connelly and Clandinin (2006); Clandinin and Connelly (1990) observed that arguments for the development and use of narrative inquiry are inspired by a view of human experience in which humans, individually and socially, lead storied lives. These researchers focus on understanding the experience of those who are at the center of the study those who are living it. Thus, these researchers engage in inquiry from an ontological perspective in relationship to knowing and developing an understanding of a phenomenon as

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those who are living it experience it. In representation of the data slice as presented here, we are invited to understand the experience from the perspective of the teacher educator living this experience. The students, the Barbie and Ken dolls, are experiencing this differently and while this is a critical event for the teacher educator, it might be just another day in class or since it is “game day” to the students it may even be an annoyance. When engaged in this methodology which usually begins with the researcher constructing annals and chronicles as well as a narrative account capturing the beginning point from which the narrative inquirer began attending to the phenomenon (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). The methodology begins with the inquirer making explicit their own understandings of and assumptions about the phenomenon, the focus of the inquiry is always more directly on the relational aspects of this work and the attempt to understanding how the participants experience and know the phenomenon in relation to the inquirers construction of the phenomenon. The inquirer, as in the excerpt above, is focused on understanding the experience from the perspective of the person experiencing it. Story with its ability to capture experience and our understanding of it is at the heart of inquiry into the research puzzle being taken up. Narrative inquiry uncovers and examines knowledge known from the place of ontology and situates that inquiry in experience as expressed in lived and told stories. The inquiry, as presented in a final research text, has an organic experiential quality and yet it always makes evident that the inquiry is informed by and intertwined with the research literature. Sometimes the connection is expressly stated and sometimes it exists in the resonances between the narratives provided and the shared understanding of the scholars who are part of the research conversation that lays alongside and informs the inquiry. In the excerpt presented, the desks marking space between teacher educator and teacher candidates, the profession of revolution occurring in the midst of mandates for teacher education reform, and closing the classroom door are some of the resonances and connections to the larger research literature on teacher education and teacher education reform that are present in this piece. Through the use of the three-dimensional narrative space, this inquiry involves the reconstruction of experience in relationship to both the participants and the social milieu (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000).

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Methodology in Relationship with “research puzzle” and Researched The focus of this methodology is experience and the researcher pushes to uncover the marginalized worlds from the perspectives of the participant (in our example, the self). An essential part of taking up and specifying a particular research puzzle in narrative inquiry begins by the narrative inquirer identifying and exploring his or her own experiences with the phenomenon. This examination then shapes both the statement of the research puzzle and the phenomenon to be inquired into. This initial work around forming the he research puzzle is essential since this work is always relational with a broad view that includes world traveling (Lugones, 1987) where the researcher actively seeks to open themselves to understand the lives of those being researched from as much as possible that person’s perspective. Therefore, the narrative inquirer must unpack and make explicit their own experiential and embodied knowing about the research puzzle before they begin to conduct an inquiry as they live alongside a participant. From the excerpt presented here, the tensions emerge sharply when the inquirer becomes wakeful to the distances between the desks and the teacher educator. This expressed acknowledgment of distance and separation provides a glimpse of the embodied experiential knowing of the inquirer in terms of their relationship to the teacher candidates they are interacting with. This detail raises wonderings about distances that separate the perspective and life experience of the teacher educator from the teacher candidates. It communicates the teacher educator researchers understanding that she does not completely understand the perspective of her students. This distance exists in tension with the teacher educator’s communication that she does understand some things through her reference to game day. But her separateness is instantiated when she portrays them as doll like. Another point of embodied knowledge that suggests a tension in this account is the statement about been scared, which leads to a wondering about what is scary about encouraging students to teach differently than they were taught or to engage in this kind of revolution. The narrative details revealed lead to the wonderings that emerged in the writing of the piece. The sharing of these details within a story of an experience develops resonance with and raise wonders for the reader. It is the resonance and wondering that emerge from carefully crafted statements of experience guided by the research puzzle that directs the inquiry the in part communicate the power and meaning of the work.

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Methodology and Evidence The research design of narrative inquiry is subjective and does not pretend otherwise. The use of commonplaces is central to this inquiry and researchers push on three-dimensional space attending to place, sociality, and time as they explore the meaning of the experience. In looking back to the excerpt provided here, we might consider what is the significance of this being the last game of the season? The teacher educator admits to being scared and describes the teacher candidates as wide-eyed and notes the desks demarcating the space between her and them. These details lead to wonders about the relationships between teacher educators and teacher candidates in this era of reform. It is from this systematic exploration of field notes, field texts, interim texts that meaning emerges and communicates the power of understanding the particular for contributing to the more general research conversation. Narrative inquiry is fundamentally empirical work and it is deeply grounded in the data collected during the experience and ongoing attention to understanding the meaning of the experience in relationship to the research puzzle and the phenomenon under investigation. The empirical evidence on which narrative inquiry is based are contained in field notes, collected artifacts, interviews, and conversations with participants, as well as in negotiations around interim texts, research accounts, and final research texts. Important to note is that the data for exploring the research puzzle is constantly emerging as the narrative inquirer engages in living alongside the participant and experiencing events that have the potential to support the inquirer in gaining an understanding of the phenomenon under study. The emergent and evolving quality of the evidence and interpretation of it and the processes specified are fundamental characteristics and constitute the methods of narrative inquiry. In taking up narrative inquiry as a methodology, each of these strategies is essential to the researcher’s developing and deepening understandings of the research puzzle: the phenomenon under investigation and the phenomenon of narrative.

Establishing Trustworthiness Narrative inquiries are concerned not only with demonstrating trustworthiness and credibility for the inquiry but also with communicating resonance. They achieve this when they attend carefully to the strategies and methods as well as the methodology of narrative inquiry. Thus, narrative inquirers

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begin with narrative beginnings, they collect field notes and artifacts and interviews. They move their initial understandings forward through a process of placing them in the three-dimensional narrative space, identifying and valuing resonances among accounts and the life experiences of the researcher and the participants. They seek coherence in the understandings of the experience they develop and the accounts they construct and the data they collect. Because narrative inquiry is relational, this movement from evidence to the final research text occurs in community. Narrative inquires usually construct a community with whom they can confer and who can provide response to the inquiry that shapes their understandings and their final research texts. Narrative inquirers engage in careful, rigorous research. One of the strongest indicators of this is their engagement in negotiation of their narrative accounts with participants so that the final account is a relational one about which both researcher and participant agree.

Presenting the Findings The findings are represented in a careful narrative and expository that feels somewhat organic and weaves the stories from the inquiry together with research on the phenomenon an about the use of story as methodology in ways to lead to deepened understanding and new insights that resonate with the reader of the research. This is clearly evident in the example provided here and the understanding that the narrative for this examination emerged from the data slice presented in the S-STEP section. Distinct to narrative inquiry and fundamental in establishing trustworthiness is the recognition of experience as story. Understanding that people shape their lives by story and the story opens the world of people and through story the people negotiate their worlds (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006). When engaged in narrative inquiry, researchers explore experience through the use of the three-dimensional space. Connelly and Clandinin (2006) identified “three commonplaces of narrative inquiry temporality, sociality, and place which specify dimensions of an inquiry space” (p. 479). They imagined them “in the spirit of check points” (p. 479) or places to direct one’s attention in conducting a narrative inquiry. They provide a kind of conceptual framework for narrative inquiry. However, “just as it was for Schwab in curriculum, the study of any one or a combination of these three commonplaces might well take place in some other form of qualitative inquiry” (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006, p. 479). To undertake a

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narrative inquiry, there needs to be a “simultaneous exploration of all three commonplaces” (p. 479). We cannot focus only on one to the exclusion of others. In narrative inquiry it is important to always attempt to understand people, places, and events as in process, as always in transition and to communicate within the text the tensions, bumping places, wonderings and places of wakefulness to establish trustworthiness and create resonance.

A LOOK TOWARD AUTOETHNOGRAPHY While it was originally used as a term to describe cultural studies of one’s own people (Hayano, 1979), autoethnography now refers to work where the research focuses on autobiographical stories that feature the self or includes the researcher as a character (Ellis, 2004; Ellis & Bochner, 2000, 2003; Ellsworth, 1993). Through examination and analysis of these autobiographical stories in relationship to the research conversation around the phenomena or experience being explored or the larger shared societal or cultural knowledge about it, this methodology reveals the tensions uncovered between a person’s particular experience and the general understandings of the broader social context. Broadly, a description of culture would include evidence of shared patterns of thought, symbol, and action typical of a particular group, while an autoethnography would simultaneously question, challenge or reveal insights about those shared patterns. Considered an autobiographical genre of writing and research that reveals multiple layers of experience and understanding (Ellis, 2004), autoethnographers engage in research by exploring their personal experiences looking for the tensions, gaps and relationships between personal understanding and the cultural elements of those experiences. They do this to agitate, disrupt and contest views of the world (Jones, 2005) with a desire to make a difference in it (Renner, 2001). Autoethnography includes a self-reflexive way of examining experience while considering how the self is Othered (Bennett, 2004). Like narrative inquiry and S-STEP, autoethnographers often write in first person, using a multi-genre approach that can incorporate short stories, poetry, novels, photographs, journals, fragmented, and layered writing. What distinguishes autoethnography is the intentional attention to cultural elements and disruptions and insights into shared cultural understandings. The autoethnographer is simultaneously pushing to increase personal understanding and shared cultural or societal understanding in order to disrupt. This

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orientation to knowing the culture of the self and the way in which the larger culture of the person conducting the study is revealed in the text is a fundamental element of autoethnography. Researchers look broadly at their setting to include social and cultural aspects of their lives. Providing these multiple layers of information and understandings allows autoethnographies to contribute to the larger research conversation from and through a very personal contribution. Importantly, the autoethnographer brings the vulnerable self to the work and explores the tensions of the context (societal and cultural) and the self. The work also often reveals the cultural knowing of the individual within a society against a backdrop of larger cultural knowledge of the culture and society as a whole. In an attempt to echo the work of autoethnographers, we took the original data slice from 1996 and generated a poem as autoethnographers often do to examine how autoethnography as methodology distinguishes itself from narrative inquiry and S-STEP research.

Poem in four voices Arizona Group You have to imagine the scene You would have been proud. Scene Here we are, my class and I, In an oversized room with too many desks It is the end of the football season, We are playing our serious rivals. Today is our first whole group meeting in weeks … Quickly the issues turn to human dignity … I In the front of the room is their teacher. Me … I look like I studied the conservative republican book of dress … I begin by asking if anyone has any management miracles I begin to talk about revolution in the schools. But, I did not begin the discussion before

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I, unconsciously, walked over and closed the classroom door … There I was professing revolution. I used a favorite saying … today is a good day to die … I asked them for issues for which they were willing to take a stand. Personally I was scared. Students My students look mostly like Barbie and Ken … They arrive in class precisely on time Their little eyes wide … whispering. They were mesmerized.

Ontology and Claims about Knowing We observe that autoethnography attempts to capture what is from the life perspective and individual knowing of the researcher. However, since this work has a fundamental purpose of disrupting society and culture, a characteristic of the work is about being able to claim to know. In this way, the fundamental research stance of the autoethnography would be considered epistemological because the focus is away from the ground-of-being/ becoming and toward what claims to know things about the world from the perspective of the individual living in it. In this work the self is located directly in the center and this work revolves around the self or the interpretation of self not necessarily in relationship to others but in relationship to the culture of which one is a part. As an autoethnographer the commitment of the research is the expansion of ideas and the value of the research appears in the writing and/or illustrations of what occurs in the larger societal structures, assumptions, or practices. As the data excerpt suggests the researcher is often interested in considering multiple perspectives revealed in an autobiographical account but the juxtaposition is always between the self and society or culture. The multiple voices in this poem represent the attempt in this research to capture personal but multivocal accounts that allow insight into issues of a society or culture. This is made clear by the four voices represented and overtly labeled in the account and in the separation of self (the poem labeled “I”)

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from the classroom and the students. The claims to know are grounded in the assumption that the self has authority to know and can claim knowing for and about the culture they come from (Davis & Ellis, 2008).

Methodology in Relationship with “research puzzle” and Researched In autoethnography the focus on the work is writing. Davis and Ellis (2008) argue that this methodology emerged in writing the understanding of the self in contrast with the writing of ethnographers about the culture of others. Through the written exploration of self, the understanding of the self about others, about the society or the political and cultural in relationship to personal experience and understandings. In fact, the researchers’ orientation is fundamentally autobiographical although the viewpoints of others may be drawn from and interpolated from the event. Contrast here the relationship of the poem presented in this representation of the data slice with the earlier narrative account in which the scene is set and unfolded clearly from the perspective of the narrator of the story. Here, the poem is represented in four voices and purports to capture the voices of the others in the story, but is built on the understandings of all the others represented in the stories from the perspective of the researcher constructing the account. This presents the researcher as an insider who holds cultural knowledge of how the researcher and others within the culture would understand it. Fundamentally, the autoethnographer/researcher examines the ways the self and personal experience within a culture is related to societal expectations. The attempt is to push forward critical analysis of aspects of a culture while simultaneously questioning and pushing on the traditional understandings of these issues.

Methodology in Relationship with the “research puzzle” and Researched The inquiry centers more clearly than either other methodology on the self and self-understandings, and the researchers is encouraged within an autoethnography to expose vulnerability and view the research project as therapeutic. While other methodologies resist this notion and indeed both S-STEP researchers and narrative inquirers assert the empirical basis of their work, autoethnographers encourage an examination of their data through writing that explores the therapeutic value of critically considering personal experience in relationship to oppressive structures within the larger society.

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This turn to the therapeutic is evident in the excerpt provided here who invites colleagues to observe from their voice, using their own experience to support and assist the researcher in their communication of their understanding of and assertions about the event. Evident as well is the overt privileging of the perspective of the I throughout this representation of the work. In this methodology, the questions the researcher take up deal with oppositional understandings they have about society and culture. This means from the very beginning of the investigation the research question pursued and the data used represent fundamental and personal yet oppositional and resistant understandings held by the researcher. This means that the researcher is always working with the discomfort caused by making visible their own view of the experience from their own perspective. Therefore, the autoethnographer is positioned to be vulnerable yet resistant to critique and rejection. The work values most highly the view of the autoethnographer in terms of the societal issues being taken up. In the I voice of this poem the author more clearly and comprehensively than in the other texts created from the data piece reveals herself as vulnerable but asserts more strongly her personal construction of the her underlying knowing of the experience. The fear of retribution, the sense of self as being other than students and her understanding of her institution and its culture all emerge in the poem.

Methodology and Evidence In the research design autoethnographers seek alternative ways to challenge perspectives. The focus centers on the writing that is always autobiographical. Autoethnographers attempt to violate traditional practice and in so doing make themselves, “vulnerable to criticism about [their] most personal stories” (Davis & Ellis, 2008, p. 284). What this suggests is that alternative forms, overly personal accounts of experience, and an insistence on the interpretation of the researcher as the primary and authoritative knower of the culture are fundamental aspects of this genre of research. The messiness and overlap in research can clearly be seen in autoethnography. Ellis (2004) describes autoethnography as referring, “to writing about the personal and its relationship to culture. It is an autobiographical genre of writing and research that displays multiple layers of consciousness” (p. 37). The gaze moves back and forth, “… looking through an ethnographic wide angle lens, focusing outward on social and cultural aspects of their personal experience … then inward, exposing a vulnerable self that is moved by and may move through, refract and

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resist cultural interpretations” (p. 37). As Davis and Ellis point out, auto ethnography is, “research, writing, story, and method that connect the autobiographical and personal (2008, p. 284). This is evident in the representation of four perspectives, but which on further examination are actually alternative constructions of the view from the self that support and bolster the position of the self in the depiction and examination of the event. Data involve life histories. But these are the life histories of the autoethnographer and not necessarily others in the story. While narrative inquiry requires artful writing because of the organic intermingling of story and exposition, writing is an even more central part of autoethnography. Working as an autoethnographer requires that the researcher engage as well in developing as a sophisticated and strong writer. Autoethnographers as part of the practice of their research must seek to develop stronger accounts of their experience by increasing their skill as writers. As a result, much of the strategy for analysis focuses on writing to know. When we look at the data representation of the poem, the separation of it into four voices and the adjustment of the language and the decisions about how to place the work suggest this orientation. This work involves writing and rewriting as a part of the study. In fact, writing episodic life stories are part of the beginning work of autoethnographers. As the writings are analyzed the story and the experience of the researcher (the “I”) are central. The researcher juxtaposes current understandings against the backdrop of literature, culture, and a perceived shared understanding of society. Jones (2005) notes that, … autoethnography works to hold self and culture together, albeit not in equilibrium or stasis. Autoethnography writes a world in a state of flux and movement between story and contest, writer and reader, crisis and denouement. It creates charged moments of clarity, connection, and change. (p. 764)

Establishing Trustworthiness Autoethnography is the most subjective of the intimate methodologies presented in this chapter. For the most part, autoethnographers focus on the presenting of a story fiction or creative-non-fiction and worry far less about trustworthiness. It is a story presented by the researcher and since it is from the life and perspective of the researcher that must almost within and of itself provide sufficient ground for asserting trustworthiness. There is of course attention to coherence and sometimes resonance, but it is the

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writing and rewriting the shaping and forming of the account and the development of the self as a writer that in some ways forms the basis for judgments of trustworthiness and creditability. For these researchers evidence of a conventional sort are less-valued. Ellis and Bochner (2003) state that as autoethnographers they, always create … personal narrative from a situated locale, trying to make our present, imagined future, and remembered past cohere, there’s no such thing as orthodox reliability in autoethnography research … we do reliability checks. When other people are involved, you might take your work back to them and give them a chance to comment, add materials, change their minds and offer their interpretations. (p. 229)

For them, a, “story’s generalizability is constantly being tested by readers as they determine if it speaks to them about their experience or about the lives of other they know” (p. 229). The value of the work resides in the ability of the account to resonate and draw support for the critique the work provides to traditional aspects of the culture and society of the author.

Presenting the Findings To present the finding for autoethnography the researchers usually generate creative-non-fiction, fiction, or poetry. The presentation of findings comes in the form of a story about the researcher’s attempt to raise political and cultural questions that cause readers to consider identity (Marshall & Rossman, 2015). Through narratives of experience and explication and interpretation of them, autoethnography brings the personal understandings of the researcher against popular, societal understandings to examine the fit. This juxtaposing of the particular against societal understandings represents a critical aspect of this methodology.

EDGES AROUND THE METHODOLOGIES As we turn toward considering the various edges between these methodologies, we wonder how these methodologies lie in relationship to exploring experience and personal understandings of experience and the potential contribution of such understandings to the research conversation. As we stated all of these methodologies can contribute personal knowledge from the perspective of the particular to the research conversation on teaching and teacher education. However, we also realize that because of the way in

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which the self in relationship to the other, the processes for developing knowledge, the differences in how trustworthiness is established and the fundamental differences in the focus of each methodology then considering the edges allows us to articulate what each methodology can uniquely contribute. In her work, Wolf (1992) explores the “messy stuff of experience” but cautions researchers to be respectful of those people with whom we work (p. 58). She points out that issues of interpretation depend upon who is writing, thinking, and considering the work. As Wolf struggled to examine how her work expressed experience, so researchers using any of these methodologies will struggle in their exploration of the experience and in communicating the value of the particular in a climate when the research community is focused more overtly on generalizability rather than applicability or the value of understanding the particular. Like Wolf, we find that work in any methodology goes beyond field notes and offers no single truth. Wolf acknowledges that each researcher can see things differently. In fact, she points out that her research partner, Arthur Wolf (a traditional anthropologist) saw the field notes and did not dispute content, but found that he drew quite different conclusions from those notes. Each methodology examined here attempts to reduce the research puzzlement as an attempt to understand the informal logic of actual life (Geertz, 1983). Wolf suggests that it is our “willingness to speak and write about experience that results from our serious engagement in discovering what we can about how life is lived in another social/cultural setting” (p. 128). We agree with her that life is unpredictable, experience is messy and as researchers we must be both careful with and tolerant of the ambiguity, multiplicity, contradiction, and instability that comes with that messiness. As good researchers, when we sit down to work we must remind ourselves that life is “unstable, complex and disorderly” and it is the researcher’s job to wade through and pluck out the important bits (p. 130). Drawing from the work of Pinnegar and Hamilton (2009) represented in Fig. 1, which we articulated earlier, we can identify similarities among these methodologies. These similarities include a commitment by all users of these methodologies to elements of good research, to attention to the commonplaces of place, time and sociality, to the use of narrative/story in some form, to the primacy of “I” or subjective view, to acceptance of and willingness to be vulnerable and to a desire to know and account for the knowledge of the self and the other. Researchers using these methodologies take risks to pursue issues that may touch tender places. Even with these similarities when we look across the larger research literatures, we see confusion among terms like strategy, method, narrative,

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story, and so on which, in turn, can raise questions of trustworthiness around the work and the researcher. Certainly we see how the crisp use of terminology would strengthen the quality and integrity of whichever methodology the researcher used. In Table 1, below, we attempt to detail the ways these methodologies collide, bump and separate across the issues of the stance, the role of the self, the commitment and value of the methodology, the focus, research puzzle, research design, data collection, analysis, and representation of findings. Researchers using any of these methodologies would use the elements of good research, including the explicit description of a study’s import, a clear design for the study and a description of the analytic processes, a recognition of the study as situated in the larger literature, ethical action as researchers, and the public presentation of the work. And we see differences where edges collide. Some differences are explicit; some differences are less so and herein lies the confusion. We note that each methodology uses the terms narrative and story in different ways. In S-STEP research narrative is a story told by the I or the Other (and recounted by the I) and it might also be a segment of an interview or some other piece of qualitative data. In autoethnography, story is more clearly an autobiographical account told from the perspective of the I and is unapologetically presented from that perspective. In narrative inquiry use of the term narrative implies a negotiated text between researcher and other. So, while the methodologies have shared terms like story or narrative, the meanings of those terms differ. One of the edges shared by narrative inquiry and S-STEP research is that the research is centered in ontology and a commitment to understand what is and create a representation that presents an authentic account. While S-STEP research focuses on practice, the primary orientation of narrative inquiry is toward understanding experience (although it is as Clandinin (1985) demonstrate from this orientation that narrative inquiries often deepen our understanding of personal practical knowledge). Like SSTEP practices research narrative inquiry makes claims to know from the place of ontology understanding more fully what is but narrative inquiry begins in experience as expressed in lived and told stories. Both Narrative inquiry with its commitment to uncovering understandings of experience and S-STEP with its commitment on revealing understanding of and improvement to practice stand on the ground of and are oriented toward ontology. In contrast, because autoethnographers attempt to use their personal understanding and accounts of personal culture to resist and disrupt more general societal understandings and assumptions, they are more concerned with making claims to know and therefore stand on the ground of and are oriented to epistemology.

Table 1. Stance

Narrative

Ontological Relational

Self

Less focused-on Understanding

Commitment and Value To experience Experience

Other in tension w/self

Self-study

Ontological

To the side

Understanding

Next to self

To improvement

In tension

With other

A Look across the Methodologies. Focus

Research Puzzle

Research Design

Data Collection

Analysis

Representing Findings

Experience Pushing to uncover Marginalized worlds From perspective of other connection

Relational World traveling (Lugones) Bumping places and tensions Wonderings

Subjective Use of commonplaces is central Push on 3-D space systematic for meaning Narrative beginning, artifacts, self

In the midst Living alongside

Third space Field to interim texts

Story

Use – field texts/ notes Movement back and forth

Systematic use of artifacts

TEdor/TEdor practice

Cosmopolitanism

Traditional qualitative

Qual processes

Traditional qualitative

Academia practice Classroom

Uncovering tacit knowledge Look at action/ turn back on self

Attempts to be navigate between objective and subjective Always go back to the experience Come to know through dialogue rather than writing

Use of journals

Dialogue

Contextually embedded

Evidence in important

Collaboration

Interactions w/politics

Interactive Evidence in important Systematic Critical friend What is evidence is broader and can look more like AE sometimes

Auto ethnography

Epistemological About knowing

In the center

To expansion of ideas Writing/illustration of what’s happening on the larger plane

More focused on writing Individual related to society

Focus on self

Vulnerability

Alternative, challenge

Life histories

Story

Research as therapeutic

Focus on writing

Narrative writing

Juxtaposing

Always autobiographical

Writing/rewriting

Against backdrop of lit, culture, shared understanding of society

Evidence less-valued Most deeply subjective Writing episodic life stories

Creative nonfiction Poetry

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Another edge if found in the preliminary work of narrative inquirers and autoethnographers. Prior to any work in the field, the researchers using these methodologies engage in beginning writing. The narrative inquirers call this writing narrative beginnings; the autoethnographers call this writing episodic life writing. In each case, these writings provide a clear foundation for the work to come. However, the purposes beyond this engagement are somewhat difference. Narrative inquires use narrative beginning to uncover their own understandings and assumptions about the experiential phenomenon of their research puzzle. In contrast, autoethnographers use this writing to develop and form their developing understanding of self culture that is the overriding purpose of their work. In S-STEP work, researchers are assumed to know teaching and teacher education and do not take the time to examine the ground upon which they stand. They may look at their foundation now at this time as they shape their research question, in other words their current sense of ontology or what is in practice, but they do not look to their beginnings. Narrative inquirers and autoethnographers also share a commitment to writing. However, both of the research communities require as part of their data collection and analytic process the construction and reconstruction of artful texts. For narrative inquirers the focus is on creating an organic holistic research text that presents experience and leads the reader to wonder about and become wakeful to the tensions, bumping places, and meanings of the phenomenon in question. In contrast for the autoethnographers writing is data collection, interpretation, and development of research text. In autoethnography there is an orientation to developing sophistication as a writer as part of engagement in the research. The focus of narrative inquirers in on creating the most authentic and insightful account on the phenomenon under inquiry through a process of living alongside and engaging in the negotiation and renegotiation of texts among the researcher/researched. Other edges we see between autoethnography and S-STEP where the evidence they present can look similar. While autoethnography always includes a look at the broacher cultural context, sometimes the work of self-study scholars may venture into that territory. Autoethnography and self-study of teaching and teacher education practices methodologies also share an interest in dialogue. However, the depth of that interest varies. In authoethnography the researchers attempt to capture the conversations (sometimes called dialogue) of those involved in the study. For S-STEP researchers’ dialogue is the coming-to-know process in the study. Narrative inquiry like S-STEP research is empirical work and is grounded in the data collected during the experience. Both methodologies expect that the data collected will allow researchers to check the perspective

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of others as well as question their own perspective and interpretations. Although the construction of autobiographical accounts by the autoethnography might be considered a form of collection of data, since it consists of writing and rewriting, exploring and re-exploring the meaning of the autobiographical account through such writing, data collection as a formal process is less apparent. We do not attempt here to answer the question of which methodology is better; rather we are responding instead to our perceptions that there is widespread methodological confusion and we the hope this work will promote better, more rigorous research. In Fig. 2 we attempt to capture the understandings concerning the edges the similarities along with the differences our exploration uncovered.

Self Study of teaching and teacher education practices

Narrative Inquiry Stance

Focus: Experience

Focus: Practice

Thinking behind Stance: Ontological

the scenes

Stance: Ontological Commitment to Improvement

Research Design

Research Design Dialogue

3-dimensional space

Elements of Good Research Commonplaces (Social, Temporal, Place) Use of narrative/story I-subjective Vulnerability Knowing the Other

Narrative beginnings Focus on writing

Evidentiary representation Dialogue/conversation

Autoethnography Focus: Cultural Context Research Design Stance: Epistemological Conversation Connection to larger society

Fig. 2. Venn Diagram of Three Methodologies Redux. Note: This diagram is an elaboration on the Venn Analysis Pinnegar & Hamilton 2009 and Hamilton, Smith & Worthington, 2008).

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SIGNIFICANCE This analysis presented in this chapter draws attention to some of the muddle and confusion. When researchers have a sharper, clearer understanding of a methodology, it can guide them to utilize the methodology that allows them to direct laser-like attention to the issues that must be explored to better understand and examine professional knowledge and experience. In turn, attention to the ways in which these methodologies demonstrate trustworthiness and rigor has the potential to insure standards of quality for those who hope to explore the complexities of teaching and poverty to support our obligations to unseen children. In so doing we can better guide our work and hopefully support others in doing the same.

SECTION II INTIMATE SCHOLARSHIP

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SECTION OVERVIEW INTIMATE SCHOLARSHIP We make this turn toward what we see as intimate scholarship (Hamilton, 1995) because only a subjective, relational, and up-close look can expose those aspects of our lives. Intimate scholarship takes up ontological stance where recognition of the individual/collective relation has value, uncovers embodied knowing through autobiography and action, and explores the coming-to-know process based in dialogue (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2014) that captures particularities to document the ways we navigate lives and experiences in the educational world. When engaged in intimate scholarship teacher educators reveal the vulnerabilities and passions that most often remain hidden in talk about experience. (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2014, p. 153)

This quote argues that because it allows for research on teacher education to more clearly represent the practice of and participation in teaching and teacher education, intimate scholarship has a greater potential to inform the research conversation in teacher education. Such a stance is in opposition to most research currently most valued by the larger research community. The scholarship in teacher education that is currently most revered is research conducted from a modernist epistemological orientation that requires objectivity, randomized samples, statistical manipulation, validity, and generalizability. The valuing of this orientation was made clear through Cochran-Smith’s (2005) AERA presidential address wherein she argued that for teacher education to make real progress in building a knowledge base researchers needed to engage in more large scale, crossinstitutional studies, using standardized instrumentation. This assertion received further support with the AERA Studying Teacher Education Panel’s decision regarding ways to limit the research studies utilized in their examination (see Cochran-Smith & Zeichner, 2005). Yet as this section makes clear valuing the particular, grounding work in ontology, using dialogue as a coming-to-know process, positioning in vulnerability, and bringing openness to interpretation all characteristics of intimate scholarship can, do, and will contribute important understandings to the teacher education research community. One of the predominant 107

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reasons for the potential success of intimate scholarship to shape and improve teacher education as an enterprise is that like teacher education as an enterprise, researchers engaged in intimate scholarship fundamentally seek relational understanding. Our knowing as teacher educators and our process in becoming teacher educators are based in what Slife (2004) labels a relational ontology that recognizes that things exist and develop meaning not through studying them as if they were static and determinable (an abstractionist or modernist ontology) but through acknowledging, recognizing, and making-meaning of the ways in which they relate to each other. From a Deleuzian context, ontology represents the de-centered center of attempts to explore issues and connections of difference help develop the assemblages that we might build. As intimate scholars, we believe that utilizing selected methodological tools enables us to develop the kind of scholarship that contributes to the quality of teacher education and allows us to live our commitments in our actions as teacher educators. As intimate scholars, we are committed to a life beyond multiculturalism promoting a world that accepts and sustains all humans (Appiah, 2006). With Dewey (1933) we seek to develop and developing committed teachers and educators through educative experiences to be open, whole-hearted, and responsive. Within these commitments Deleuze provides a basis whereby informing our selves and shaping relations with others we stand in a space of becoming to create and recreate assemblages that offer new lines of flight and better ways of relating to and with each other. These theoretical commitments, enacted and honored through intimate scholarship, enable us to act in more socially just ways and educate teachers who shape their practices and their educational worlds in potentially similar ways. These researchers hold a fundamental commitment to the practical that includes a recognition that a focus on the particular in this place at this time. With this focus we take up what we learn from our inquiries to work with the teachers we educate as they refine, reshape, and enact practices that create environments where children and others in schools can not only succeed but also thrive. As intimate scholars we recognize we hold a basic obligation to humanity again an obligation to the particular. Education, particularly teaching is fundamentally relational. It is within educational spaces and educative experiences that teachers (our students), including us as their teachers, embrace ethical obligations to create educative contexts. Intimate scholarship enables us to shape such contexts. Indeed, these environments emerge first as our practices are shaped in relationship to the needs and potentials

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of those others who stand and live in our contexts. As a result of the possible contributions that intimate scholarship might make to the research conversation, then across time the typical and traditional school landscape can be transformed as practices that support and sustain teaching, teachers and teacher educators (as well as represent ethical relationships) emerge holding new promise for the development of others. Such practices have the potential to become routine and the new norm at all levels of education (public school as well as universities). In this section of the text, we describe the elements and characteristics of intimate scholarship to make clear the ways in which engagement in this work can fulfill this promise.

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CHAPTER 6 THE VALUE OF THE PARTICULAR In 1988, Polkinghorne argued that, … our traditional research model, adopted from the natural sciences, is limited when applied to human beings. I do not believe the solution to human problems will come from developing ever more sophisticated and creative applications of the natural science mode. (p. x)

He suggested that the human sciences might profitably look to practitioners using narratives rather than researchers using numbers to provide insight into how to attack intractable problems faced by society such as teen pregnancy or criminal recidivism. He indicated that a turn to research using narrative rather than numbers might provide a surer research base from which practitioners could work. In concert with this view, Putnam (2005) suggested that most of the difficult problems we face as a society are intractable and that traditional forms of social science research where results could purportedly be generalized from one context and applied to another had not resolved many of these dilemmas. Putnam indicates that Dewey’s work represents the third enlightenment where the best source for knowledge for responding to the difficult problems faced in our society was to focus on experience of the particular. He argued that social scientist should examine and inquire into particular responses. By providing careful accounts of experience with a particular problem, at a particular place, with particular people at a particular time, the audience of the research could determine how the knowledge garnered by the study could be applied to other situations and settings. Inquirers engaging in intimate scholarship focus their work on the particular and make explicit and public understandings they develop. Some might question what we can learn from intimate scholarship focused on the particular that will significantly inform our interactions as teacher educators or teachers. Through such a focus, we are able to attend to the variability of response to human problems and the dignity of the individual players. We can better attend to the nuances of meaning and multiplicity of perspectives that are present or possible. Exploring the particular in the context and experience of a specific teacher educator provides an endless 111

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array of ways to examine and respond to the phenomenon of interest. In attending carefully to the particular, teacher educator researchers can more easily imagine new responses to such problems.

LEARNING FROM INQUIRIES FOCUSED ON THE PARTICULAR Studies focused on making meaning and developing understanding of a particular experience, setting, or person is different than learning from studies organized toward producing generalizable knowledge. In addition, the kind of knowledge such studies produce is also different. When the goal is generalizability, the inquirer focuses on gaining a randomized sample so that the results can be generalized to other populations. In doing so, a unique group is overlooked, ignored, or controlled for, when indeed it might be the actions of the most idiosyncratic group that might best inform others in how they might respond to the phenomenon under study. What can be learned from the situation may indeed be constrained by the instruments used to record differences. In studying the particular, in intimate scholarship the inquirer comes to the task with ideas about what is to be addressed but because the looking is more open there is opportunity in the moment for the participants to push back, to explore, to move the study in ways that distributing and collecting surveys do not allow. Studies of the particular through intimate scholarship allow for the inquirer to be caught off guard and disrupted in the act of the study which gives the inquirer opportunity to shift the focus, revisit the goals, create new probes, revisit and reinterpret the data already collected. Indeed the disruption becomes part of the data itself. Hermann-Wilmarth and Bills (2010) in an example of intimate scholarship conducted through the methodology of autoethnography developed a longitudinal study that explored the experience of LGBT students during preservice teacher education. In doing so, they provide insight into how, if we create safe spaces and open dialogue, our participants will teach us things not only about our question, but also about our research skills: … our own insistence that our participants participate how we wanted them to and their constant resistance to that insistence. Their queering of our role as and their role as participants, and our response to it has become, because this is autoethnography, data. (p. 261)

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The study then reports what these authors learned about the experiences of LGBT preservice teachers and the understandings of resistance, disruption, and surprise they experienced as researchers. This is the story of a research effort wherein the authors’ attempted to explore narratives of LGBT preservice teachers’ experiences within teacher education. The chapter provides insight into how research plotlines are actually lived when researchers embrace a poststructural, social constructivist orientation to research and take up autoethnography as a tool. It documents how through focus group discussion the role of researcher and participant were realigned so that all were participants. It reports how dialogue led to particular kinds of meaning making. While initially the research project was framed as a study of LGBT preservice teachers experience in teacher education, the teacher educators came to realize as the study progressed that they needed (as the teachers of these future teachers) to better understand the experience of learning to teach from the perspective of the preservice teachers. What the teacher educators also came to understand was the influence the research process might have on participants’ school-based advocacy efforts which would emerge later and not during this process. Just as importantly they found that while participants were resistant to engaging in the topics and issues the researchers presented, they valued the interaction and continued to return to monthly meetings across the several years of the study. This helped the teacher educators understand that a safe place to share and talk was what LGBT students needed during preservice preparation and as they transitioned to employment as teachers. Because the participants disrupted and resisted the structure of the study planned and the researchers developed field notes concerning their own perspectives of the experience, the authors of the study were able to analyze not only the response of the participants but their own response as well. Another example of what intimate scholarship focusing on the particular contributes to the research conversation was conducted from the perspective of self-study of teacher education practices (S-STEP). In this study, Brubaker (2015) makes public his role in forming and shaping the negotiations he engages with students around assignments and grades. He examines a critical moment when he negotiated a grade with a student whom he suspected of plagiarism. Through making public his interaction with his student Franklin, Brubaker provides a model for how we might negotiate grades with our students and how we can use grading contracts to support us in this process. He articulates three phases of these negotiations. Across his presentation of findings and data he returns to relevant research, research that can inform teacher educators about negotiating with students

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around such sensitive issue. Through his connection of his study to the body of research on negotiation in other social science fields beyond education, we see clearly how we might apply the things his study reveals in our own practice as teacher educators. Hughes (2008) also contributes to our understanding about how teacher educators invite resistant learners to take up new ideas and become more self-critical in a piece where he engages in intimate scholarship with the methodology of autoethnography to make visible how teacher educators can respond across barriers of race, class, and gender to construct more caring centers for teacher education. There is a parallel between how Hughes responded to Maggie and how Maggie related to her student D. It made visible how difference can be claimed and negotiated in teacher education multicultural education classrooms that are often sites of resistance and debate. Huber and Clandinin (2005) demonstrate the value of an exploration of the particular through a study conducted using narrative inquiry; in the study that examines how a curriculum of lives is negotiated on the professional knowledge landscape of schools through their account of an experience with a field trip to a fort in Canada. After providing context and detail of the trip, they present us with image poems representing three children from the classroom. The image poems capture and present the child to us so that as a reader we relate to them and they are familiar to us as like other children we are aware of or have experiences with. Following the image poems, Huber and Clandinin provide wonderings a series of questions about how these children might be feeling about and engaging with the experience. In the wonderings, they open up space where as scholars all we have read about difficult lives some children negotiate is brought forward and we consider and reconsider how this field trip and others might be experienced by children. The inquiry positions us to think deeply about how the experiences children have in schools lead them to story themselves one way or another. The poems and the wonderings draw us into an open interpretive space where multiple perspectives and alternative interpretations resonate and we reimagine how schools are and might be. Another example of what research on teacher education can garner from a study conducted as intimate scholarship is provided by Greenwalt (2014). A commonly held notion in teacher education is that how teachers are as teachers emerges and develops in part because of their past life experiences. While we know this, we often do not attend carefully to this notion either in our teacher preparation programs as a whole or in our own individual teacher education courses. In a phenomenological study, which is

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conducted from the perspective of intimate scholarship, Greenwalt (2014) reminds us of this when he says: … through my investigations, I have learned that there is another quadrature at play for those whose professional lives involve working with children: the child we teach, the child we were, the parental figures who raised us, and the parental figures who are involved in the lives of the children we teach. Emotional negotiation comes first through seeing that these four figures are all with us as we learn how to teach. (p. 327)

In the article, Greenwalt juxtaposes the experience of four students and their relationships with their parents and teachers with the understandings that emerge in their first field experiences in response to the students with whom they interact. He examines and provides evidence of the idea that what we learn through our relationship with our parents can be both helpful and harmful as we take up a new identity as a teacher. He uses the study as a basis from which we are asked as readers to critique and expand Lortie’s (1975) notion of the apprenticeship of observation and examine how preservice teachers’ experiences as children in relationship to their parents shapes their action as teachers. He argues for the need to support these beginners in drawing on their life experience without overextending the meaning of those experiences when they are not applicable. Using the methodology of action research, McNiff (2013a, 2013b) explores the difficulty in living our values as human beings when we are invited in as consultants across cultural boundaries. She says in the introduction to her study: It is this idea of “consideration and construction of the self” (p. 502) that is the main theme of this paper, because developing a cosmopolitan mindset involves not simply learning to get on with the locals at a surface level (observing national days, particular forms of greeting and eating together), though this is an obvious starting point, but actually committing to a deep level respect for the traditions and values of others and internalising the insights. This means not simply “taking the insights out of the suitcase when one is a guest in the other’s place but actually carrying the insights into one’s life, regardless of time and place.” (p. 502)

Within the article, McNiff provides several examples of how cultural differences get revealed in everyday interaction and how acting on misinterpretations rather than embracing a desire to know and understand the perspective of the other can lead to difficulties in the experience. She also notes how imposing programs and practices based in alternative cultural norms can actually hurt rather than help those we come to engage with. Intimate scholarship has value because it provides clear insight into the understanding developed within particular contexts from the perspective of

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the inquirer. By providing details and interpretation from the viewpoint of the inquirer and locating the reader in the context of the research, intimate scholarship allows for the audience of the scholarship to add the experiences explored in the study as well as the understanding developed to their own store of experience. Through intimate scholarship the experience of the researcher becomes our experience and their understanding informs and shapes our understanding as it emerges in our reading of the research text.

VARIABILITY OF RESPONSE TO HUMAN PROBLEMS AND THE DIGNITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL PLAYERS Every language presents us a different way that a group of humans responded to the problem of communication with each other. The variability of languages is a lesson in the human condition. In the same way, as the inquiries conducted through the framework of intimate scholarship demonstrate, intimate scholars have unique opportunities to learn about teacher education through work focused on that scholar’s individual understanding of particular, experiences, memories, and practices. In such studies, readers are invited into experience and re-experience teacher education informed by perspectives other than their own. Assertions from Appiah (2006) concerning cosmopolitism are relevant here when he says: So there are two strands that intertwine in the notion of cosmopolitanism. One is the idea that we have obligations to others, obligations that stretch beyond those to whom we are related by the ties of kith and kind, or even the more formal ties of a shared citizenship. The other is that we take seriously the value not just of human life but of particular human lives, which means taking an interest in the practices and beliefs that lend them significance. People are different, the cosmopolitan knows, and there is much to learn from our differences. Because there are so many human possibilities worth exploring, we neither expect nor desire that every person or every society should converge on a single mode of life. Whatever our obligations are to others (or theirs to us) they have the right to go their own way. As we’ll see, there will be times when these two ideals universal concern and respect for legitimate difference clash. There’s a sense in which cosmopolitanism is the name not of the solution but of the challenge. (p. xv)

If we apply Appiah’s reasoning, to inquiry in teacher education, then studying particular practices or experiences of teacher educators (wherever they live) has value because it informs us of the beliefs and practices that others hold significant for preparing teachers in their contexts. Such studies also hold value because the humans engaged in these studies have worth as humans.

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McNiff’s (2013a, 2013b) study also argued that teacher educator/ researchers, wherever they are located on the globe, have obligations to each other. We have an obligation to do the hard work of teacher education research in a hope that our understandings can inform the work of others in different places and different cultures who think seriously and apply selectively what they learn from intimate scholarship to their own situation. Every teacher education program like every language is a people’s response to a particular problem educating teachers. In the case of teacher education, the difficulty is how through wise stewardship over the resources available and working within the constraints of context, knowledge, and culture do we educate a new generation of teachers who will be at least equal if not superior to the last one. In doing this, as Appiah and McNiff articulate, we must let others “go their own way.” By allowing scholars who read our work to see us and our understanding of our experience in our context, as intimate scholarship does, the work we produce becomes ever more useful to others.

NUANCES OF MEANING AND MULTIPLICITY OF PERSPECTIVES Another way that research on the particular is valuable is that it reveals nuances of meaning and it constantly seeks and presents alternative interpretations and a multiplicity of perspectives. When the intimate scholar focuses on the particular and reveals in the research text both his or her understanding and the experiences and evidences on which it is based, then new ways of thinking and being are opened up for the reader. As the inquirer attends to nuances of meaning and examines alternative interpretations and perspectives, readers are invited to see the world differently rethinking and responding differently to the challenges of teacher education in their own contexts. The texts of the intimate scholar invite the reader in not as a consumer but as an interpreter. Readers are thus repeatedly thrust into the zone of maximal contact wherein, according to Bakhtin (1981), their past experience is brought forward into the present situation forcing a reinterpretation of the past, a shifting of the ground of the present and a reorientation of the future. This is also a zone of inconclusivity since readers are repeatedly thrust into this space where the ground is unstable and interpretation constantly shifts.

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By engaging with the text developed as intimate scholarship the reader is invited to see again and again their own experience in terms of this new understanding. In this way, the readers’ understanding of past experience, their present understanding, and their own future being and becoming are disrupted. Intimate scholarship invites those who are focused on the particularities of their own practice and the interpretation of it as well as those who are audience to the work into a process of dialogue that is the interpretive grounding of intimate scholarship (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009) with its orientation to an ontological rather than an epistemological stance. The shifting ground lying under intimate scholarship engages and re-engages the reader. It invites reinterpretation, the development of more nuanced understandings, and provides new perspectives that can guide teacher educators both in their research on teacher education and their practice of it. Intimate scholarship either through engaging as a researcher or in reading the research leads to a rethinking of experience in light of the experience of the other.

EXPLORING THE ENDLESS ARRAY OF THE PARTICULAR In The book of laughter and forgetting, Kundera (1980) argues that repetition is the second infinity. In commenting on a character playing the piano, he notes that every time we practice or play a particular piece it is different because we can never exactly reproduce what we did the last time. In the same way, when a person using intimate scholarship takes up the study of a particular experience, or situation, or context, or idea, the potential for variation in understanding and interpretation is myriad. Polanyi (1967) also argued that tacit knowledge is holistic and that whenever we take up some piece of it for scrutiny we alter the whole. Making understandings about a particular aspect of our tacit knowledge explicit may help teacher educators strengthen their practice and develop their understanding of a phenomenon, because in the act of studying it our understanding and knowing of it is disrupted, altered sometimes transformed (it becomes different or new). As a result studying our tacit knowledge, our embodied understandings of experience and practice is a never-ending source for inquiry. In the same way, each time we read a study oriented to examination of the particular new opportunities for learning are opened. We never come to a text in the same way we took it up earlier. The more rigorous the

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scholarship demonstrated, the more careful the attention to the particular, the more open the interpretive stance, then the more likely it is that a new study of an experience will lead to new understandings because the particular is being taken up anew.

IMAGINING NEW RESPONSES TO INTRACTABLE PROBLEMS Maxine Greene (1999) argues that in research in education the two paradigms quantitative and qualitative are not at odds with each other and that each has value. Quantitative research opens the possibility for researchers and scholars to see the horizon of the problem. They are able to see an overarching view with the boundaries marked and defined. When inquirers take up qualitative work they enable researchers to see large and it is in the tension the resonance between the two ways of seeing that experience and action can be reimagined and new possibilities occur. In a similar way, inquiring into the particular through the perspective of the life experiences or practice or knowing of the intimate scholar, teacher educators are invited into a new way of seeing and imagining educational issues under examination. In this way, when the reader juxtaposes their own past experience, their knowing of the research literature of a field and the vista of experience opened in the research text by the intimate scholar, a whole new way of seeing the issue emerges. Researchers are presented with opportunity to re-experience and to develop new understandings to add the experiences and understandings of the intimate scholar to their own. As intimate scholars focus on the particular and reveal what they know from their own perspective and provide evidence and interpretations that grow from that seeing, the research community is provided with an intimate portrait that reinvigorates curiosity and leads to deepened and sometimes new understandings of what just moments before had seemed settled and conclusive.

CONCLUSION In living our lives structures both seen and unseen may constrain us but in inquiring into our experience, as intimate scholars (since it is a form of

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living) the interpretive processes allow us to make visible constraints and potentially free us from them (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2011). As inquirers explore the particular spaces in their own practices, experiences, and contexts, plotlines, characters, and interactions can be imagined as otherwise as having alternative possibilities and to the extent that our analysis and our representation of it invite those reading the work to imagine things differently or take up our work in unique ways tailored and applied to their contexts studies of the particular readily inform the research conversation in teacher education and lead to improved experiences for teachers, teacher educators and children and youth. As intimate scholars, revealing our contexts and exploring our understandings invites readers to rethink their contexts and constraints and think of new ways to be in relationship with their students and new ways to structure teacher education and support the development of the teachers they educate and the children those teachers will serve.

CHAPTER 7 VULNERABILITY Vulnerability refers to a state where we feel open to attack or injury. It can refer to situations where the vulnerability is physical such as in extreme sports. It can refer to financial vulnerability brought on by making unwise monetary choices. It can be technical when the computer systems we employ are susceptible to hackers. For our discussion, vulnerability of intimate scholarship involves emotion. Exploring the role of emotion as an aspect of intimate scholarship, Kelchtermans and Hamilton (2004) articulate the personal nature of the knowledge uncovered and the relationship to vulnerability: … we look beyond the technicist reductionism from the perspective of “knowing how to” toward a “being some-one who” perspective. We examine the moral dimension of knowledge that includes vulnerability in teaching, the integrity and trustworthiness necessary to do the work, and suggest the need for a language to address this dimension. (p. 785)

They argue that such studies reject “technicist reductionism” characteristic of positivist research in order to highlight the kind of knowledge produced in intimate scholarship. The knowledge specified is embodied and enacted as the phrase describing this knowledge clearly expresses. Producing such knowledge from inquiries conducted within intimate scholarship requires that researchers attend to their own integrity as well as the trustworthiness of the study. They identify vulnerability as a central underlying aspect of teaching practice when those who are intimate scholars take up a study of it. Since teacher educators who take up intimate scholarship conduct their inquiries on shifting grounds, make public their feelings and understandings, and accept that what they learn is always open for critique and reconsideration, the ways they study their practice can be characterized by vulnerability (Kelchtermans & Hamilton, 2004). We also assert that scholars taking up such inquiries are also vulnerable as researchers. When engaging and sharing publicly these inquiries, we are vulnerable because we claim ownership and accept responsibility for our knowing and acting as teacher educators. We are vulnerable because the inquiry space is open, evolving, and unstable. And in this space the data collection and analysis 121

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processes are ongoing (with interpretation opening rather than closing down wondering and reimagining), and judgments of veracity and worth reside in the hands of readers.

OWNERSHIP AND RESPONSIBILITY Those who employ intimate scholarship in their inquiries within teacher education and teaching publicly declare that they are the teacher educators under scrutiny in the study. In this way, they take ownership of the work and reveal through their assertions for action and understanding or their wonderings about what could be different their responsibility to act in particular ways in their life. Ownership in intimate scholarship is not in the traditional sense of having exclusive rights to the study or what is learned from it. Instead, it means that the researcher is accountable for the thinking and actions made public in the research itself. Implicit in this ownership is the success or failure of the work that the researcher “I” bears responsibility for the integrity or lack of it in their study. While other researchers using other methodologies often feel this same responsibility as authors of a study, this stance of ownership is heightened in intimate scholarship because the researcher is often at least one of the participants in the research, and the study itself is reported in the voice of the first person. The inquiry is always centered in the study of one’s self in relation to Other autobiographically, historically, culturally, and politically. Consequently, researchers are accountable for both what is present and what is absent in the study and in his or her practice (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009). In taking an ontological stance, an orientation to developing understanding of what is, from the perspective of the inquirer, there is an implicit assumption that the researcher will attempt to act in ways that are in concert with the understandings developed. Part of the responsibility of intimate scholarship, the bargain the inquirer makes with the reader of the report is that the inquiry will reveal mistakes as well as successes. Researchers will describe experiences and understandings where the inquirer may be uncomfortable with his or her action or beliefs. For example, Bullock (2009) explores points of tension in his practice as a beginning teacher educator where the pedagogy he thought he was employing was different from what he actually did. In his examination of this discrepancy, he argues that neither being a successful teacher candidate

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(bringing forward experience as a student in teacher education) nor being a successful teacher of physics provided an easy basis from which he could transition into teaching as a teacher educator. Instead, he discovered that while he could draw forward things he understood to inform him, he was in fact once more a beginner who had to learn from practice to develop strong practice. Studies conducted as intimate scholarship reveal to scholars who they are. Researchers in this work are not just those who know something but also those who act in particular ways in response to what they know. Bullough and Pinnegar (2001) argue the necessity of humility and integrity in conducting such work both obligations that position the scholar as vulnerable. Intimate scholars are committed to developing living educational theory. This means not just that the theory lives because it grows and changes but also because it lives in the practice, interaction, and experience of the inquirer.

THE INQUIRY SPACE The inquiry space for intimate scholarship is an open one in which it is expected that the researcher and the researched will learn and grow. Understanding of the experience and its meaning will shift, reorient, or be transformed. Navigating this space is always complicated at best. In the inquiry, the researcher will uncover and excavate tacit, embodied as well as professional knowledge developed in the present moments (Stern, 2004) within experience as we explain what we know or act on it. The ground on which intimate scholarship is conducted is unsteady. Inquirers often will not know what they know until we say it and then they may write or speak things in opposition to what they had assumed they thought or did. Polanyi (1967) argues that tacit knowledge is holistic and integrated, which is both bad news and good news. The bad news is that when we take up scrutiny of one aspect of our tacit knowledge we rip it from its moorings within the holistic mass and in doing so we alter it because we obscure the connections it has to other ideas. This makes knowing, in a modernist epistemological sense when things can be bounded, held static, and equated with each other (Putnam, 2005), improbable. However, the good news is that there will never be a lack of tacit knowledge we can study both because we can never know it all and because when we take up a piece for examination it will be reintegrated into our tacit knowledge in new ways. If we are examining narratives, we know that stories can be told differently.

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Events can be moved along the plotline as flashbacks or inserted into future experience. What is beginning or ending can become the middle of the story and the beginning and end can potentially shift places. In engaging in intimate scholarship focused on autobiographical experiences, we know that everyone who participated in the experience may provide a different account of it. In addition, as intimate scholars explore a narrative fragment, their engagement with it drawing new perspectives, seeking alternative interpretation or additional or divergent accounts the fragment becomes story and the story takes on new life (Boje, 2007). We may be blinded by insight into one aspect of the event and therefore unable to see others. In every form of intimate scholarship the ground we work from is unstable but to reach insights that are significant and informative, the intimate scholar will embrace vulnerability and the opportunity it provides to uncover deep understandings and strengthen knowing in teacher education. Being vulnerable makes intimate scholars welcoming of new ideas and new ways to interpret and other ways we might see. It pushes scholars to search out alternative perspectives and scrutinize the data with greater care. When we take up an inquiry from an orientation of intimate scholarship, we are continually unsure. We wonder if our research account is viable and accurate. We wonder what we will unearth and what we might have unearthed but it remained hidden. We wonder how disruptive the inquiry process might be to our ability to act or which of our routines as teacher and teacher educator will unravel and how our knowing in action will be disrupted. Because we embrace vulnerability as a condition for doing intimate scholarship, the inquiry space where we work is always in flux uncertain, unstable, and unpredictable. Yet, it is this very instability that holds potential for the deepest kinds of knowing to emerge.

DATA Qualitative research data collection and analysis can leave the researcher feeling vulnerable. Questions might be raised about the accuracy and trustworthiness of the data. Critics may raise issues about the honesty of informants and whether the research can actually say with certainty that the informants know anything about the topics and questions they responded to. Questions can emerge about the decisions made in doing analysis and whether the analysis itself accurately represents the data and the patterns and themes. Issues might be raised about how certain the intimate scholar

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is of interpretations and whether contradictory accounts and evident were vigorously sought. While similar questions might be raised about quantitative data attending carefully to the assumptions and strategies will alleviate and provide answers to critics. However, when qualitative researchers take up intimate scholarship, new questions of trustworthiness and bias (beyond those typically raised about qualitative studies) emerge that may make scholars feel even more vulnerable. For some reason, readers are more likely to trust our judgment about others than they are to accept our judgment of ourselves. Intimate scholars are susceptible to charges that the data is not authentic or generated after the fact or with particular results in mind. As a result, intimate scholars, who are themselves always a central participant to the study and its interpretation, are vulnerable to claims that the data is spurious and the analysis is deceptive or misguided. Queries can be raised about accuracy or thoroughness or reliability or strength of data or selection of evidence. However, it is not just the collection and interpretation of the data that makes us vulnerable as intimate scholars. Vulnerability also comes if the citation of the evidence reveals potentially uncomplimentary aspects of our action and interaction with others. While our data and analysis reveal what we learned from our inquiry, it may also reveal weaker aspects of our practice and in so doing reveal tensions and/or contradictions in our study. When we situate ourselves in the study we cannot hide who we are or where we work. Although we attend to the anonymity of those who work with us, even overarching statements about our contexts or colleagues or students might present them in ways that are troublesome. Once Stefinee wrote a book chapter that did not (she thought) demean her institution, but did not present it as pristine. The fractures and fissures within her program were clear. Initially wary about how colleagues might react to her representation, she felt the study should be shared and might help others in teacher education. She remembered how during her graduate work her professors expressed the opinion that people at our institutions seldom read what we write. While she felt vulnerable, she was fairly certain no one at her university would read the chapter. To her surprise, two years later three graduate students appeared at her door wanting to discuss her study as her chapter was an assigned reading for a colleague’s class. Their desire to discuss the study revealed her vulnerability. Data collection, analysis, and reporting are also situated in a space of vulnerability because the interpretation process never closes down. As a reader takes up the piece and seeks to draw understandings about the

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particular experience or phenomenon in the study, they bring their own past and current experiences coupled with an understanding of their own context. As they read, they integrate their knowledge and understanding with the text before them. While this can happen with any kind of research, intimate scholarship pays careful attention to the reader and seeks to position their study in a way that invites the reader to interrogate, reinterpret, and re-experience the events presented and the ideas discussed. Thus, even though the study is completed and an interpretation has been established it is not closed off. We (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2014) engaged in a study in which we revisited the findings of our early work (Arizona Group, 1996), provided a published reconsideration and reinterpretation of our early and later experiences (Arizona Group, 2007), and then produced a current reinterpretation (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2014). In this chapter, we account for this process and assert the ongoing openness of interpretation present in intimate scholarship. We do not abandon or deny the trustworthiness of our first reading and interpretation, but make visible interpretation as ongoing, utilizing additional lenses to trouble and destabilize it. As intimate scholars our teaching, teacher education, and research practice always exist in a zone of inconclusivity (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009). We arrive at points where we make evidence-based assertions for action and understanding but even as we finalize research texts (e.g., Coia & Taylor, 2013), [Studies conducted within intimate scholarship] never quite arrive at a final static point (e.g., Arizona Group, 2004). Our purpose is to make visible this shifting ontological space and the processes of dialogue and interpretation involved, thus, demonstrating the value of the fundamental qualities of openness and inconclusivity evident in [intimate scholarship]. (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2014, pp. 45 60)

While intimate scholars can establish the trustworthiness of their findings, they also recognize that the study is always open for reconsideration and reinterpretation. This instability of the research text leaves the researcher vulnerable. Moreover, this zone of inconclusivity represents the space-between that Deleuze addresses in his work. This space has no closure or definitive nature. Rather, in this space we are opening ways to consider and creatively reconsider other possibilities.

JUDGMENTS OF VERACITY AND WORTH Another aspect of the challenge that comes to those who engage in intimate scholarship is related to judgments of quality and rigor. Currently, at least

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in terms of funded research, the quantitative once again asserts formidable power over what counts as research and what research is valued and valuable. Such research feeds the desire of those who wish to adhere to and assert fundamental criteria for knowing. From the modernist epistemological frame they can turn true belief into knowledge through randomization and statistical analysis. They can report themselves objective and their research as generalizable to other contexts and times. They devalue the importance of understanding the particular. Intimate scholars are vulnerable when their university standings, rank advancement, or tenure is undermined because their inquiry reports use words and not many numbers. Intimate scholarship puts forward the author as the one whose meaning and experience are examined and reported. The data for analysis, the meaning made, and the findings represented in the reports are coming from the perspective of the researcher. Still, colleagues who do quantitative work exclusively may assert that intimate scholarship cannot be defined as research or trustworthy and therefore holds no valuable place in the larger research conversation. Since they cannot plot findings on a norm curve and determine their probability, these scholars wonder about what the findings reveal. Some of these researchers recognize and value more mainstream qualitative work, but the subjective aspects of intimate scholarship are suspect. Work that attempts to uncover and explore the researchers’ tacit knowledge and experience is fundamentally flawed. Such scholars are wary of Putnam’s (2005) assertion that clear understandings of the particular are valuable in determining how to act to resolve intractable problems. Thus, intimate scholarship and scholars are vulnerable to attack concerning the trustworthiness of their work, the findings reported as well as its worth and contribution. Just as importantly, intimate scholars are vulnerable to their own judgments concerning veracity and evidence. Because we take a central position as researcher and researched and assert the understandings as emerging from our analysis of data we ourselves produced in the form of field note observations, journaling, self-interviews, self-videotaping, self-selected artifacts, and memory work, most intimate scholars I know are always concerned about the viability of their interpretation. They revisit their data, seek yet again for negative cases examples, talk through interpretations with others who have similar interests and experiences. They weigh their evidence and query its veracity. They feel vulnerable to attacks about bias, about whether they saw what they think they did, whether the evidence clearly supports their interpretation.

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BACK TO THE BEGINNING As intimate scholars we always stand in a space of vulnerability. Indeed, the work of intimate scholarship generates vulnerability since the inquiry space often fluctuates and lacks stability. The need to establish authenticity of the data its accuracy and representativeness leaves the intimate scholar open to critique. The potential of revealing the messy space of experience and practice and to present the self in what may be seen as an unfavorable light generates vulnerability for inquirers. Rigorous intimate scholarship invites the reader to embrace, take up, and reimagine the data in terms of their own experience. The various processes central to intimate scholarship leave researchers vulnerable to both their own insecurities and concerns about trustworthiness and rigor as well as similar concerns expressed by modernist scholars. Ironically while intimate scholarship always entails vulnerability which can lead to disruption, doubt, and despair, learning to work in a vulnerable space can develop attention to rigor and trustworthiness and coherence in the work with potential to produce scholarship to guide teacher education.

CHAPTER 8 OPENNESS Inquiry as intimate scholarship displays a fundamental characteristic of openness. Such inquiry examines and makes public what the researcher learned from experience. Interpreted broadly, it includes not just face-toface interactions with others, but also exploration of ideas and objects that exist only in the mind, or engages in investigations into ideas or examines how and what texts of all kinds reveal about his or her knowledge of teacher education. The experience examined exhibits the qualities of interaction and continuity and explorations of it that are educative display these characteristics (e.g., Dewey, 1938/1997). Interaction refers to engagement with others both present and absent. Continuity refers to the way in which our learning in new experiences builds on and draws forward what we learned from past experiences and leads forward to new experiences. Inquiring into such experience positions the inquirer throughout the research as open. Therefore, accounts of intimate scholarship exhibit continuity and interaction as well as the learning that emerged. According to Dewey (1933/1993), we learn from experience from the perspective of wholeheartedness, directness, open-mindedness, and responsibility. Wholeheartedness refers to having curiosity and a boundless desire to develop an understanding. Directness is present as inquirers stand in a space of self-forgetfulness filled with confidence in their ability to guilelessly and unselfconsciously explore being willing to uncover and reveal their culpability, misunderstanding, or insight. Open-minded inquirers present themselves as persons willing to learn, to entertain different perspectives, and to consider whatever unfolds within the experience. Responsible inquirers are willing to acknowledge, accept, and act on the consequences of their learning. They act on what they learn and seek to understand what is implicit in the meaning made from the experience as well as their new, or altered obligations. In intimate scholarship the inquirer not only embraces this perspective during the inquiry but it is also evident in the text reporting such inquiries. In studies using intimate scholarship, the accounts of learning within an inquiry are expressed in such a way that readers are invited into a similar experiential educative space. The readers’ engagement and immersion in 129

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the report of the inquiry, their desire to understand the experience, connecting it to their own knowing, position them in an educative space characterized by interaction and continuity leading them to add the experiences explored as part of their store of experiences that inform their practice as teachers and teacher educators. Inquiry within a frame of intimate scholarship makes public the learning and the report of the inquiry exhibits similar properties, as a result inquiry in intimate scholarship is innately open. In defining intimate scholarship, we reference Rodgers’ (2002) asserts idea that reflection is a form of inquiry and identifies four criteria for reflection. The first and the fourth are relevant to the characteristic of openness. 1. [Inquiry] is a meaning-making process that moves a learner from one experience into the next with deeper understanding of its relationships with and connections to other experiences and ideas. It is the thread that makes continuity of learning possible, and ensures the progress of the individual and, ultimately society. It is a means to essentially moral ends …. 4. [Inquiry] requires attitudes that value the personal and intellectual growth of oneself and of others. (p. 845)

Intimate scholarship is identifiable as this kind of inquiry and, as a result, it communicates the quality of openness. Openness in intimate scholarship is apparent in the space of the inquiry, the design of the research, the evolving nature of the various aspects of the study, and the invitation to the reader to participate in interpretation and to add the experiences revealed as part of their own cache of embodied knowing and memory. In this section, we will explore openness through a careful examination of each of these points.

THE SPACE OF THE INQUIRY When we talk about the inquiry space of intimate scholarship, we include not just the concrete location, context, participants, and interactions occurring at a locale, but also the emotional, mental, ethical, and spiritual understandings held by the research and potentially, since intimate scholarship is relational, the researched. In producing intimate scholarship, the inquirer expects the reader to be critical, analytic, curious, and questioning and thus inquiry into the focus of the study will continue beyond the boundary of the published account. Indeed, the intimate scholar never considers the text

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as finished, reified, or complete the research comes alive when we take it up again and interrogate the edges and boundaries in the text. Understandings asserted are accepted, rejected, adjusted, and applied. Findings shift as they enter into the meaning-making process in which the reader of the text engages. Kelchtermans and Hamilton (2004) describe the process of conducting inquiries based on intimate scholarship that explores teaching to uncover what teacher educators know and learn as an act of desire (Deleuze, 1994). Using the works of Pryor (2001) and Deleuze (1994), they argue for understanding the processes of engaging in intimate scholarship focused on teaching and learning as a desire for learning and engagement of self with the world. This search for understanding includes an interest in answering and fulfilling desires related to inquiry. We think that Deleuze would encourage us to ask questions about how things work and how our understandings of the world and the environment around us hobble or inspire us and how that contributes to our understandings. The inquirer understands that anyone (including the inquirer himself/ herself) who comes to the account and interrogate it to make meaning in relationship to their own knowing will be enmeshed in just this kind of learning and meaning-making process. The reader will revisit, renegotiate, and reconstruct the understandings and the meanings made. With Dewey (1938/1997), the authors of intimate scholarship recognize that engaging with the text is a potentially educative experience particularly as the reader brings their own personal, practical knowledge (Clandinin, 1985) to bear. Intimate scholarship displays the characteristic of openness since inquiries are located in a space between (Bullough & Pinnegar, 2001). It is between history and biography since the orientation is toward the particular and the personal with the understanding that the personal is representative of the public and historic. It is located between the single perspective and alternative perceptions, between the perspective of the self and that of the other, between what is known and knowable and what might be perceived as unknown and unknowable, between what is immediately present and what is absent, and between the tacit or embodied and the explicit. Those who engage in intimate scholarship know that they stand on shifting ground (e.g., Arizona Group, 2004; Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2012). In their explorations, they recognize that the researcher, the researched, and the question explored are not bounded, static, and generalizable. Instead the space is one of learning and change. The researcher expects and seeks to learn within the experience of conducting the inquiry, the understandings, and perhaps even the question they began with (e.g., Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2014) will shift and even turn back on itself. Further, since the

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inquiry is grounded in the relational and involves interaction with Others, those participating also grow and change. Given past-present-future influences on participants and researchers, the knowing is partial and emerges in the inquiry process. Another way in which the research space is open is the orientation toward a relational ontological stance. In the face of the inconclusivity and openness, fundamental to intimate scholarship, claims to true knowledge asserted within modernist epistemology are impossible. However, descriptions and explanations of what the inquirer comes to understand as well as other possible interpretations or wonderings and the evidence that anchors these understandings form a basis from which others can take up, critique, and re-shape the findings or understandings presented. Thus, intimate scholarship stands in a space oriented toward ontology but based also in awareness of the epistemology that underlies it (where knowledge has multiplicity and is socially constructed) a space between ontology and epistemology. This space has been described by Barad (2007) as ontoepistemology. We address this perspective with attention to Deleuze’s work in more detail elsewhere (Hamilton, Pinnegar, & Davey, in press). Ettlinger (2014) labels these places of inquiry as non-Euclidean geometric space. In such an open inquiry space, the task of the researcher is to ground the multiple perspectives and alternative interpretations in the data. The inquirer must not only introduce multiple perspectives and interpretations but also provide the data that grounds these differing perspectives and interpretations reporting such inquiries involves documenting the multiplicity of it. In such an inquiry space all are invited to try out alternative interpretations, seek out multiple perspectives, engage in wondering and re-imagining, and examine what is both present and absent in the study and in the account. In other words, intimate scholarship is always conducted in a zone of maximal contact where the inquirer brings forward the past and reinterprets it in terms of newly formed present understanding as knowing of the past shifts the present as well and the future is reimagined or reconsidered. Bringing all that we thought we knew together with what we know now and as those trajectories of knowing come into contact with each other the stories we tell of ourselves are destabilized and what we took as fact shifts reforming itself as new understandings and new potentialities and experiences (e.g., Bakhtin, 1981). From the tradition of narrative inquiry, inquirers are welcome to “wonder” how things might be different or how participants or others are experiencing things (e.g., Huber & Clandinin, 2005). From a Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices perspective, inquirers are invited

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to examine what they learn, reframe their practice (Loughran & Northfield, 1998; Northfield & Loughran, 1996) or follow the author, and turn the study back to the self (see a discussion of this in the inquiry section where we explore developing trustworthiness). From an autobiographical perspective, the inquirers are invited to explore their past to make sense of their current experience and investigate implications for the future through re-imagining the past, reconsidering the present, and reconceptualizing the future (e.g., Murphy, Huber, & Ross, 2012; Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009). Regardless of the methodology guiding an intimate scholar, the space explored remains open with that openness both implicit and explicit in the research account. Inquiries into teacher education that are identifiable as intimate scholarship are living entities. As living entities, they have permeable boundaries that grow and develop where meanings shift both during the study and as researchers write accounts of it. As we explore and interrogate our experience, multiple forms of knowledge formal, informal, tacit become part of the inquiry process and inform us in that process. Thus, wherever one stands within a project involving intimate scholarship one is always in a space of openness or as Clandinin says of narrative inquiry it exists in the midst (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). As Leitch (1986) argues, we live our lives in middles and beginnings where ends emerge from middles when we talk about and explore our experience. In exploring and constructing research accounts, we can determine what is beginning, what is ending, what is the middle we as inquirers can shape the exploration and the account turning back again and again to reconsider and interrogate our understanding, our formulations, our conceptions of what we are exploring. In intimate scholarship, structures both seen and unseen may constrain us but in inquiring into our experience we stand in an open space that allows us to uncover constraints, structures, and social or cultural norms. In other words, standing in a space of openness as an inquirer allows us to make visible constraints and potentially frees us from them. Intimate scholars are able to use them to guide our work, or imagine them differently.

THE DESIGN OF INQUIRIES FROM THE BASIS OF INTIMATE SCHOLARSHIP As Marshall and Rossman (2015) articulate, generally qualitative research design begins with a conceptual frame which includes consideration of the

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topic, the purpose, and the significance of the inquiry. The framework constrains and shapes the question to be explored, the literature reviewed, and the methodology taken up in the inquiry. In communicating an inquiry conducted from an orientation of intimate scholarship, inquirers utilize strategies like those posited by Marshall and Rossman. Such forms support readers in engaging with the inquiry and negotiating their understanding of what is being articulated by the researcher in relationship to their own experience with the study and in life. However, even in its finalized form as a research account, studies conducted from the basis of intimate scholarship communicate openness. It is potentially evident in the research design, in the statement and formulation of the puzzle (questions or topic or experience) pursued, in the setting up of the methodology including the reporting of the analysis process with attention to trustworthiness, in the reporting of the findings, themes and patterns, assertions for action or understanding, or wonderings that emerge, and in the expression of the conclusions. The author of such accounts attends to demonstrating himself or herself as trustworthy and rigorous and yet open to things revealed or explored to be otherwise for alternative perspectives and multiplicity of understandings (Ettlinger, 2014). In the design of intimate scholarship, the inquirer makes public that the study will be conducted from the perspective of the inquirer. This is a central feature of intimate scholarship and is one of the prime reasons that such scholarship is positioned in a space of openness. Openness in the design of studies based in intimate scholarship means the researcher privileges and makes public that the perspectives and experience of the inquirer are not only the basis of the inquiry but also the driving force across its conception and execution. The self of the inquiry will direct the study not from a basis of solipsism or personal indulgence but as a way to uncover the tacit and embodied knowing of the inquirer in relationship to what is being studied. The study as designed and orchestrated then should allow the inquirer to explore his or her own understanding as it is situated at the start of the study and it is shaped and informed during the research process. While all inquiries are directed by the person who designed them, intimate scholarship makes this clear and the design of the study then must be developed so that others would agree that how the study is conducted, how data is collected, and how it is analyzed and interpreted, allow for the study to be conducted in a space of uncertainty and yet provide a basis from which findings can be reached and creditable. The inquirer must communicate the systematic pattern of exploration, the evidentiary basis of the

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study, and the strategies employed to ensure both for the inquirer and the reader that what was uncovered has a basis in evidence. The inquirer must make clear how attention was paid to seeking alternative perspectives, sources of data that could disrupt the inquirers’ initial understanding and how attention to establishing the trustworthiness of findings was present. In order to meet such a demand, inquirers with this framework must not only act with integrity but also communicate themselves as trustworthy. Inquirers do this not by simply reporting strategies of trustworthiness communicated in the report of data analysis but in every element of the study. Purpose functions to communicate the openness and integrity of the inquirer by delineating clearly what the particular study is about. In doing so, it provides evidence that the inquirer knows the research question. As Greene (1999) argues, the purpose makes visible how seeing large is related to the horizon of the research conversation in teacher education against which the study will be conducted and to which it will contribute. The informed reader will immediately be aware of how the proposed study opens in new and interesting ways themes in the research conversation on teacher education. In intimate scholarship, this is a tricky place because the inquirer opens new space or reopens for examination things that others thought settled. The author must stand in a space of openness and yet communicate how this inquiry will inform and yet will not settle once and for all the issues present in the conversation concerning the phenomenon explored. Meeting these demands means that the design of the study allows for the inquiry and the inquirer to contribute and yet remain open to alternative interpretations or differing examinations. In developing the conceptual framework that brings coherence to the inquiry, the researcher reviews relevant literature. Such a review demonstrates trustworthiness and still communicates openness by the way in which it interprets the studies reviewed. The author as reviewer uses the research to frame the study attending to and identifying relevant as well as prominent studies, providing a linked interpretation of them that those who are aware of the studies will find rigorous and reputable. Because it is conducted in a space of openness, the inquirer from the basis of intimate scholarship interrogates the findings, connecting studies through juxtaposing studies in surprising ways, raising questions the studies open, and developing an argument based in the research that leads readers to become curious about what is to be studied and open to such a study. In addition, the review of literature in intimate scholarship often includes discussions of the understandings that developed during the study. Such reprises can lead to reinterpretations of study findings and reassert

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the original arguments present in the research conversation concerning teacher education. In other words, both within the literature review that frames the studies and in drawing it forward as an interpretive tool in the analysis and conclusion, intimate scholarship continues to open and reopen what we knew and might know, about the phenomenon under investigation. In the design of intimate scholarship particular attention should be paid to articulation of the logic for and power of using such scholarship to explore the puzzle, question, or phenomenon proposed for study. Part of this logical argument does not, as a rule, argue the validity or acceptability of the methodology employed, instead the case to be made is how using this methodology and conducting the study from the perspective of the inquirer will indeed contribute. Because intimate scholarship is fundamentally open and the findings of the studies open rather than close down further discourse and exploration, then the argument for the viability and power of the study to contribute to scholarship on research in teacher education more generally must be cogent and clear. Again, making the case that using intimate scholarship for this particular study and honoring its fundamental openness is paramount in such inquiry. In articulating the appropriateness of the grounding in intimate scholarship and the methodology as well as the strategies to be employed, the inquirer reveals, as well, how the study can be categorized as intimate scholarship. Given the subject of the inquiry, the context of the study, the selection of participants in addition to the self, it is important that the research design allows for and captures openness during the data-collection process while simultaneously providing the needed evidentiary basis for the study. The context and the unpacking of it for others, the specification of the experience to be studied, and the description of the situations, events, and participants at the heart of the study must be powerful enough to enable the researcher to stand in a space of openness as the study evolves. The constant interplay of reaching understanding and honoring openness are fundamental to design these inquiries and must be attended to by the inquirer from conceptualization, through implementation, interpretation, and reporting. The design, enactment, and report of the data analysis procedures and practices must exhibit openness both in their design and in the reporting of them. Because understandings held by the self about the experiences as well as the practices of the self in relationship to others are its essential orientation, intimate scholarship is permeated with an ever-present openness. As a result for such work to have credibility, the author must provide an evidentiary foundation from which she or he can

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question his or her self-understanding and from which others reading the work can open and reopen, consider and reconsider both the ideas and the evidence. In describing data analysis and articulating attention to the trustworthiness of the analysis, the inquirer must be transparent about how the analysis and its interpretation was conducted. Central to this is not just the articulation of strategies employed but also how the specifications of such strategies and methodologies attend to relevant issues. The researcher must demonstrate competence as a researcher who carefully considers threats to trustworthiness and addresses them. This includes identifying and collecting data relevant to the inquiry and countering oppositional accounts that emerge in the study. Indeed, the researcher must design the study so that the data collected provide evidence to respond to questions that might arise about whether there is evidence that X happened or that X is indeed a theme and not a point imposed by the researcher. In order to stand in a space of openness as an intimate scholar, the inquirer must be clear about attention to the potential for self-bias and imposition of meaning on data. Such openness as indicated should occur in the account of how data were analyzed and how the interpretive processes progressed. Since in intimate scholarship the self is the researcher and researched, attention to self-imposition of meaning without evidence must be addressed or questions about the interpretation credibility and trustworthiness of the study emerge and are difficult to counteract. The power of engaging in inquiry in a space of openness is not a matter of the author communicating that anything goes but in the way in which the inquirer artfully positions the question or puzzle or experience or phenomenon to be explored in relationship to the research conversation, the context of the study or the research arena to be informed, the participants and experiences selected, the data collected, and the analysis conducted. In formulating the design, the inquirer is attentive to how the study is positioned so that it allows for and yet manages the shifting terrain of the inquiry. Knowing that emerges from such studies can actually be anchored in openness and careful attention to the anchor increases the veracity and contribution of the study. Designing studies based in intimate scholarship places them in a space of openness; however, the inquirer in imagining and articulating an inquiry from this basis must capitalize on rather than be held hostage to this characteristic. Ironically, the potential for openness is communicated by placing constraints within the design. Careful consideration of openness within inquiry increases the scholarly potential, as well as the contribution of

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such research to what we know as teacher educators about teaching and teacher education.

THE EVOLVING NATURE OF THE VARIOUS ASPECTS OF THE STUDY INTIMATE SCHOLARSHIP Inquiries based in intimate scholarship, regardless of their methodological basis or the strategies for data collection and analysis utilized, communicate in the research account the emergence of ways of thinking that contrast with what they originally thought, or provide a trace of how questions or interpretations shifted. In making evident the evolving nature of interpretation, question formation and analysis as well as the presentation of multiple perspectives within reports of findings and conclusions, intimate scholars establish their rigor and trustworthiness. Because the inquiry space of intimate scholarship is an open one, while inquirers might provide a clear statement of purpose in their initial formulation of the study, they also may articulate how the purpose emerged with the process of review of research, their engagement in designing the study, or in response to conversations or dialogue about what was to be studied. For example, Mansur and Friling’s (2013) curiosity emerged as they experienced surprise when reading their preservice teachers’ responses to an open-spaced learning curriculum environment. In turn, this surprise led to conversations with colleagues about their wonders regarding teacher educators’ interactions with preservice teachers. This surprise anchored in responses from students and supported in interaction with colleagues led them to explore further how they learned from and shaped an open-spaced learning environment within their teacher education program. Studies conducted with intimate scholarship often reveal how strategies and techniques for doing the research (what constituted data, how data was collected and how analysis proceeded) evolved as the researchers engaged in the research process. Lovin et al. (2012) report such a process. They began by articulating and analyzing their individual and collective beliefs about mathematics teacher education. This led them to determine to collect data about their teaching, critique and respond to each other’s teaching, and then explore how they responded within their practice to such critiques. Their description of their decisions concerning data collection, analysis, and interpretation reveals how being open concerning their beliefs about mathematics

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teacher education and teaching and the things that were revealed in their study led to additional data collection, analysis, and interpretation. In her study of Muslim students in a multicultural high school in Canada, Chan (2006) reveals her evolving understanding of the wearing of the burka by junior high students and her reconstruction of parental practices which initially appeared to her and the teachers at the school to be rigid and resistant as accepting and loving. In her account, she expresses her regret for her initial misunderstanding of the perspective of the others in her study. Communicating her misunderstanding, regret, and reinterpretation helps teachers and researchers better understand cultural norms. Her openness caused Stefinee as a reader to question her own interpretations of behavior of students, colleagues, and community interactions. Because of the characteristic of openness foundational to intimate scholarship, inquiries from this frame always occur in Bakhtin’s zone of inconclusivity. As explained earlier, the zone of inconclusivity or zone of maximal contact represents a point wherein past experience is brought forward into the present and through contact and interrogation in terms of current experience understanding of past experience is altered. Hamilton and Pinnegar (2014) articulate the role that evolving understandings of the meaning of experience can play, as researchers intentionally engage in a process of opening, reconsidering, reinterpreting past experience as teacher educators in light of new and emerging understandings. Again, since openness is an anchor in intimate scholarship, when attention is paid to the potential difficulty of openness as a feature of intimate scholarship such studies make strong contributions to research in teaching and teacher education. As a result of negotiation within the zone of maximum contact, the inquirers’ understanding of an experience and their learning from it is altered and from this position their practice, the experience, the phenomenon are reimagined and the future is reoriented. The inquirer engaging in intimate scholarship exhibits Dewey’s attitudes of wholeheartedness, directness, open-mindedness, and responsibility and in doing so is constantly open to embracing multiplicity of understanding and interpretation. Thus, in their research account intimate scholars reveal openness by providing a record of how understandings emerged, how data collection was altered, how changes in analysis procedures occurred. They also record their orientation toward opening and reopening interpretation through wondering and imagining how what they came to understand how experience might be orchestrated differently.

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THE INVITATION TO THE READER TO PARTICIPATE IN INTERPRETATION Intimate scholarship opens the inquiry space to the reader and in the textual account communicates an awareness of a scholarly other who might see things differently, whose context may provide different constraints and thus lead to different interpretations. In an early study, the Arizona Group (1994) presented their findings from a study of their beginning years as teacher educators as a series of letters. There was no official findings or results section that communicated how the authors expected readers to interpret the experience of being new professors. Instead, they edited the texts in such a way that the scholar reading the study would construct their own interpretation of the experience. In a study conducted by Huber and Clandinin (2005) they use the strategy of found poetry and wondering to invite the reader into the inquiry space. The poems not only capture their knowing of the children studied but coupled with their wonderings also bring together these particular children in relationship to what research argues about multicultural education, critical race theory, etc. In this way, the findings of the study continue to remain open. Inquiries based in intimate scholarship maintain and communicate an awareness of the reader as interpreter of the study and the text. This positions the study (the arguments in the literature review, the question of the study, the strategies sections, and the findings, discussion, and conclusion) in a space of openness. Thus, intimate scholarship contributes not only the understandings uncovered by the inquirer but also the wonderings and new understandings that emerge as the reader enters the open space of intimate scholarship.

OPENNESS AND INQUIRY IN INTIMATE SCHOLARSHIP Intimate scholarship is recognizable because of its quality of openness. Inquirers from this framework or orientation embrace openness. This is evident since they position their study in that space, embrace and attend to openness in the design of their study, communicate the evolving nature of any aspect of their study, and invite readers to be co-interpreters of their inquiry. In other words, researchers engaged in intimate scholarship embrace openness rather than work to close it down. In this way, they

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reveal what is and what they understand about particular experiences or practices at particular points in time and provide evidence for their understandings yet expect meaning-making to emerge and reemerge each time it is read or re-read. Thus, intimate scholarship contributes not just the meaning-making that emerged from a study, but also provide explanations of how meaning making occurred and how the meaning might be construed and explored differently.

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CHAPTER 9 DIALOGUE AS A TOOL FOR KNOWING Stefinee’s first dissatisfaction with the scientific method as a basis for comingto-know occurred when she was in second grade and her teacher introduced the scientific method for the first time. It was her first experience in being taught a prescriptive process for coming-to-know. It was a lazy afternoon and she and her friends were trying to solve a problem. She doesn’t remember the problem they did lots of projects that year, but she remembers the teacher being frustrated with them and bringing in a film so that they could learn the correct way to engage in problem solving through the strategic use of the scientific method. The film told the story of a father and son working to fix a leaky faucet and the hole it caused in the bathroom shower. Fairly quickly in the film, a screen appeared which was labeled The Scientific Method. Under that label were four steps: Hypothesis, Observation, Data Collection, Decision. The teacher told them that they needed to use these steps to solve the problems they were working on. After the film, Stefinee’s group tried to use the steps. They argued and argued over the steps but they couldn’t make the steps work. Time was running out, so they gave up on the scientific method and worked rapidly together to solve the problem. Her group proposed ideas, argued about them, tried things out, argued again, until one of them had an idea and it worked it solved the problem. Then the really hard part began, the teacher asked them to write down their “hypothesis” and then fill in “observation,” “data collection,” and “decision” on the sheet she gave them. Whatever it was they wrote the teacher said they had done it wrong and gave them no credit even though they had solved the problem correctly. You see, rather than propose a hypothesis, observe, record data, and then decide what to do, they thought of an idea, proposed other ideas, talked and argued about why it would or wouldn’t work. Simultaneously they tried out many ideas, discussed them, and finally hit on something that they agreed on and it worked. Today, Stefinee realizes that the teacher was actually asking them to use the Scientific Method and correctly label the 143

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parts of the problem-solving process that were pertinent to it. She accepted the teacher’s judgment that even though they had arrived at a correct decision somehow they were wrong. Stefinee didn’t dismiss the film. She took it seriously. She wanted to learn how to solve problems the right way. She remembers getting better across her life in school at making up things to put in the categories of hypothesis, observation, data collection, and decision, but she also remembers that she could only make the process work afterward and not during the process. Thus, it was that in second grade, Stefinee confronted for the first time the difference between modernist epistemology based in positivism and poststructural epistemology based in social constructivism. Dickerson (2010) articulates the difference between these orientations to inquiry as practiced within family therapy: One of the ways that a poststructural philosophy influences … family therapy, is to understand meaning as “a variety of local and partisan truths that may be told about everyday life” (Miller, 2006, p. 270). Thus, instead of generalizing from individual experience to some larger meaning that underlies it, a structural approach, the therapist co-researches (Epston, 1999) with the client what meaning an experience has for that specific person in this particular time. (p. 350)

What Dickerson points to as the difference between these philosophies is an epistemological and ontological orientation toward a singular and certain meaning on the one hand and a recognition that meaning can be varied, multiple, and partial and is connected to a particular place and time. Stefinee is pretty sure that her teacher would have represented what she was having her class do was learn to use the scientific method to construct and report the results of a scientific experiment. For the teacher the scientific method probably represented the process engaged in once a solution path had been determined. However, as humans engaged in problem solving the entire process of uncovering what each of her group knew and what they thought might work, integrating and negotiating background knowledge and thinking about the problem. What Stefinee’s group did she would now label what we did in problem solving was engage in dialogue. From Dickerson’s perspective meaning making would occur as we negotiated the multiple and varied meanings we brought to the problem-solving situation. Of course, as a second grader, I had not yet learned about the philosophic conceptions of what counts as knowledge or how knowledge is built and verified. At that point, I didn’t yet understand how inquiries proceed differently and knowledge is established depending on the beliefs one holds about how knowledge grows and develops and is certified as

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accurate. I also then did not understand that dialogue could be a basis for our knowing supported by the authority of our experience (Munby & Russell, 1994). In this second grade inquiry experience, each of the students was striving to explore what is or what might be the solution to a problem from their own perspective, belief, and knowledge. Their inquiries represented very much the characteristics of intimate scholarship. The students were trying to understand what was and what might be (ontology rather than epistemology). Stefinee felt exposed as she revealed what she knew and believed in a forum where she worried her peers might repudiate her thinking and the group might fail to solve the problem correctly in the time allotted (vulnerability). We stood in a space of uncertainty since we weren’t sure what the problem was, what solving it meant, and how to use appropriately the tool the teacher had proposed (openness). The group were engaged in responding to a particular problem within a particular context (particular). What is important for this chapter is that the problem-solving process that this group of second graders engaged in is an example of how dialogue forms the basis of their coming-to-know. Since inquiries conducted within the frame of intimate scholarship seek multiple perspectives and alternative conceptions and interpretations, the meaning reported concerning the experience is open. The orientation of the inquirer engaging in intimate scholarship is toward making meaning of experience and what is learned usually enters the embodied knowledge and is oriented toward acting on what was learned. Indeed, those engaged in intimate scholarship are less concerned with epistemology and more oriented toward ontology. In this chapter, we define dialogue as the comingto-know process within intimate scholarship. We then articulate the process, explain the movement from everyday conversation to dialogue, identify the elements that are conducive to dialogue, examine the theoretical foundation, explore the authority of dialogue in establishing understandings, and argue for its epistemological strengths. Even when we agree in a conversation with others about an idea, each participant will have a slightly different understanding or unique expression of the shared idea. Ideas submitted to the process of dialogue endure questioning, analysis, alternative interpretation, evaluation, and synthesis. In this way, as ideas are expressed, the understanding of the group and the individual are moved forward, supported, and expanded. Conversation moves beyond talk to become dialogue when it contains inquiry, critique, evidence, reflection, and response. This discourse occurs in spaces of agreement and disagreement and both commonalities and differences emerge

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and understanding is both developed and strengthened. The understandings that emerge from dialogue appear in actions taken on the always-public stage of practice. Dialogue is a process of coming-to-know through which meaning is made and on the strength of which we develop assertions for action or understanding.

A PROCESS OF COMING-TO-KNOW In intimate scholarship, understanding emerges as we engage with participants, the data we collect, and our own knowledge and understanding. We arrive at an understanding but continue to push the boundaries of that understanding by seeking other examples, other ways of interpreting, and looking more carefully at the details to make sure that the understanding we develop takes into account the data we have and resonates with the experiences we have. In this process, we seek out others to try our ideas out on using details and examples to support what we are saying. The others we seek out are our participants, colleagues, or others who have experience with the particular phenomenon we seek to understand. These others can be human, but they can also be articles we read, current wisdom about the issue, or even counter voices from our own thinking. Challenge and evidence are central to dialogue as a process of coming-to-know. As we interrogate the understandings we develop in terms of past and current research, the data we collected, the experiences we have had in external and internal conversations, our understanding develops strength and gives the intimate scholar a basis for knowing that can be used as we act in practice or as we think and plan for practice.

THE ZONE OF INCONCLUSIVITY: THE THEORETICAL FOUNDATION OF DIALOGUE As we confront our experience, the details attendant to it, stories from our past are brought forward into this present moment. As we reflect on and inquire into the experience and our ideas about it, we reconsider our past, often reinterpreting it and since past knowledge and experience is the basis of our current understandings, the meaning of our current experience is altered, sometimes shattered, sometimes shifted and as a result the future is

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altered as well. This bringing together of past, present, and future is named by Bakhtin (1981) as maximal contact and what we label as a zone of maximal contact. This is also a zone of inconclusivity (Bakhtin, 1981). It is within this zone where interpretation is opened, renewed, and altered that new understandings emerge and old ideas are both deepened and shifted. As we interrogate our data, our experience, and our understandings in interaction with both present and absent others, we do so in an arena characterized by a cycling between certainty and uncertainty, in this cycling process knowing is both developed and strengthened. Our orientation to the problem or our understanding of it is shifted. When we intentionally utilize dialogue to develop meaning from our inquiry, we do so by pushing our knowing into a zone of inconclusivity where alternative and multiple views of what is and what might be come in contact and interact with each other.

CHARACTERISTICS AND CHARACTERIZATION OF THE SPACE Dialogue is oriented toward inquiry and reflection and necessarily involves both critique and response with evidence. Because it is an uncertain space of exploration attention must be paid to the vulnerability of participants and the quality of the relationships. Dialogue is the process of knowing in inquiries conducted from a basis of intimate scholarship. As a result, inquiry is also a characteristic of this space. By inquiry, we mean that participants will take a stance of exploration by wondering, imagining, and questioning the idea, experiences, and interpretations being considered. Inquirers engage in reflection during this process. They engage in thoughtful examination expressed through analysis, synthesis, and evaluation as well as through expressions of experience in examples, evidence, or narratives. Critique or response is central which means participants provide analytic considerations of ideas and evidence when they respond within the dialogue. While dialogue is an open space for exploring meanings, participants should be able to provide evidence to support their ideas. They are able to support ideas with examples, critical incidents, arguments, quotations, data, and research. Dialogue is a space of vulnerability. Participants make public their thinking, their lack of understanding, misconceptions they might hold. They share stories sometimes of failure and struggle. They may find themselves to be the only opposing voice in the dialogue.

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All of these situations can make us uncomfortable and uncertain which may leave participants feeling exposed and unsure. This is why spaces of dialogue should be characterized by a sense of caring, respect, community. Such spaces make visible emotions and attitudes because they support people in being willing to take risk and speak honestly all things that make dialogue more fruitful and more helpful. Those engaged in dialogue need not be best friends but such work is relational and as Bohm (1992) asserted when there exist caring relationships in groups participating in dialogue inquiry is more productive. For dialogue to work most effectually, the dialogue occurs in an atmosphere of caring, respect, listening, and strong voices. The participants in dialogue must stand firm on what they know and understand. Participants interrogating the ideas proposed must have strong voices. Voices that will stand firm on their own understanding and demand explanation and evidence and push for clarity and coherence in the arguments presented are essential to building and uncovering new understanding. But, they should also listen to the arguments of others and be open to the fact that their ideas may not resonate with everyone and since this is a forum for testing the efficacy and strength of ideas they need to be flexible and consider ideas that oppose or are counter to their own. For strong voices to have real power, the arena of dialogue must be one of caring and kindness. In order for participants to offer the kind of robust and rigorous critique and response necessary for constructing viable meaning the dialogue must be characterized by consideration and compassion as much as with challenge. Such discourse may be intense but it need not necessarily be contentious. Every voice both divergent and convergent views must be respected and welcomed. Alternative interpretations must be considered and thinking other than our own must be attended to with esteem and be considered and reconsidered. Most importantly to dialogue as a process of coming-to-know an attitude of listening is imperative. Intimate scholars listen carefully to both discord and accord. They try to hear what is present and absent in the conversation. Intimate scholars who do strong work are always in a mode of listening to the data, to the experience, to the ideas from past and current research, to others in the discourse. In addition to having particular characteristics, dialogue can be described as a space that communicates a sense of community and inclusion allowing for the emergence of knowledge. While everyone participating in a dialogue may not be dearest friends, there is a sense of belonging, acceptance, and valuing among the participants. When this sense of community is disrupted it becomes difficult to maintain dialogue and people may begin telling cover

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stories (Olson & Craig, 2005). This means they provide responses that the participant asserting the idea or one of the other group desires rather than an honest expression of their ideas and feelings. It is not just that all voices and ideas are treated with respect but in addition participants listen to the discourse, note the turn taking and elicit ideas from those who say less or seem silent in ways that are inviting. As a result, knowledge emerges in the spaces within the discourse. Through this cacophony and harmony, ideas are shaped, formed, and transformed. Those seeking to understand their inquiry come away with more confidence in what they are learning or with new ways to think and conceptualize their data and understandings.

THE PROCESS OF DIALOGUE The process of dialogue is never straightforward and discussion and ideation can move as parallel lines, triangles, and/or tangents. During the process of dialogue an idea can be asserted details of the evidence supporting it can be pursued. Ideas that the assertion reminds one of can be explored. So the process of dialogue is messy and moves backwards and forwards and is constantly in flux (Arizona Group, 2006). To clarify and communicate an understanding of the process we have conceptualized it as a cycle which is represented in Fig. 1. Dialogue begins when an idea is proposed and then taken under investigation. In other words someone puts something forward for consideration. It might be a story or reference to an event, it might be a theoretical explanation, it might be a concept, or ideas from a research article. Thus, dialogue ensues when something expressed by one of the participants is taken up for further discussion or probing. Dialogue moves forward through cycles of agreement and disagreement. The disagreement need not be contentious but an alternative way to understand or a diametrically opposite interpretation. Agreement need not be unitary but it may be accompanied by explanation, expansion, or caveat. The idea may be met with questioning. The questions may address accuracy or veracity or usefulness. It might also be met with an if-this-then-that response that is as much questioning as assertion. In this way, the idea moves forward or it may be abandoned for alternative explanations or altered understandings or even a repeat of the idea. But, understanding in dialogue develops as the idea or explanation moves forward through cycles of agreement and disagreement, mediation, as well as expressions of commonality and difference. Responses include

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something is put forward

Modified statement of original idea Alternative statement of idea Further exploration of Data.

Agreement with expansion Questioning of the idea Disagreement with evidence

Expressions of commonality among competing ideas Expression of difference among similar ideas Mediation process where individual terms are explored Presentation of research that supports or conflicts

Fig. 1.

Process of Dialogue.

statements of acceptance, questioning, evidence/examples, alternative representations, evaluation, and synthesis. The responses can be presented as critique, reflection, expansion, query, agreement, or evidence. As the dialogue proceeds evidence presented, alternative representations, interpretation of other experience or understandings may proceed. Alternatively, the initial idea may be dropped and not picked up again. While it is easiest to capture the process of meaning making as a cycle within dialogue, in actual operation, the process is better represented by Foucault’s (1978) metaphor for negotiations of power. Foucault compares the operations of power and alliances of power to the movement of a stream. He describes how water flows together to become rivers, larger rivers, and merge into oceans, but also the movement can be one of the generation of a

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flash flood on a desert terrain moving across the landscape. Streams are fed by rain or melting snow; new tributaries are carved; new alliances and connections among streams are constructed; and new pathways emerge, as in an instant these streams of water converge into a flash flood. The process of meaning making in dialogue never completely closes off and ideas proposed might be returned to in subsequent discourse or conversation. After interrogation a modified representation of the initial idea is proposed. Usually it is one that more clearly interprets or explains the situation, concept, experience. In addition, the person who proposed the idea may retreat to reconsider data or rethink and the idea is withdrawn. Another idea or the reformed idea that has been proposed or something that emerged in the dialogue might now be taken up in a similar manner. As we engage in the process there are patterns of how inquirers come to know in dialogue. We come to know by saying what we know out loud supported with evidence and argument. We come to know through curious listening which allows us to hear and integrate the common and disparate expressions. We come to know by discussion together, pushing to clarity and handling discordant as well as resonant expressions of the ideas articulated with the whole group keeping at it until an idea is constructed. Every so often across the dialogue, a participant will summarize what has been said, sometimes framed as a question, sometimes as a summary of ideas proposed, sometimes as a story that captures the idea or the presentation and explanation of a diagram or table (constructed during the dialogue). At these points, the floor is opened to response and the summarizer seeks a check on their understanding framed as agreement or disagreement. After the check, the dialogue continues or turns to new ideas.

CONVERSATION TO DIALOGUE Dialogue begins in conversation in interactive or sometimes story talk but abruptly or gradually it moves to dialogue as inquiry and critique with evidence, reflection, and response emerge. The conversation intensifies and turns from sharing to pushing for understanding of what is under consideration. As the conversation turns to dialogue, there is a deepening and doubling back in the talk. Our experience has been that dialogues emerge from conversation. We get together to talk about what we are coming to understand. We want to try out an idea or explore further our understanding of an experience.

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This conversation usually begins in talk. We ask questions about each other, our lives, what has been happening and we listen and share (caring talk). We share stories of our experience since we last met (story talk). As the talk moves forward, we move from conversation to dialogue because our coming together was not just meeting up to catch up but to develop our understanding. Box 1 provides an example of dialogue when conversation moved toward dialogue as the Arizona Group explored further what we meant by dialogue as a process of coming-to-know (Arizona Group, 2004). Notice what we present in the example can be deceptively characterized as everyday discussion but since we are seeking to understand what we mean by dialogue when we are talking about it as a process of coming-toknow the conversation deepens and intensifies. Notice that we draw into the dialogue questions about what we are doing, we assert ideas about what dialogue requires, we use other researchers understandings (Peterson, Tharp, and Jack) to expand and explore our own. We compare it to other ideas like praxis (as conceptualized by Freire, 1970). We query our personal understanding. We move to talk of definitions (see italicized portion of the example). It is clear that even when we agree, we have different conceptions. As this example shows, our conversation moved to dialogue as our talk moved to critique, questioning, evidence, reflection, and response. Notice as well, how as we engaged in dialogue our understanding was shaped and formed.

CONDITIONS FOR DIALOGUE As the example in Box 1 (our example of dialogue), and our explanation of the cycle underlying dialogue (Fig. 1) suggest, dialogue has specific elements. When meaningful and helpful dialogue occurs these elements are present. Notice that while rancorous critique and disagreement can emerge, dialogue often falls apart particularly when the caring and kindness are no longer present. Notice here that the conditions of dialogue also include the characteristics of dialogue. We place these ideas here as well as earlier because without these conditions dialogue rarely emerges. The conditions of dialogue include respect, caring, strong voices, focus, and openness of interpretation and understanding. We have spoken of the importance of respect to the development of dialogue. Only when all participants feel that what they have to say is valued and valuable will they authentically participate otherwise they may fall

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Box 1. Example of Dialogue

Arizona Group (2004).

January 31, 2002 ML: This is still a “she said”, then “she said” relation…Is that what dialogue is?… PP: I was thinking that dialogue happens every day, all the time, but what does cleaning it up and publishing it do to it? Did both the dialogue and that process help us grow? Reinterpret what we had written? ML: Do we clean our dialogue? SP: Dialogue is to me conversation…But then we have to think like Roland Tharp says, “What makes a good conversation?” It is inclusive, it is responsive… KG: Peterson would say it that constructing meaning is a primary concern in dialogue: Thinking critically and using the knowledge to move forward….Dialogue is something like praxis to me. [What follows in this space is a further discussion of praxis, dialogic, dialectic] In a dialogue, people co-construct meaning. I see that being an important factor in my work with all of you. I got somewhere that I might not have been able to go by myself. PP: Now we’re getting into the learning part. We did something, which we have not yet defined and we learned from it. ML: Oh great! SP: When Jack talks about the dialogic, he is talking about keeping the tension between the question and the answer. PP: Did we ask each other hard questions? ML: Well, I’m not sure I knew the question and I know I didn’t have the answer… SP: I think actually that our lives were the statements and we asked ourselves the hard questions. PP: I like that. ML: So, lived experience? KG: Yes, dialogue helped us to address our “hard questions” but not always answer.

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silent, leave the group, or in other ways withdraw. Wheatley (2002) argued that respect is evident when participants listen curiously. By this, she suggests the participants are more interested in listening to what the other will say than they are in composing a response. We have discussed earlier the need for caring. Peterson (1992) argues that in engaging in meaning-making conversation, we use caring talk and story talk to create a safe and welcoming space. Authentic caring talk communicates respect and acceptance. Through caring talk we build a basis for disagreement and discord where difference is treated as exploration rather than competition, and participants can therefore continue to engage rather than retreat. Bohm (1996) suggests that within the dialogue circles his group sponsors caring is not essential since participants represent all facets of a community affected by the subject of the dialogue. But he also asserts that when there is trust and caring in relationships and the person becomes part of the dialogue the work is more complex, understanding richer, more powerful, more applicable. To counteract a situation when caring is not present he establishes rules that set a stage of respect and curious listening so that caring will emerge. Rather than having “fake” group “bonding” and relationship exercises attending to an orientation to curious listening and other strategies he hopes that within the dialogue experience caring relationships will emerge. In order for meaning to emerge, the dialogue need not be divisive or strident but participants need to have confidence and communicate in strong voices. To explore deep matters as a research group where sensitive personal political matters can be deeply embraced and examined, all participants must, without rancor, be willing to express opposing and even unshared views. Participants must be willing to stand by their views (if they still hold them) even when the entire group disagrees. From such dialogue, ideas become sturdier and more nuanced. In productive meaning-making dialogue there should be opposing as well as harmonious views. The more that alternative and oppositional perspectives as well as consonant views deeply explored are part of the conversation the deeper will be the understandings for action and understanding that potentially emerge. For conversation to move from conversation to dialogue, there must be a focus or purpose in the discourse. This focus is more likely to determine the beginning point rather than the ending point. Having a focus provides a basis for returning to the matter at hand so that the dialogue can intensify rather than dissipate. Coming together to focus on an issue, topic, questions, or situation provides a framework so that participants often will have thoughtfully considered what they already know. We have no

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expectation that the ideas and interpretations we bring with us to dialogue will remain unchanged or sometimes even taken up. We approach our work with openness, wholeheartedness, and responsibility (Dewey, 1933/ 1993) conditions for learning and growth that lead to deepening understanding, insight, and suggestions for action.

ONTOLOGICAL STANCE AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL STRENGTH Intimate scholarship is always oriented to understanding. The inquiry is directed toward understanding experience or practice. In this way it makes implicit, tacit, and embodied knowledge explicit. The enterprise is grounded in a desire to understand what is. Thus, the orientation to inquiry is an ontological one. The intimate scholar is interested in seeing and making meaning of what is. As understanding is developed, action and practice are usually altered as intimate scholars seek to live the understandings they develop. Thus, the findings, results, assertions for action or understanding that emerge from dialogue have epistemological strength but not necessarily surety. Assertions for action and understanding are strong enough to guide practitioners in moving forward in practice or experience and in understanding and interpreting experience and practice. Dialogue, the ongoing interpretive act of attending to commonality and difference in data reviewed, ideas expressed, understandings reached, provides the basis for establishing the trustworthiness of the ideas and insights that emerge.

AUTHORITY OF DIALOGUE Dialogue becomes the basis from which we make assertions for action and understanding thus it is this process of intense consideration of commonality and difference that expands understanding of both and provides us with confidence for asserting knowing what is. Since dialogue always exists in a zone of inconclusivity uncertainty is a condition for meaning making. The inquirer arrives at an understanding of what is being explored that is satisfactory to them supported by an interpretation that is consonant with the data. The inquirer knows that another construction might be made of the evidence and different understandings might be reached, but the

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evidentiary trace laid out in the report of the inquiry will support the interpretation proposed. Intimate scholars are concerned about the authority from which they make the assertions they do. These assertions of understanding are based in the credibility, viability, and veracity of the reports of their inquiries as judged by the research and practice communities of teaching and teacher education. As we have argued, teacher educator researchers engage in their work in a space of openness and vulnerability which can undermine confidence in the authority they hold to make claims as knowers of concerning their experience, practice, thinking, and action. Among the constitutive practice of the various research traditions, the traditions that guide our inquiries exist as competing stories to the traditions of others. The basis for establishing the authority of our research accounts and our understanding of these competing narratives of traditions shape the self of the researcher and the authority of the researcher to make assertions about the understandings that emerge from their studies. Establishing an authority from which intimate scholars can claim understandings regardless of the methodologies and strategies employed in their scholarship is crucial, particularly since the foundation for our expressions of knowing emerges from a relational, interactional, negotiated space we label dialogue. As the authoritative basis for the assertions we make, we offer the authority of experience based in dialogue (Arizona Group, 2004; Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009). However, to claim this authority, the texts reporting our understandings must demonstrate to readers and convince them that the study and the scholars are trustworthy and have authority. Teacher educators employing intimate scholarship realize their vulnerability and subjectivity in the research occupying space as researcher and researched in studies they undertake. Since they recognize the basis of their assertions of understanding and action is their integrity and trustworthiness as a witness, they usually continue to seek out disconfirming evidence and alternative explanations in multiple ways and often beyond what they might have done had they been inquiring within a more general qualitative orientation. Dialogue as a process of coming-to-know and as the authority on which assertions for knowing their experience, thinking, and action rest, provides an arena for confronting and interrogating any assertion that are made. Intimate scholars seek constantly in the written report of their inquiry to demonstrate their rigor, their virtue as a scholar, their trustworthiness. Grounded in this effort which is made highly visible in their reported study, intimate scholars are then able to make assertions from the

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space of the authority of their experience (Munby & Russell, 1994; Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009). In our chapter in the International Handbook of Self Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices (Arizona Group, 2004), we report an experience when all four of us examined the letters we had sent each other within our first years as an academic. Each of us worked with the same set of data. We discussed with each other the understandings we were developing. We went back to the letters again and again seeking disconfirming evidence or negative cases (Williams, 2011) for our interpretation. Yet, when we presented the work each of us developed completely different understandings of our experiences. Through interrogation of difference as well as agreement, supporting our understandings with the evidence, linking our ideas to conversations in the field of teaching and teacher education, we each emerged with a different interpretation. Each interpretation was coherent and trustworthy and resonated with readers but there was not sameness. Through the process of dialogue, each of us were confident in our knowing. While the data was fairly static, our background knowledge and experience, the contexts in which we worked, and the ideas we followed varied and thus, the insights we provided concerning experience as beginning professors varied as well. When we engage in dialogue as a process of coming-to-know it results in understandings that are trustworthy. These assertions support us in our action and our thinking about our experiences and practices. The attention to the trustworthiness of our findings through dialogue makes what we are learning useful to us as we pursue other inquiries and useful to others who read and use our research. The process of dialogue lends authority and strength to understandings about the focus of our study as intimate scholars. Through this process we are able to stand on the authority of our experience (Munby & Russell, 1994).

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CHAPTER 10 ORIENTED TOWARD THE ONTOLOGICAL The social sciences are fundamentally about humanity and human relationships. The fact that humans alone and in interaction with each other are situated in a context, in a time, in a place means that human action and interaction has potential for unpredictability, agency, growth, and change the ontology in which they exist we would claim with Slife (2004) is a relational rather than an abstractionist one. Thus, as a science it rests uncomfortably in the positivistic framework (based in an abstractionist ontology): the social always disruptive to the scientific. Intimate scholarship is fundamentally even more disruptive of the positivist framework since the study and the report of it are examined and constructed from the perspective of the self within practice or experience in relationship to others in the experience or as part of the larger community in which the practice or experience resides. Indeed, rather than striving for objectivity and generalizability from the perspective of an abstractionist ontology, intimate scholarship embraces and makes productive a relational one. As Slife (2004) explains: … what is ontologically real and has being in practice [or experience] cannot be understood apart from its relations to other aspects of the context. Indeed, practices do not exist, in an important ontological sense, except in relation to the concrete and particular situations and cultures that give rise to them, implying what we might call a relational ontology. (p. 158)

Since intimate scholarship always resides between the self and the Other, biography and history, and takes up as its arena of study the development of an understanding of concrete and particular experiences or practices where the experiences, the interactions, the understandings are always necessarily based in relationships and are constrained by and in relationship to the contexts they occur in or that give them life. As a result, the inquiries undertaken in intimate scholarship are always pursued within relationship and develop within a relational ontology. Educational research and researchers are categorized with the social sciences and currently and traditionally the positivist paradigm promoted 159

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by the other social sciences has held power, however, Bullough (Bullough & Pinnegar, 2004) asserts that educational research is distinctive from social science research because at its heart there is a relational and moral commitment to the “well-being” of children and young people. Because of this commitment, educational researchers are obligated to not only study but also develop nurturing realities that improve the lives of children and young people. In the face of the unpredictability of human interaction and moral commitment (a fundamental characteristic of educational research), assertions regarding the probability of one event over others and a commitment to objectivity and generalizability seem less important. What seems more important is deeper understandings of educational realities that nurture children and young people the development of deeper understandings of the experiences of children and young people and the educational practices that serve them. Qualitative research became attractive to educational researchers beginning in the 1980s because of the inability of quantitative research work to provide compelling accounts of what certain realities were and of what could be. The work of Au (1980), Philips (1983), and Tharp and Gallimore (1988), for example, provide good examples of researchers whose work turned the hearts of the educational community and provided new insights into underlying meanings and relationships between teachers and children in schools. Such work allowed educational researchers to see the failed and productive relationships that existed or could exist for students in schools. These accounts helped us re-see the experiences of children within the context of class, race, and gender. The educational lives of these children and the richness of their communities came alive and helped us rethink the kinds of educational experiences children ought to have, moving us away from a focus on effective practices to relational ones. In fact, at that time, effective practices that could be demonstrated through statistical evidence with a focus on improving scores on achievement tests became less attractive than understandings of cultural difference, nurturing realities, and caring relationships. However, almost as soon as researchers using qualitative strategies provided insights into new ontologies, the educational research community (yet again) became more interested in issues of epistemologies. That is, the discussion turned from one of the value of understanding experience to an intense discussion about the validity and foundational warrants for such claims (Fenstermacher, 1994; Wittrock, 1986). ThayerBacon (2003) argues that in the current climate we speak of a narrow epistemology, not linked to a relational ontology but based on the scientific method which required objectification of participants, uniformity of

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treatments, and statistical manipulation and probability tables so that the researcher could assert that one teaching method or classroom has a .01 probability of being better than another, or that this behavior is related to that one and so on at a statistically significant level. In retrospect, the energy that the educational research community committed to the discussion of establishing validity or warrant for claims made for research methodologies representing alternative ways of knowing, seems mostly wasted because in the current climate the only claims that seem to gain official sanction are those based in statistical manipulation (Borko, 2004; Cochran-Smith, 2005). What we argue for here is a turn from this positivistic and postpostivistic epistemological foundation not merely toward general qualitative strategies but toward intimate scholarship that holds out promise that researchers can develop helpful descriptions and explanations of the particular experiences of teachers, teacher educators, preservice teachers, youth, and children. Such work can allow educational researchers to more hopefully attend to the moral imperative of educational research the improvement of the educational condition and the well-being of children and young people. Thus, educational research would be at its heart about uncovering what really is occurring in a particular class, in a particular context, with particular people, in a particular place, at a particular time. As we understand such realities, we can reimagine them elsewhere in other contexts. Capturing the particular well allows thinking people to reimagine what they learn from the analysis in a truthful way in their own practical, educational spaces. This, rather than generalizability, is the promise of intimate scholarship. If educational researchers committed to the well-being of youth and children attended in their research to ontology (what is), particularly a relational ontology, rather than a modernist epistemology (surety in claims to know), the research that emerged will have greater veracity, be more powerful for policy makers, and be more useful for practitioners. We are not naı¨ ve to the fact that ontology and epistemology are entangled and related. What we argue instead is that the social sciences in general and education in particular have attended so carefully to a particular scientific epistemology focused on the warranting of claims and the establishing of validity from some external source, that they have failed to recognize that what captures the imagination, the heart, and the convictions of the readers and users of educational research is attention to ontology particularly a relational one which allows for clearer understandings of what is.

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For example, in McNiff’s (2013a, 2013b) account of her cross cultural consultation experience we come to understand how nuanced and difficult the task of providing support across contextual boundaries is. By providing a rich account of the difficulty of consulting in such situations, McNiff (2013a, 2013b) allows us to imagine ourselves in these circumstances and the necessity of taking a learning stance in which the consultants position themselves as learners and try to be attentive and mindful to the epistemologies, relationships, and practices of those already part of that context. In the process, she calls into question how educational consultants should position themselves not only when they cross continents to do consulting but also when they work within their own countries and cultures reminding us that every context is unique and we need to be mindful of the nuances of routine, practice, interaction present in that context. In a similar way, Chan’s (2006) work makes us think again about situations where we seek to create environments of multiculturalism and acceptance of difference. As Chan explores the dilemma of a teacher and a student around participation in a field trip, she reveals her own misunderstanding of the meaning of wearing of the hijab, the difficulty the teachers who were culturally sensitive, accepting of difference and willing to learn from and with students had in interpreting and accepting some cultural differences, and the experiences of the youth whose parents would not allow them to participate in the field trip. By attending to meaning making from the perspective of all the participants, we see the teacher (William) as open and caring; we see more clearly the dilemma of youth trying to simultaneously negotiate the norms of both home and school cultures; and we see the parents as caring, loving, and accommodating. By attending carefully to the ontological assemblage underlying the experience of teachers attempting to enact a culturally sensitive curriculum, we learn clearly how difficult it is, the goodness of all involved, and yet the challenge for the teachers and the students. In this example of intimate scholarship, Chan reveals these things not through the use of surveys and statistical manipulation of scores, but through her clear sighted unpacking of the perspectives and experiences of all those involved including her own understanding and misinterpretations. Through quotes, analysis, and description, McNiff (2013a, 2013b) and Chan (2006) allow us to see and understand these experiences of working across difference through the eyes of the participants and through their acknowledgment of their own understandings and interpretations. We trust what these researchers say not because of the probability of occurrences but because of their careful portrayal of their experience, the framing in the

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research conversation and the resonance we recognize between our own context and the contexts and meaning they present to us. Because McNiff (2013a, 2013b) and Chan (2006) capture the reality of their experience and practice clearly, succinctly, and with virtuosity, we look more carefully at the way we position ourselves when we are invited to intervene or consult with schools. As we prepare our students to work in settings that are increasingly culturally diverse, we orient them toward exploring difference rather than assuming they understand or the assertion of the rightfulness of their own cultural understandings. As these researchers frame their work in ontology rather than epistemology the understandings they communicate and the assertions they make are found trustworthy and inform our thinking about these issues within our own contexts and in terms of our own educational practices. What is valuable about these works developed within a framework of intimate scholarship is not that they assert foundational criteria for knowing (epistemology) but that they resonate with scholars and practitioners. We have a sense that they accurately portray realities and that what they assert has implications for improving the lives of children and young people in classrooms (ontology). Intimate scholarship uncovers a particular reality, or what is, which we may have suspected but was hidden from view. Scholarly work that attends to ontology also gives researchers and scholars a way to imagine realities other than their own. For example, in a work of intimate scholarship by Huber and Clandinin (2005) we follow a diverse group of children from an urban school on a field trip to an historic fort. This research is powerful because through the use of narratives, we experience the trip from the perspectives of teacher educators interested in social justice, their teachers and ethnically diverse aides, and the children. Huber and Clandinin provide these ontologically contrasting accounts and provoke us to wonder about the collision and overlap between all of those realities (contrasting accounts of how these participants experienced that trip). Through their wonderings they help us to reimagine what children’s classroom experiences might be and how our perspective as teachers, teacher educators, researchers, or museum personnel might be flawed or shortsighted. This work resonates because it not only uncovers contrasting experiences of a real situation but also invites us to imagine potential realities. Consequently, what we argue here is that intimate scholars in paying greater attention to creating factual, accurate, believable resonating accounts from their understanding, create inquiries that have increasing

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potential to uncover what is and cause us to imagine how to improve the well-being of children. Thus attending to ontology our virtuosity as scholars and our trustworthiness as inquirers are established. In other words, intimate scholarship that pays attention to the creation and anchoring of ontology with evidence in its very nature takes care of epistemology. Often research that is epistemologically driven becomes so centered on establishing truth claims that it fails to invite us to understand or reimagine the educational worlds we inhabit. A continuing debate in research communities where intimate scholarship develops focuses often on the validity of the research accounts (e.g., for S-STEP research, see, Loughran, 2004; Whitehead, 2004). Ongoing discussion in teacher education (e.g., Richardson, 1997) has focused on the epistemology of our students around the central question of how do we get students to think differently than they do? How do we get them to change their beliefs? Currently it is a given in teacher preparation that if we want to prepare stronger teachers we must explore and expand their beliefs (Darling-Hammond et al., 2005; Richardson & Placier, 2001). Equally prevalent are the stories of resistance that teacher educators routinely tell about their valiant efforts to confront the beliefs of their students about diverse learners, teaching as transmission or the role and purposes of schooling (e.g., Cockrell, Placier, Cockrell, & Middleton, 1999; Placier, Burgoyne, Cockrell, Welch, & Neville, 2005). Constructivist teacher education that focuses on bringing students to better true beliefs through confrontation with those beliefs reveals teacher educators as living contradictions since this confrontation communicates to preservice teachers (and reveals to us) that there is a perceived “wrongness” about students’ beliefs and a “rightness” about our own (similar to the work from Chan, 2006 and McNiff, 2013a, 2013b). In turn, this suggests that unlike our assertions about multiple perspectives and co-constructed knowledge, we actually require agreement about a unitary view of the reality of teaching and learning. In essence, such a stance insists that our students must believe differently, must take on a different epistemology, if they are to become “good” teachers. Indeed, we seem to insist that they embrace a specific epistemology. We suggest here that as a form of qualitative methodology when intimate scholars embrace an ontological stance (e.g., Berry & Loughran, 2002; Clandinin & Roziek, 2007; Kuzmic, 2002) rather than an epistemological one in providing evidence of experience and practice, it allows educational researchers to embrace more completely a relational ontology centered in a commitment to the well-being of children and young people.

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Bullough and Pinnegar (2004) make the following assertion about S-STEP scholars that is especially applicable to those engaged in intimate scholarship as well. [Intimate scholars should have] expended great effort in exploring warrant and validity issues, these are epistemological concerns. Explorations of process and agreement over strategy will not lead to stable truth claims. An essential quality of all [intimate scholarship] points toward a specific ontology, which includes a commitment to a quest for understanding and to a way of being with and for children, colleagues, and our students. (p. 340)

Based in our understanding of Sandra Harding’s notion of standpoint theory (1990, 1991, 1996) and Rom Harre´’s positioning theory (Davies & Harre´, 1990; Harre´ & Van Langenhove, 1999), we determined to take up an experiment in which we would strategically position ourselves in teaching and research. We single-mindedly take an ontological approach in exploring our teaching practice and in uncovering our understanding of teaching. We wondered whether doing so might strengthen our research based in intimate scholarship from a self-study of practice methodological orientation. We wondered if as the teachers of teachers, we took a different stance toward preservice teachers’ understandings and invited them to reposition themselves in their plotlines of teaching in the settings and situations of teacher rather than their student-based perspectives, how would our experiences and our own understandings differ and how would preservice teachers respond? This chapter demonstrates what an unapologetically ontological orientation within intimate scholarship looks like and reports what we learned when we used this lens to examine a narrative of work with preservice teachers against past research. In this work, we explore the value of taking an ontological approach in both teaching and research. We bring into dialogue Mary Lynn’s narrative of a semester of teaching using an ontological approach positioned against and connected with an exploration and analysis of past work done from a basis of intimate scholarship which allows us to explicate the value of focusing on ontology rather than epistemology both in our teaching and our scholarship.

THE NARRATIVE ONTOLOGICAL ANALYSIS In the next few pages, we provide an analysis that interweaves a narrative of teaching teachers and intimate scholarship (in particular a study of educational practice) through the lens of ontology. We begin with Mary Lynn’s narrative and weave narrative and analysis throughout the rest of

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the chapter. The interspersed analytic comments draw attention to the narrative’s ontological texture and connect it to similar ontological insights and stances found in other work.

MARY LYNN’S NARRATIVE BEGINS I teach Curriculum and the Learner in Elementary School at my university. An initial course in the professional coursework for students interested in teaching elementary students, these are students who are just finding their way in a career-directed program and finding their identities as teachers. As a general curriculum course I focus on definitions of curriculum and elements involved in the creation of curriculum, not on specific strategies and models or content areas. My students come mostly from the surrounding region and towns and like many other teacher education programs we have mostly white, mostly middle class, mostly female students in the elementary aspect of our program. These young people are bright with an average 3.5 GPA (on a 4.0 scale). Most of them, at least on the surface, appear happy to be at our university, many of them claiming that they have wanted to attend KU all of their lives. One student even proclaimed that she arrived home “from the hospital in a Jayhawk [the university mascot] t-shirt.”

Analysis Begins

The Turn toward Ontology

In this explanation of Mary Lynn’s narrative of this course, we see already a turn toward ontology. Her focus is on overarching definitions and elements of curriculum rather than arguing best practices, models, and strategies. She supports students in coming to a holistic understanding of their own beliefs and their consequences. Enora Brown (2002) does something similar when she proposes a reconstruction of a traditional educational psychology class. Mary Lynn’s class and Brown’s preservice teachers are both welcomed and prodded to new understandings of educational realities. Second, Mary Lynn’s description of the young people in her class and the comment about the student coming home from the hospital in the t-shirt resonate with teacher educators elsewhere and can establish veracity. We can imagine or experience it in our own realities. We find a similar resonance in Tidwell’s article (2002) about her interactions with preservice teachers at an individual level because we have all had students who wander away from our classes or seem not be able to understand what we do. Both Mary Lynn’s narrative of her students

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and Tidwell’s description of her students not only resonate but also provide boundaries. Because they are not exactly our experiences and their contexts of practice are not ours, the accounts bump up against our realities and cause us to rethink our experiences, which are similar, but not exactly the same as those described. We are struck by what those differences and similarities can mean in our practice. In Tidwell’s article when she reveals troubling aspects of conceptions of herself as a teacher through her analysis of her teacher behavior in her interactions with preservice teachers she allows us several points of comparison and contrast with our own teaching and our understanding of the research of teacher student interaction and the impact of preservice teaching on teacher education students.

MARY LYNN’S NARRATIVE CONTINUED Although I have been teaching for what seems to be an eternity, this course represented a new experience for me. I created it completely from inception. My department had no plan, no syllabus upon which to draw it simply had the title. I was expected to create the course with little guidance. I found this to be an exciting prospect. When I considered what a course called “Curriculum and the Learner in Elementary School” might include, I easily selected points about curriculum and learners. As I did this, I realized that I needed to step back for a moment and consider the learners with whom I would be working, asking myself “What do those students in my class need to know in order to be the best possible teachers for their own students, in their own classrooms, in their own schools?” This question wasn’t even formulated completely when I knew the answer my students needed to become conscious of their own beliefs and theories about teaching and learning. From my own research and my own teaching I recognized the importance of being fully cognizant (or as much as possible) about personal background, beliefs, and understandings. To me understanding cultural and personal elements seems as important as any external theory to one’s teaching practice and approach to teaching.

Analysis Continued

Ontological Collisions in the Real

This narrative, like Freese’s (2005) and Clift, Brady, Mora, Choi, and Stegemoller’s (2006), opens to us the view that in our teaching practices

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and in our scholarly accounts of those practices we imagine and construct new realities. In talking of her excitement in constructing this course, Mary Lynn reveals her obligation. Intimate scholarship, when viewed through an ontological lens allows us to watch what happens when we create new realities and raise questions about our adequacy and inadequacy. Placier et al. (2005) use theater of the oppressed to help students reimagine social justice, but their effort to engage preservice teachers in this way is not without conflict. Freese reveals what she learned about her processes both as a teacher and as a researcher by studying how she supported the self-study of her students. As Wilcox (1998) argues, such work provides us with a witness to our teaching and creates a reality in which we can explore how we are meeting our moral commitments to our students and to theirs (e.g., Hutchinson, 1998; Oda, 1998; Placier et al., 2005). In addition, this segment of the narrative clearly instantiates the everpresent moral imperative of educational research. Self-study reports of particular teaching practices almost always include places where the researcher either asserts or questions whether or not what is being taught will enable their preservice teachers to provide classrooms that attend to the well-being of their students. In earlier work (Arizona Group, 1997), we uncover how such commitments are central in our own pedagogy when we articulate as a basis of our commitments as teacher educators our obligation to the unseen children who are the students of our students. We raise this question again in a slightly different way when we consider whether we are creating teachers who are trustworthy and question our own trustworthiness (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2000). This allows us as researchers and teachers to develop deeper understanding about the influences of obligations on our teaching and in teacher education.

MARY LYNN’S NARRATIVE CONTINUED Identifying this, I began to list critical issues and initiate plans for presenting this information to students. Because I believe that students in the initial stages of professional learning are not yet ready for the intricacies of theoretical understanding, I decided to provide bare bone information about curriculum. That meant that I defined curriculum (offering several possible definitions), found examples that fit the definitions, and used our class structure and process as an intimate example. Further, I decided that by exploring the commonplaces of curriculum (Schwab, 1978) student,

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teacher, content, context as ways to frame the directions we might explore the curriculum and the learner throughout the semester. I told the students that curriculum “is a very complex concept that not only represents an organized course of study but it also makes explicit the curriculum designer’s philosophy and perspectives. This semester we are only going to look at curriculum at a very basic level. We are not going to address deeper philosophical issues or the many possible ideologies involved in curriculum (Hamilton, 2005).” I assured them that when they entered their master’s program they would be ready for a more in-depth look at the complexities of curriculum and the many philosophical perspectives that may affect the creation of it.

Analysis Continued

Imagining the Ontologies behind a Text

In her explanation of how she structured her course, Mary Lynn reveals the imagined reality she hopes to construct with her students and the theory behind that construction. Almost always, in intimate scholarship, researchers begin their accounts with descriptions of the theoretical ontology upon which their practice is based. For example, Berry and Loughran (2002) talk about four types of issues that lead them to construct their teaching the ways they did and the assertions that emerged from that. In comparison, Clift et al. (2005) and Coia and Taylor (2005) reveal the ways in which they position theories of teaching and learning to provide a philosophical structure for the actions they take in their classroom. Mansur and Friling (2013) reveal how they drew on theories of learning to guide their construction of an open learning assignment. The ontological demonstrations of the classroom in Mary Lynn’s account suggest that she is attempting to position her students to imagine and reimagine school curriculum. This brings to mind the ways in which Huber and Clandinin (2005) cause us to imagine and reimagine the school lives of children. In addition, it reminds of Chan’s (2006) account wherein we are pushed to think differently about the challenge teachers face in constructing culturally sensitive curriculum. This segment also hints at how teacher educators support preservice teachers in discovering their professional working theory. The imagined reality, the tacit theories upon which they construct their teaching, and the concept of professional working theory are uncovered by Dalmau and Gudjo´nsdo´ttir (2002) in their research and work in supporting the development of teachers’ understanding of theory and practice in their own work. In this work, Dalmau

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and Gudjo´nsdo´ttir work to enlarge teachers’ capacity to view their teaching and professional development from multiple perspectives thus enlarging teachers’ ontological knowledge of their practice.

MARY LYNN’S NARRATIVE CONTINUED In fact, curriculum represented just one strand of my course. Another strand was the personal exploration of beliefs. A third strand was the field experience component where the students went out to the schools to observe what we talked about in the classroom. Through the course organizer (a teaching tool developed by the Center for Research on Learning, ongoing), I demonstrated the spiral of our curriculum and how one might bring various strands together, always deepening student understanding of issues. Interspersed through the course were readings and other relevant topics, but these three strands sat at the heart of the work. As I planned and taught the class, I developed a greater respect for the spiral curriculum, often using a spiraling hand motion in front of the class to express this concept. I used it so often that by the end of the semester the students themselves had adopted the motion to express the concept. But, we aren’t to the end of the semester yet; we are hardly at the beginning. For me, the notion of spiral meant that I presented a series of ideas/ concepts/points, modeled them, discussed them, had students demonstrate them, had students discuss them, and then returned to these ideas/ concepts/points two more times during the semester, each time deepening the discussion and presentation to strengthen their understandings and elaborate their knowledge.

Analysis Continued

Ontology as the Zone of Inconclusivity

An ontological approach to teaching and research, as this segment demonstrates, places students and our research audience in the zone of inconclusivity where, as Bakhtin (1981) suggests, the past and the present are brought together in ways that result in a collision of the past and the present. Students (and readers) imagine and reimagine the present and rethink their past that positions them to imagine a different future. For example, Freese (2005) explores how through the use of self-study her students visited, revisited, constructed, and reconstructed their own understandings of teaching. Intimate

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scholarship invites us into accounts of these zones of inconclusivity and pushes our own practices and our thinking about them forward. As Kuzmic (2002) suggests, that the character of thinking about and doing research is usually thought of as epistemological in character, the orientation in the work is toward understanding and change and so the ontological aspects are more appropriately reified. In the account of her experience in defining the spiral curriculum to her students, Mary Lynn’s hand motion and her students’ repetition of that movement late in the semester, demonstrate the ways in which this approach supports preservice teachers in developing lived experience bodily knowledge that they will take into their teaching. In intimate scholarship we also see evidence of how this spiraling approach expands educators’ ontology of their teaching and research practice. Bass, Anderson-Patton, and Allender’s (2002) work provide us with three perspectives on the same set of experiences. Through different accounts of the learning that took place in the same set of experiences, their study allows us to see more clearly the impact of multiple perspectives within experiences and offers a deepening of understanding. We are able to see and consider similar but contrasting conceptions of what was going on in a particular experience. It helps us to see how different participants learn different things from shared experiences. Like Huber and Clandinin’s (2005) account of a school field trip, we are confronted with the slippery character of experience but also an understanding of how considerations of ontology allow us to learn from that experience.

MARY LYNN’S NARRATIVE CONTINUED I began the class with a series of in-class writings about personal background and belief that culminated in the writing of a life history. The students wrote a paragraph about their reasons for becoming a teacher, about their influences, about their descriptions of teacher identity, and about the lives they lived in public school. The life histories succinctly captured their experiences. I assigned this activity to promote their understanding of themselves and pinpoint their beliefs about themselves and about teaching. Throughout the semester I asked them if they felt their actions aligned with their beliefs or if they were experiencing any living contradictions or moments of cognitive dissonance. Many of them simply said they were not used to looking at themselves so deeply. They also said they had never had an instructor who cared about

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these issues. Ever conscious of my role as a model, I would explicitly draw connections between my personal history and the ways that I teach or the ways that I organize. Ever conscious of my ability to influence my students I worked hard to recognize that I had many different perspectives in my classroom and tried not to be an advocate of THE way of teaching and learning. I talked to my students about multiple realities and when differing views emerged in the classroom I respected them and said, “Well, that is one way to think about it.” Of course, that frustrated them. That frustrated them because they wanted THE answer so they could do well on the exam (or so they thought). And it frustrated them because I was not behaving in a way with which they were familiar “I have never had a class like this!” one student exclaimed.

Analysis Continued

Learning through Juxtaposing Ontologies

In her ontological approach to studying her teaching, Mary Lynn is obviously conscious of her role as a model for teaching in particular ways and in relation to particular students. This means that Mary Lynn must be as aware of the experience in the classroom (the ontology that students experience) as she is of the knowledge claims she makes (the epistemological claims she articulates). S-STEP researchers indicate that this is an ever-present concern. Friedus (Friedus et al., 2005), in a collaborative self-study of a program in reading literacy engaged in with former students, embraces the progressive theory and practices that are the basis for her teacher education program. Yet, given today’s standardized climate, she begins to question whether there needs to be a change in that approach. While modeling preferred practices she wrestles with ontology. She is very aware of the conflicting realities that will potentially confront her students in their practice. Notice how Mary Lynn is attuned to her students’ responses concerning the feel, the emotional climate, into which she places them. They feel supported and challenged. Work by Berry and Loughran (2002) uncovers the multiple levels that attention to self as a model in teacher education contains. Like Mary Lynn, Berry and Loughran have a clear concern for professional development and the quality of the experiences they share with preservice teachers and each other. Friedus’s work (Friedus et al., 2005) and Mary Lynn’s account remind us that learning in teacher education comes about as Russell (2002) says, through considering how juxtaposing the strange and the familiar against each other uncovers new ways of looking at that reality as the familiar becomes strange and the strange becomes familiar.

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Another example of the ways in which the revelations of the multiple perspectives of an event deepen our understanding of that event and the learning that can occur emerges in Clift et al. (2005). In this work, stories within stories become explicit as members of the research team converse about issues that arise during their work together. In this instance they provide a shared account of a conversation followed with every participant’s perspective on the conversation. The research shows how this gathering of multiple perspectives pushed the ontological understanding that Clift and colleagues had of their practice as researchers and teachers. A basic definition of ontology suggests that it refers to just what is; however, because we are acting in a world, we may not be able to see what that world is beyond our immediate action in it. Weber and Mitchell (2004) articulate the various ways that scholars can and do use written, visual, and artistic accounts of experiences (accounts of their perception of what is) to provide a site for exploring the multiple realities of experience. Coia and Taylor (2005) provide even greater insight into the use of autobiography in their exploration of its use with preservice teachers and their learning from that experience. Here the use of autobiographical accounts illustrates how authors position themselves ontologically in order to understand and the account itself establishes that reality.

MARY LYNN’S NARRATIVE CONTINUED Conversation represented a key element in my classroom. I specifically showed them Bloom’s taxonomy and told them that while I would spend a bit of time in the realm of fact and comprehension, I was far more interested in the ways that they constructed reality and discussions about that would force us into higher order thinking skills. I told them that I wanted them to connect their own ideas with the ideas of their colleagues and the ideas from other classes and the ideas from their readings and ideas from their observations. I also told them that I expected discussion and I expected all students to participate. To help the shy, the introverted, the insecure, I met with every student for at least 15 minutes so that they could get to know me and I could get to know them. I usually started with a question like, “So, how are you doing in the School of Education?” Usually the conversations turned to discussions of friends, family, and desires for the future. I do believe that students felt more comfortable in class, although they did not always volunteer to

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participate. To remedy this, I used a set of popsicle sticks to monitor who did and did not participate in the discussion. Because I believe that the exchange of ideas is critical to the construction of understandings, I expected this participation. I clearly stated that in the syllabus and recognized that some of them needed a nudge. The use of popsicle sticks also helped me keep track of who might be dominating the conversation (although that in this experience did not usually happen). Analysis Continued

Dialogue under an Ontological Approach

An underlying process in an ontological approach to teaching and an ontological focus on research employs dialogue as a way of building, reconstructing, and considering knowledge. The way in which dialogue works as a tool and a process in research is explored by the Arizona Group (2004, 2005). A conception of dialogue as the cycle on which research is based allows us to push forward talk about how that in teaching when we are concerned about the reality(s)of the classrooms we experience attention to relationships is always central. We realize that student resistance, while anticipated, should not be allowed to disrupt students’ learning or alienate them. Russell’s work (1995) looks at a teacher educator in contrasting settings and accounts for the balancing act that an educator (in either setting) must engage into both support and challenge student thinking. Just as Mary Lynn’s attention to relationships in her narrative suggests, Russell (1995) indicates a similar kind of understanding. In his account of his return to teaching in a high school physics class he reports how he came to understand that the most important thing he did was taking the kids outside to take photos of them so he would remember their names. This action communicated to them that he really wanted to know who they were. In her study of attempting to enact a social justice classroom in an educational foundations class, Placier (1995) suggests that often our university experiences where conflicts are created can result in the troubling fiascos no matter how unintentional we are. Brubaker (2011) generated similar experiences when he invited his students to determine the content and schedule for the course. Brown (2002) described her decision to engage students in public explorations of their own issues of race, class, gender that resulted in them developing a clearer understanding of the impact these issues had in public schools, the schools where they would teach. She also encountered resistance. McNeil (2011) describes her attempts to negotiate her identity as an African-Canadian in the face of resistance on the part of her students and the strategies she used to create a climate where she could work more productively with them.

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When preservice teachers experience our classrooms as emotionally supportive even when they resist the activities in which we engage them, we create a space where learning can emerge from resistance. In these situations, teacher educators can make visible what they do to create a climate that supports the learning of resistant students and that leads such students to engage in difficult learning experiences. As a result preservice teachers can see how to do the same thing and there is greater potential that preservice teachers will create similar welcoming environments for their own students. Note here the ways in which Mary Lynn prompted a preferred reality without insisting on it. She engages in what Bullough (2006) calls shaping “an ontology to fit” her heart. In an ontological approach to teaching and research, an underlying tension develops around providing an ontology that embraces students as well as shapes their heart. Tidwell (2002) explores the balancing act required in valuing individual students, yet meeting goals as teachers. In contrast with public school teachers, teacher educators as well as educational researchers must be ever aware that the work they are doing is not necessarily focused on the classroom in front of them but on future classrooms where children’s’ growth and well-being is supported and nurtured and expanded. An ontological approach to teaching and research never loses that ideal and focus. Since such an approach is not about asserting a particular way of knowing or being but encourages preservice teachers to make their views of what teaching could be both more concrete and more expansive.

MARY LYNN’S NARRATIVE CONTINUED From the beginning I had many students who felt that they were called to teach, using that specific phrase. To them this meant that from the time they were quite young they felt drawn in unexplainable ways to the profession where they knew that they would make a difference. My selection of activities, therefore, allowed them to explicitly extend the borders of their understandings of their ideas around this “call.” (I must note that in a revisit to their writings after grades were submitted, the students who felt called to the profession did much better in class than those that did not. Those who selected the profession for other reasons seemed less likely to attend class, provide detail in their work, and so on.) As we moved beyond the initial writings and into their understandings of the roles of teachers, students, content, and contexts in the classroom, we explored the meanings behind their words we explored their

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conceptions of the reality their words expressed. That means that when a student said, “a teacher cares for students,” I might ask, “what does it mean to care?” Or with any given response, I might say, “what do you mean by that?” or “How might that look?” At first, they were shocked; as if I were somehow stupid or I was not serious. They came to understand that I was asking them to elaborate on their own understandings of ideas. Once we passed through the first weeks of class as we turned toward the second spiral on our class curriculum, I announced, “Today’s the day!” “What do you mean?” they queried. “Today’s the day that you start making connections,” I said with a smile. “Connections with what?” they asked with an edge of panic to their voices. “Relax, this isn’t another assignment. It’s now time for you to start connecting what you know with what you are reading in your texts, what you are hearing in other classes, and what you are seeing in your observations,” I soothed, “This will be easy.” “Really?” they cried in disbelief. I went on to explain that I wanted them to begin their elaboration process so that they could clearly and explicitly see the connections they were making among all that they were learning.

Analysis Continued

Making the Abstract Concrete

Again, you can see Mary Lynn attempting to support students to shape an ontology that fits their hearts. The ways in which Mary Lynn invited them to construct their realities return to the ways in which Weber and Mitchell (2004) promote multiple realities. Ontological approaches in teaching and research invite participants to see a reality, imagine a reality of their own, and then present constructed and reconstructed versions of these realities. In the process of research analysis, we engage in a similar activity. Imagining what the data we gather suggests about a reality, how we might interpret this data in a different way, what else this might mean and how can we anchor and authenticate these interpretations through reference to texts, relevant events, and views of expert others. In this passage, Mary Lynn reveals that she questions students about abstract comments pushing them to use their labels to make them concrete in the ways that Coia and Taylor (2005) talk about the cycling from abstract to concrete with their students. She invites her students to construct realities by asking them to reveal the reality behind an abstract idea expressed. This account of Mary Lynn’s classroom gains interpretive strength when we recognize that it mirrors accounts by Berry and Loughran (2002) where their past experience with preservice teachers leads them to construct a

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course, so that the mere experience of the course prompts students to consider and reconsider their ideas and connect them to the new understandings teacher educators are promoting. Kuzmic (2002), in an account of his work with teacher researchers, reminds us of the hard work of building an ontological approach because under such an approach interpretation never quite shuts down and promotion of a single way of being generates resistance. With her students Mary Lynn attempts to develop a conceptual depth to preservice teachers’ representations, attempting to help them create conceptually deeper and more holistic understandings of their beliefs representations that attend to shadows as well as romance. This resonates with the Bullough, Knowles, and Crow (1991) work as well as the Tidwell (2002) work where the analysis of one reality can add conceptual depth to their new ontologies.

MARY LYNN’S NARRATIVE CONTINUED Initially they needed to be prompted. And prodded. And asked. And pressed. Eventually the connections came naturally. They might say, “We talked about that in our PRE (child development) class.” Or “I read about that in the Bullough (1989) book.” And I would ask them, “tell me what you mean?” I felt that this exploration was a critical element to the exploration of their beliefs about teaching and their understandings of curriculum and learner. To foster the growth of their ideas and their abilities to elaborate on the ideas/concepts/points of the class, I would give them case studies and ask them questions about their understandings. Part of the assignment involved the connections among their own ideas, their readings, observations, and other classes. At first this was difficult for them because they were unfamiliar with this sort of expectation, but I employed a mastery learning approach to the writing, allowing rewrites after I provided detailed notes about expectations. My goal with the assignment was not to find the ONE RIGHT ANSWER, but to encourage the students to explain how they had come to understand the ideas, concepts, and points in the class. For example, in the conservative and controversial state of Kansas science and evolution are very much on students’ minds. Of course, that meant that issues about this and related topics seeped into the classroom. While I have a particular belief about these issues, I find that it is my place to ask students to best represent their ideas, not convince them of one

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perspective or another. If they can articulate their view and connect it with what we have discussed, I allow them to present their ideas. However, I do not invite debate because I think that everyone has the right to his or her perspective. Now, when I ask myself, “so what would you do if someone had what you thought was an offense view and whose view of what was morally good was diametrically opposed to your own?” I must answer that I would have to address that. To address this issue I would not confront the student directly. Instead, I would point out that what the person said is problematic and express what I meant. For example, if a student made a racist comment, I would draw attention to the words and the effects of the words and the influence of the institutional racism rampant in this society. In a situation like this my commitment to my perception of the greater good is stronger than my commitment to the student’s point of view. My commitment to the students in the schools is greater than my commitment to the students at the university. The major assignment for the class was the creation of a curriculum packet using a curriculum guide from a local district as well as texts used by the local district. By the time students were ready to prepare this assignment we had moved through the course spiral three times, looking at curriculum and its commonplaces. By this time the texts had been read, the websites had been visited and they had seen how curriculum was enacted in the schools. They worked in groups of three or four students and focused on particular grade levels and content areas. The levels of participation varied. First, students did not seem to understand that this was a long-term project with many components. Second, they seemed unwilling to undertake the kind of work that needed to be done in the design and creation of the curriculum packet. That is, some of the students had these difficulties. Many students engaged immediately in the work. One student repeated publicly over and over, “Oh, this is the best assignment I have ever had” to anyone who would listen. Each group undertook the work in a different fashion. Some students depended on others for directions, some students waited until the last minute and rushed through the work, providing shallow evidence of their understanding. Many students, to my delight, took the work seriously and explored in detail the creation of the curriculum packet. This packet was designed around the Kansas Performance Assessment (KPA) that all new teachers in the state must complete within the first 18 months of their employment as a teacher. Students were expected to prepare a course organizer, select one unit from any content area to design lessons using a unit

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organizer, and design five lessons to fit within that unit. In addition, the students had to address issues of inclusivity, diversity, and assessment.

Analysis Continued

Impact of Openness in Ontology

It is hard work building an ontology and taking on an ontological methodology, it is messy, can lead to ambiguous results, and can reveal us to ourselves in ways that may be troubling as Kuzmic (2002) reveals in exploring his failures in an engagement with his students as teacher researchers. In this narrative and in other intimate scholarship, we see how our own studies become our cases for understanding. These cases allow us to explore the edges and boundaries of our own understanding. Kuzmic does this when he recognizes the inappropriateness of his silence in the face of external critique of his students’ performance. He articulates that in that moment he was caught between two realities: his experience as a supporter of teacher research and his own history as an educational researcher. Ham and Kane (2004) provide similar explorations of alternative realities and constructions of themselves as researchers through their exploration of the denial of their application for research funding. They experienced the collision between a research entity’s conceptions of research against their own understandings. By juxtaposing opposing views in analysis it opens up space for new perspectives and alternative interpretations. Like readers of this work, students in Mary Lynn’s classroom are invited to imagine new worlds by putting several worlds and several conclusions in conflict (Huber & Clandinin, 2005). They receive an invitation to reimagine the world they live in and enter another, rather than epistemological assertions of rightness. Trustworthiness (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2000) enters here because readers/students receive no prescribed ending and are offered possibilities, not answers. In Mary Lynn’s discussions with students whose views seem truly aberrant, she invites them, like Brown (2002), to reimagine one world and enter another. Yet in these instances she avoids the assertion of a single view. However in her interaction with her students, we see the underlying moral imperative of her students that drives her confrontation with them, allowing students to continue in that way would be unsafe for their students. An ontological approach opens space for alternative views. In the analysis and interpretations of self-study, referents become most clear when researchers use alternative ways of representing ideas: in dramas (Weber and Mitchell, 1999, 2004), in dance (Cole & McIntyre, 1998a, 1998b) in collage (Arizona Group, 1996, 2000), and in photographs (Manke, 2006). These forms offer

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concrete and visual examples of how to view work from different angles. Yet, this also occurs in research accounts like Clift et al. (2005) where alternative views of a single event are placed against each other and people can consider new worlds.

MARY LYNN’S NARRATIVE CONTINUED To complete the work, students sought out other faculty members within the School of Education with whom they were acquainted, the teacher they observed during the semester, and the work found by teachers around that nation on units, lessons, and content. I encouraged all levels of interaction with resources as I wanted them to understand that they were not alone and that across their career as teachers collaboration and collegial relations could/would serve them well. Several students enlisted parents who were teachers and/or principals as experts to provide suggestions and recommendations. Most students did excellent work. In final presentations, I sat back amazed at the ways they addressed the class about their curriculum packets. As they spoke they offered numerous connections among the many sources they used to generate their packet. They spoke in sophisticated ways about how they organized and why they organized their packets in the ways they did. To my great delight, the students listening also made connections, evidenced in the questions they asked and the comments they made. By the end of semester and the end of the course, I felt that I had successfully organized a course about curriculum that prepared my students to become strong novice teachers. I measured this feeling by the extent of elaboration in the language my students used to describe their final case studies and the materials that the students included in their curriculum packets. I also measured their success by the ways the students connected experiences with readings with points covered regarding teaching, learning, and curriculum. In addition, by the end of the semester they seemed quite familiar with their own beliefs and theories about teaching and could examine with a growing confidence the strategies and curriculum that are a part of a successful classroom. During the semester several problems developed. One problem was the schedule. Because I believe that relevant issues must be addressed if raised in class, we were often behind in the readings, leaving the students unsure about what readings and assignments were to be done and when. While I attempted to stay on top of this, I was not often successful. Another

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problem rested on the claim that I was too vague with my information whether it was in presentation or in assignment. From my perspective I felt very concrete, specific, and clear. As I prepared my lessons I took extra time to add layers of descriptions or safeguards to insure understanding. From the perspective of the students, I needed to provide clarity of description regarding assignments like what “exactly” I wanted, and, according to them, I failed to do that. By the end of the semester I finally speculated that it might be a learning styles issue. “Could it be,” I queried, “that my learning style conflicted with their learning style?” It seemed apparent that there was some tension between my perspective of the universe and theirs. I would say something to them that seemed crystal clear, simple, specific, and they would look at me as if I had spoken a language they didn’t understand. While I didn’t give up on the possibility of reaching the students, I do believe that their frustration caused several of the students to work at less than their best because of their lack of clarity. As I read and considered and generally wrestled with this problem, I decided to give the students in my next semester class a learning styles test to see what learning styles might be dominant in the class. I also took the test myself so that I could identify my own dominant learning style. Once identified, I gave the students examples of how they might address the lack of clarity as well as the promise that I would work hard at being as concrete as possible. Further, I encouraged them to state clearly what they needed to know, because the truth was that I believed I was being specific and clear and direct. This does appear to be working as students seem to understand what I want in the classroom. From my perspective as an instructor, I had accomplished my desired goal to contribute to their preparation to become the best possible teachers. The students understood the strands of ideas that I presented curriculum, personal exploration of beliefs, and their relationships to classroom observations. They demonstrated that understanding in the ways that they wove these ideas together as they talked about teaching. By the end of the semester I knew that the students (most of them, anyway) had a strong grasp of the initial information needed in the early stages of the learning-to-teach process. This is not to say that they all had processed the information in the same ways; they had not. I had distinct evidence that some students had a deeper understanding of issues or views different than others, but each student had become more thoughtful about the process of understanding of curriculum and the learner in elementary school.

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Analysis Continued

The Unfinished Nature of Ontological Approaches

At the conclusion of Mary Lynn’s narrative we see her attempting to resolve conflicting ontologies some students’ views in relation to her views. Not unlike the varied stories found in Clift et al. (2005), Mary Lynn realized differences in understandings among the views and attempted to redesign her approach to better match the needs of the students. This work continues. In fact, the unfinished nature of the narrative addresses Bakhtin’s (1981) zone of inconclusivity, the ever-evolving, reimagining of lives and ideas. Just as we never completely finish the analysis on a research project. We revisit even a finally published and thus anchored interpretation that leads us to think and rethink what we thought we knew and what we thought we experienced. It is the power to produce this kind of ongoing imagining and reimagining that emerges when researchers attend carefully to exploring, exposing, examining what is rather than asserting claims about it.

THE ELEMENTS OF AN ONTOLOGICAL FOCUS As we look across our presentation of a teacher educator’s narrative account constructed from a basis of intimate scholarship education juxtaposed and analyzed through illustrations and reference from work constructed within a similar framework, we identify six elements that reveal the value to research on teacher education and teaching in using an ontological lens to guide intimate scholarship and establish ourselves in both arenas as trustworthy: 1. The turn toward ontology where we construct a multi-faceted view of what is. 2. Ontological collisions in the real where attention to the relational nature of human experience occurs. 3. Imagining the ontologies behind a text where we provide evidence to support those constructions through data, recognize the zone of inconclusivity, and learn through the juxtaposition of ontologies. 4. Dialogue under an ontological approach where we interrogate expressed views, to contradict or expand ideas. 5. Presentation of ourselves as trustworthy in a representation of the multi-faceted dialogue and revealed process of interrogation (analysis). 6. Reimagining of others in consideration of their own lives and works in relation to the text and experiences provided in the research article.

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Intimate scholarship is always conducted from an ontological perspective and what we know is revealed in the research text by providing evidence from the details, stories, understandings of our experience, lives, and practices. Because the ontology we stand in as intimate scholars is fundamentally relational, then our accounts are relational as well, providing alternative views, multiple perspectives, and wonderings or reimagining. As intimate scholars, we advocate this stance in conducting research within an ontological rather than an epistemological orientation. Positioning the self as knower accountable for and responsible to the understandings developed concerning particular experiences, times, places, and practices is a valuable contribution to research in teaching and teacher education. We encourage a moral, imaginative space for reimagining our own lives. We find the assertion by Bullough and Pinnegar (2004) to be an appropriate end: As a result, at its core, [intimate scholarship] embraces a moral imperative. Our being as teachers and teacher educators is wrapped up in the exploration of the point where, in practice, we meet and souls and selves touch. Thus, there is always a utopian moment in self-study, a point where the self is invited to be more than, or better than, itself. (p. 340)

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CHAPTER 11 INTIMATE SCHOLARSHIP CONCLUSION As we move forward in becoming a teacher educator working in the midst of experience and practice, we learn and grow. We shift in our understanding, experience tensions, resolve problems, develop relationships, and learn about being a teacher educator. We stand in the perfect place to reveal, act on, and expand our knowledge about teaching, teacher education, and being a teacher educator. The kind of scholarship most suited to these explorations is intimate scholarship. While intimate scholarship can be our orientation within a number of research methodologies, scholarship undertaken from that perspective shares a number of characteristics. Inquiries explore the particular our particular experiences, practices, lives, or learning. Intimate scholarship embraces subjectivity and vulnerability. Interpretation in inquiries conducted within the space of the intimate are always open in the doing, in the living, in the reporting, and in the research conversation of the community. Knowledge in intimate scholarship is developed in dialogue with ourselves, with the research literature, with our past experiences, and with colleagues and participants. Since intimate scholarship is conducted in an uncertain space and is fundamentally relational it is oriented to ontology. It allows the reader to see experience and practice from the perspective of the practitioner and is conducted in a space where knowing shifts and is unstable, these very characteristics mean that it holds the promise for contributing to understanding and knowing about teaching, teacher education, and teacher educators. In this section, we have visited each of the characteristics of intimate scholarship. In this section we consider each characteristic again providing an explanation of it and how it occurs, exemplifies, and enriches the potential of intimate scholarship to contribute to the research conversation in teaching and teacher education.

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STUDY OF THE PARTICULAR In critiquing all forms of qualitative research, quantitative researchers often point to the lack of the generalizability of findings as one of its major drawbacks. Research conducted from the basis of the scientific method with statistical manipulation can promise that findings from research conducted on a sample of a population can be transferred and applied to that population across settings and contexts. Sometimes quantitative researchers however lose sight of the fact that this can only occur if the reader seeks to generalize a finding based on a sample to the larger population of which the sample is a part with an expectation of success with a reasonable level of probability (.05, .01, .001). Quantitative research can rely on foundational criteria for knowing based in inferential statistics and the long held idea of truth as method. To apply the findings from one quantitative study to another requires that the original sample be random and that the larger population of which the sample is a part is easily and readily identifiable. The requirement of randomization is always a challenge for educational researchers. Parents make choices about what part of a city they will live in, where they will send their children to school, and who will be their children’s teacher. Teachers’ and school districts make decisions that result in particular teachers teaching in particular schools. Even when researchers develop stratified random samples across a school district or city, it is not very probable that the resulting sample will ever be either random or even completely representative since there are too many points of choice which intervene in such an eventuality. What we know as former teachers is that the removal of only one child from a classroom if he or she is either a particularly charismatic, cooperative charming student or a recalcitrant, obstructive, reactive one can make a drastic difference in the learning opportunities that occur in that classroom. In studying teacher education, seeking for randomization or even representativeness for samples is also difficult since choice plays such a prominent role in the selection of a particular teacher education program, university, or teacher. The teacher educators in place, the design of the program, the field placements, and the level of fidelity of implementation for any treatment are all fraught with issues of choice and variation. In contrast, qualitative research attempts always to seek out a sample that will allow the researcher to gain the deepest and most rigorous understanding possible of the phenomenon of interest and so the qualitative researcher relies on the reader to judge the transferability or applicability of the understanding developed in one study to his or her own setting and context. Intimate

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scholars recognize, just as general qualitative researchers and even quantitative researchers do that ultimately, the generalizability, transferability, or applicability of what is revealed in a research study depend on the thinking of the reader of the research. To the degree that readers of the research report find that the findings of a study resonate with their understanding or context, they will judge the study as applicable, transferable, or generalizable to their setting. Thus, in some way regardless of methodology, whether or not findings get applied or transferred depends on the judgment of the reader of the research report. Attention to randomization or representativeness of a sample or providing sufficient detail about the context and the treatment parameters hold the potential to be more or less convincing but the judgment of applicability does not reside with the researcher. The intimate scholar does not see generalizability as a goal and expects that the reader of the research will utilize a study to inform their own thinking about the situation. There is also never an expectation that how an intimate scholar acts in his or her own practice in response to a study will be unilateral and straight forward but dependent on the relationships, contexts, dynamics, and constraints acting on the researcher. Intimate scholars trust that in examining their own practice, experience, and memory they can make more visible and explicit their tacit knowledge. What they know will be revealed in their action or thinking about the situation, the relationship of this experience to their past life or background, and their understanding of these specific students or others at this point in time in this place. Through intimate scholarship, they will uncover insights, knowledge, or understandings that will illuminate and contribute to the conversation in teacher education. As a result, the intimate scholar does not attempt to generalize but instead to develop and communicate an understanding of his or her own experience or practice or life as a teacher educator, based in his or her own perspective, orientation, and past experiences. The intimate scholar regardless of the methodology utilized focuses clearly and completely on coming-to-know the particular the particular practice, event, experience, interaction, or response. Intimate scholarship takes seriously the need to provide a rich descriptive account of the context, the interactions, the constraints along with the thinking behind what is studied, and the assertions for action and understanding that emerged in the inquiry. The audience of the research account is responsible for determining how and whether what is learned from the account will be helpful or useful in understanding and acting in his or her own context. Thus, intimate scholarship at its foundation seeks to develop understanding of the particular. In the first chapter of this section, we explored the value of

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attending to the particular through intimate scholarship in research on teacher education.

VULNERABILITY Intimate scholarship focused on knowing the particular, constructed on shifting grounds of action, interaction, and interpretation means that the inquirer operating from this orientation is vulnerable. As teacher educators, one of our fundamental responsibilities is teaching teachers. What we know as teachers is that teaching is a very public private act. Teacher educators’ interactions with their students are usually oriented to supporting the teacher candidate as a learner and in doing so taking into account what we know of them, their lives, and their progress. In this way, teacher education and teaching is based on relationships. Students must trust teachers at least at some level if they are to learn from them. Problematically for the teacher, whether a student decides to trust the teacher depends not on the teacher but on the student. The teacher must act in trustworthy ways and allow the student to make the determination (Pinnegar, 2005). While researchers argue that there is a rich knowledge base for teaching and teacher education (Ball & Forzani, 2009; Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005; Hiebert, Gallimore & Stigler, 2002; Reynolds, 1995), teachers and teacher educators recognize that it depends and what are touted as best practices given a particular group of students, context, purpose, or content may not even be good practices (Bullough, 2012a, 2012b). Teaching generally and teacher education specifically are always enacted in a public private space our relationships with students feel intimate and private but a teacher must recognize any interaction with students both in and out of the classroom as being potentially public. As a result of the way in which teaching is fundamentally relational, being a teacher educator and the multiple roles assumed and enacted positions one in a constant state of vulnerability. Furthermore, teacher educators are vulnerable as our place at the university is contested, our interactions with schools are often fraught with challenge, and our role as teachers is never a sure base (Davey, 2013). Thus, intimate scholarship that makes public the thinking and action of the self in relationship to our practice or experience reeks of vulnerability. Yet, it is vulnerability and our feelings of uncertainty and instability that often contribute depth and nuance to the understandings intimate scholarship reveals. Our vulnerability as scholars makes us more concerned with interpretation, trustworthiness, and the currency of the

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conceptual framework for our studies and the attendant review of research and theory on which it is based. In the chapter on vulnerability, we explored how vulnerability is an asset to teacher educators engaging in intimate scholarship focused on their experience, practice, and lives as teacher educators.

OPENNESS Intimate scholarship remains open. The space of the inquiry is open because the ground on which it is conducted is shifting. The expectation is that the researcher and the researched have the potential to grow and change as the study moves forward and that if well-argued and presented, those reading the scholarship will gain insight that may cause them to shift in their thinking as they examine the research account. The interpretation of a study can be secured as trustworthy and coherent, but each time the scholar or reader takes it up again there is real potential for new understandings to emerge and what was thought one way might be seen as otherwise or viewed from a new perspective new understandings or nuances of meeting can be uncovered (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2014). For the researcher this means making clear the decision points and anchoring the understandings revealed in an evidentiary trail that can also include other research and theory (e.g., see Mansur & Friling, 2013). The research itself plays out in an arena that is open and research design must take into account the instability of the space and the inconclusivity inherent in the work. In the chapter on openness, we articulated the variety of ways that openness plays out in intimate scholarship and the advantage that it provides as intimate scholars seek to reach new and deeper understandings concerning teacher education and being a teacher educator.

DIALOGUE The coming-to-know process that underlies intimate scholarship is dialogue. We come to know as we interact with others, with research on the topic, with variety in our own understanding. As we engage in collecting data and in analyzing and interpreting it, the intimate scholar seeks constantly to imagine things otherwise, to consider a different view or alternative perspective. Intimate scholars seek to clarify their own understanding

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of an experience, or the dynamics underlying particular practices, or the influence of particular past experiences on current ones in this process, they are constantly cognizant that multiple perspectives and multiple interpretations always exist, and they try to uncover and bring this multiplicity of understanding against their own. Within dialogue, ideas are put forth, shaped, transformed, rejected, embraced, or secured. Within dialogue ideas are always strengthened and expanded. The intimate scholar through engagement with dialogue negotiates the meaning of and evidence for the interpretation formed. Through this process, the strength of assertions for understanding is both developed and strengthened. Intimate scholars intentionally seek out variability of opinion and submit their thinking to critique and response. Thus, understanding emerges through discussion and careful consideration. While the intimate scholar is always aware that alternative explanations exist and different perspectives are possible, it is through submission to a process of dialogue that the value and verity of the scholars’ own interpretation gains strength and the inquirer develops confidence in what he or she has come to understand concerning his study. In the chapter on dialogue, we explore this process and how this process supports the veracity of the understandings that emerge through intimate scholarship.

ONTOLOGY Most educational research is oriented toward epistemology and the validation and verification of claims to knowing. Much critique is leveled against qualitative research generally and intimate scholarship specifically on the grounds of epistemology, specifically judgments of validity. Scholars who base their work numerically utilizing statistical methods can make knowledge claims based on foundational criteria for knowing grounded in the norm curve and inferential statistics. However, as intimate scholars like narrative researchers we recognize numbers as an impoverished discourse which always require further qualification and explanation; therefore, we base our work in words (Pinnegar & Daynes, 2007). Just as Clandinin and Rosiek (2007) recognize that ontology is an important ground for narrative inquiry, we argue ontology is the ground from which intimate scholarship proceeds. The attention of the intimate scholar is toward understanding teacher education and then taking up that understanding in their action and practice. Intimate scholars seek to inform research on teacher

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education not through epistemology or claims to know, but through a careful articulation of what is in their practice. In addition to attending to what is and how they understand it, in their research accounts, intimate scholars seek to communicate these understandings to others developing their understandings through dialogue and presenting them in a public forum where others are free to critique and respond. The process and dynamics of grounding research in ontology rather than epistemology is carefully explored in the chapter on ontology.

CONCLUSION

THE RELATIONAL

Intimate scholarship is conducted through a variety of methodologies such as self-study of teacher education practices, autoethnography, autobiography, phenomenology, narrative research, and narrative inquiry to name a few. What is central to intimate scholarship is that it is always an examination of the experience and practice of the researcher; thus the researcher becomes the researched. The study can be focused on the practice, the current or past experiences, or particular critical incidents or events. The inquiry seeks to uncover the thinking or understanding or the growth and learning of the inquirer from the perspective of the inquirer. To develop trustworthiness of findings the design of the study seeks to record alternative views and perspectives on the experience. Data can involve a variety of things but always contains the thinking and meaning making of the inquirer. The studies focus on the particular and seek to inform by making the particular clear and understandable from the perspective of the inquirer. There is a fundamental openness and inconclusivity in every aspect of intimate scholarship because it is conducted and interpretation occurs in a space of instability. While surety about meaning can be reached and evidence can be provided for the assertions that emerge and connections can and are made to the wider research conversation in support of the findings, stability of meaning is fleeting and altered because understanding and meaning making is partial and emerging. Vulnerability is a fundamental characteristic as the inquirer reveals feelings, desires, mis-steps as well as descriptions of settings and practices the inquirer may have wished were other. Thus, the audience to intimate scholarship is allowed to see from the perspective of the scholar as things are. Dialogue is the process for comingto-know and it is through discussion and conversation with self, research,

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colleagues, and participants that knowing and understanding emerge and become trustworthy. Intimate scholarship is oriented toward ontology rather than epistemology because it seeks to attend carefully, explore thoroughly, and develop meaning based in what is from the perspective of the inquirer. Above all intimate scholarship is at its foundation, like teaching, relational. Intimate scholarship is always conducted between self and other(s) and the self conducting the research seeks constantly to honor the perspective and experience of the other(s) involved. In addition, the reader of the study is invited in as a participant and an interpreter thus the understandings developed from the research are relational ones. Dialogue, the foundation for knowing, is an open space and is conducted in relationship to others. The researcher enters the research with a sense of vulnerability and humility seeking through out to understand and to be open and honest about what is seen. We believe that intimate scholarship holds great promise for contributing to the research conversations in teaching and teacher education because like teaching its foundation is a relational one. As you read the chapters on the characteristics of intimate scholarship, consider how your own work might be framed, deepened, and shaped were you to take up intimate scholarship in your own work.

QUESTIONS 1. In what ways can you shift in your understanding, experience tensions, resolve problems, develop relationships, and learn more about being a teacher educator? 2. How and what might studies focused on the particular contribute to research? 3. What are the particular experiences in your context that might inform research on teacher education? 4. How do I as a reader of research determine the applicability and trustworthiness of a study? 5. How can I embrace vulnerability as a characteristic that supports and sustains me as a researcher? 6. How might I use the characteristic openness to enhance rather than detract from my scholarship? 7. How can openness provide nuance and depth to my inquiries?

DISRUPTION BETWEEN INTIMATE SCHOLARSHIP AND INQUIRY We entered teacher education at what we considered a watershed moment in the study of teaching. This was the beginning of the research on teacher thinking movement. As an outgrowth of the teacher effectiveness studies, educational researchers recognized that teachers’ thinking about teaching was as interesting as their action and that what they were thinking had the potential to both inform and reshape research on teaching and teacher education and professional development as an enterprise (contrast Brophy & Good, 1986 with Clark & Peterson, 1986). Qualitative research was reinvigorated as a vital way to examine teaching. The excitement about teaching, learning to teach, and teacher thinking about teaching inspired us and many other young scholars not only to study teaching using qualitative strategies but also to become teacher educators. After graduation, we sought positions that would allow us to both study teaching and participate in fundamental ways in teacher education as an enterprise. We were inquiring minds, and we wanted to understand and know teacher education. Of course as we took up academic positions, Colleges of Education were shifting, particularly in terms of teacher education. The move was toward more scholarship and greater experimentation with programs and practices and toward development of different kinds of relationships with public schools (e.g., Goodlad, 1994; Holmes Group, 1986, 1990). We were hired because of our academic records and promise as scholars, but we took up teacher education because we were interested in becoming teacher educators educating new kinds of teachers, in new school university arrangements, using new methods and practices. As we entered the academy as beginning professors, we replaced retired or soon to retire teacher educators. In those early years, Stefinee entered a college of education that began life as a normal school and still held remnants of those roots (see Clifford & Guthrie, 1988). In the first few years of her experiences there, her department shrank from a work force of 150 faculty to less than 50. This size reduction marked a move in the department away from a deep orientation to practice to an orientation to research. As Stefinee participated in 193

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discussions with these retiring faculty members, she was constantly surprised at the ways they talked about the practice and progress of student teachers and their knowing about teaching placements and the growth and learning of teachers. It was also at this time that as the Arizona Group formed and began to study our own experience as teacher educators. We sought to contribute what we learned about teacher education and becoming teacher educators to the larger research conversation. We realized that what we wanted to know and explore could be discovered from our position and perspective as we enacted this new identity of teacher educator. We sought a deeper understanding of our thinking about teaching and teacher education. Our prior work had focused on cultural models and the influence they had upon our lives. Additionally, we explored the development of natural memory and practical knowledge and how this knowing became both embodied and visible in our experience and action as teacher educators. From the perspective of intimate scholarship studies of practice and experience emerging from our knowing and doing informed by the conversation of research on teaching we created a community of scholars and a methodology (self-studies of teacher education practices) that enabled these studies. We recognized that inquiries conducted from the basis of intimate scholarship utilizing methodologies such as S-STEP, autoethnography, autobiography, action research, arts-based research, narrative research, narrative inquiry (to name a few) have a unique and important contribution to make to research on teaching and teacher education From her perspective as a new faculty at her institution, Stefinee watched as she realized that the knowledge these teacher educators held was practical, tacit, and embodied and with their retirement that knowledge was disappearing from the landscape. The opportunity for these retiring teacher educators to transform their embodied knowing into knowledge that could be shared more widely was unlikely. Through the section on intimate scholarship we have introduced its characteristics, articulated some contributions it has already made, and demonstrated its potential viability and rigor. We have articulated the fluid, uncertain and evolving space that studies within intimate scholarship occupy. We have explored becoming a teacher educator, highlighting how exploring our ongoing process of becoming teacher educators can and does contribute to research on teaching. We have articulated how intimate scholarship focused on our process of becoming is vital in developing a knowledge base that can guide and shape teacher education.

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Our next turn in this book is making clearer the relationship between inquiry and intimate scholarship and the demands that this kind of scholarship makes on inquiries and inquirer. We have conducted inquiries from within the framework of intimate scholarship. To make clearer what we understand about doing this work entails, we turn now to a critique of studies we have published (that have been judged scholarship) to examine more clearly how a research text demonstrates trustworthiness and where it potentially falls short. Our purpose in this work is to support intimate scholars in developing deeper understandings of how we build and communicate trustworthiness.

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COMMENTS DISRUPTION SCRUTINIZING TRUSTWORTHINESS IN SELFSTUDY OF TEACHER EDUCATION PRACTICES RESEARCH ABSTRACT This chapter analyzes our practice as researchers engaged in intimate scholarship using the Framework of Analysis (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009) as an analytic tool to scrutinize the trustworthiness of our research practice and to develop a deeper understanding of how S-STEP research establishes itself as trustworthy and rigorous scholarship. With the recognition of S-STEP research and other forms of intimate scholarship as genres of teacher education research (Borko, Liston, & Whitcomb, 2007), scholars engaged and other forms of intimate scholarship can turn to a more rigorous inquiry into and critique of our work in order to consider how we might improve our practice as researchers and support and strengthen the position and future of this research. For these reasons, we take up a critique of a particular S-STEP research study using the Framework for Analysis in order to explore both whether the work studied can be judged trustworthy and what such examination reveals about the process of establishing the trustworthiness of studies utilizing intimate scholarship methodologies. Hamilton, M. L., & Pinnegar, S. (2012). Scrutinizing trustworthiness in our practice as self-study of teacher education practices researchers. Paper presented in When Knowing Is Not Enough: Critical Examination of Self-Study of Practice Methodology, a symposium at the annual meeting of at AERA, Vancouver, BC, Canada.

In this study we analyze our practice as Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices (S-STEP) researchers using criteria specified by Pinnegar and Hamilton (2009) to scrutinize the trustworthiness of our research practice 197

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and to develop a deeper understanding of how intimate scholarship establishes itself as trustworthy and rigorous scholarship. A central feature of intimate scholarship is that the researcher is the researched in the study. The work is unabashedly embedded in the subjectivity of the self who conducted the study. The research report is always conveyed in the personal voice. Therefore, before we begin, we explore what this means for study designed and conducted from through self-study of practice methodology. All intimate scholarship fronts the understanding that the self (the researcher) develops and expresses it from the perspective of the self. Often the S-STEP community labels the work self-study; however, labeling the research as simply self-study often hides the actual relationships that underlie the work. The use of self in the title of the methodology identifies that the researchers take responsibility for knowing, engaging in, and improving their practice. Furthermore, since this work emerges in an examination of the space between self and Other in practice using only the phrase self-study seems deceptive and misleading (the intimate in intimate scholarship masks the status of self in relationship to other in the same way). As a result, when we report this work we use the phrase self-study of teacher education practice (S-STEP) as the name of this research methodology.

SITUATING S-STEP RESEARCH As a community of scholars, S-STEP researchers stand at a time when this methodology has gained status as a genre of educational research (Borko, Liston, & Whitcomb, 2007) and yet simultaneously (like other intimate scholarship) receives challenges that it is less than rigorous (Zeichner, 2007; Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009, 2010). This tension of being and not being viable research brought us to take up the query of how S-STEP research as intimate scholarship demonstrates trustworthiness and rigor or does not. In taking up this challenge, we selected Pinnegar and Hamilton’s (2009) Framework for Analysis to scrutinize our own work rather than that of others. For this study, we selected a published study from our early work that explicitly attended to trustworthiness and also contained textual experimentation, a distinctive feature of our research. As we explore out work we return to the question of whether or not we engage in rigorous research that demonstrates trustworthiness and what evidence we can identify in the chapter to support our findings.

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While theories of self will always inform the self doing S-STEP research and, indeed, can be a conceptual tool for guiding data collection, thinking, analysis, and developing trustworthiness of findings the self in the label of S-STEP research marks publicly that the responsibility for findings and enactment rest on the self who is doing the research. In this way, it marks an ontological commitment more than an epistemological one because it asserts publicly the responsibility of authors for both the practice and the research on it. Like other researchers who engage in intimate scholarship, the S-STEP research community grew out of dissatisfaction with the perspective of the distanced researcher that allowed researchers, whose research actually did focus on the preservice and inservice teachers they worked with, to obfuscate the moral commitment they held for their practice and avoid a commitment to improvement. As a result in the early 1990s, S-STEP researchers, who were already engaged in using various qualitative research methodologies, joined discussions about studying teaching and teacher education more authentically. They focused on developing methodologies that would allow them to honor their position as researcher/researched and simultaneously bring new understandings to teaching and teacher education research by uncovering what their practice revealed, what they knew about teaching and teacher education, and what they learned about preparing teachers as they improved old practices or enacted new ones. Denzin and Lincoln (2005), in a discussion of the history of qualitative research, identify critical moments in qualitative research, including the crisis of representation (1986 1990s) that addresses threats to representation, legitimation, and praxis. Since these are also central to critiques of intimate scholarship, attention to these threats has been important for those engaged in this work. During this time, the voices of the researcher and the researched were interrogated with the focus shifting between them as qualitative research scholars and practitioners. This raised questions about how to interpret experience (e.g., Crapanzano, 1985; Clifford & Marcus, 1986) and the inappropriateness of using positivist terms for inquiries embracing postmodern research practices and exploring experience from this perspective. While the entire social science community grappled with these questions, the discourse empowered researchers in teacher education to enact research on this new and emerging research landscape. Arguably, backlash against qualitative research methodologies, particularly intimate scholarship, can be identified as a cause for the recent turn toward stricter definitions of what counts as scientific research. As qualitative methodologies garnered increasing interest and greater numbers of

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researchers embraced these kinds of research practices, those scholars engaged in quantitative research began to worry that their research world would be reduced and their power-share threatened. This was not a new phenomenon and earlier versions of these tensions can be found within the annals of Educational Researcher (e.g., Smith & Heshusius, 1986) and reverberate even today in more recent issues of ER where Howe (2009) expounds on pressures from the new scientific orthodoxy. Advocates of more modernist methodologies responded to their shrinking world with methodological critique about strategy, approach, and ability to reach beyond a few individuals. Critique of intimate scholarship methodology has come not just from foes, but supporters as well. For example, Zeichner (2007) claims that researchers need to provide a broader context, situating studies within and linking them to previous research. Moreover, Pinnegar and Hamilton (2009, 2010), among others, call for tighter methodological detail and greater attention to establishing trustworthiness in this work. Since the critiques are not completely unfounded and since researchers know that research is a messy business and no research study reaches perfection, how scholars respond to the critiques and where we go next in intimate scholarship research will be important for those who engage in this work and the future of the methodology itself. In this work, we engage in a critical re-analysis of our earlier writings attending specifically to how and whether the work is trustworthy and rigorous and examine what we learned about how trustworthiness might be established. Such re-examination may help us as well as other intimate research scholars respond to and learn from this current turn.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK As teacher educators, whenever we choose to study some aspect of our practice and thereby determine to develop a deeper understanding of it, we are in essence engaging in intimate scholarship research. However, whether or not the study both as designed and ultimately as written and produced is identified and published as intimate scholarship like S-STEP research depends upon the researcher. Researchers may engage in this research but choose to represent the study that emerges as a more generic form of qualitative research or frame it as another genre of research. Often, researchers question what marks a work as intimate scholarship. As we are S-STEP

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researchers engaged in intimate scholarship, we explore this question through that lens. For S-STEP researchers, Pinnegar and Hamilton (2009) argue that there are three aspects of a research design that mark the work as emerging from this methodology. These aspects are first, claims for trustworthiness are based in ontology rather than epistemology; second, the pattern or process for coming-to-know is empirically grounded in dialogue rather than the scientific method, and third, the work is grounded in a study of personal practice and experience within the space between self and Other. One critical determinant of these features is the grounding of claims by an author in the authority of the experience of the self that conducts the research (Munby & Russell, 1994). LaBoskey (2004) identifies five characteristics that mark research as SSTEP research. S-STEP research is self-initiated and focused, is interactive (or collaborative), uses qualitative strategies, and provides exemplar validation (these being similar to characteristics of intimate scholarship as well). Engaging in S-STEP in order to develop deeper understanding and to make certain that what one believes is, in fact, evident in one’s practice, or to improve practice sounds deceptively easy. While some believe that research directed toward studying one’s own practice is easier than studying the practice and life experience of others, our experience has been that the integrity, attention to risks in the trustworthiness of design, data collection, data analysis and data representation is neither straightforward nor simple (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009). Initially, those engaged in the work of S-STEP research focused more on the struggle for recognition in academia than on the perfection of methodological representation. In our collective past as S-STEP scholars, situating our work within the larger realm of qualitative research seemed less important than doing the work. And doing the work seemed more important than offering details that might have strengthened other scholars’ readings of our work and explicitly revealed how this work contributed to the larger knowledge base. With the recognition of S-STEP research as a genre of teacher education research (Borko, Liston, & Whitcomb, 2007), we can turn now to a more rigorous inquiry into and critique of our work in order to consider how we might improve our practice as researchers and support and strengthen the position and future of S-STEP research. For these reasons, in this study we have taken up a critique of a particular S-STEP research study using Pinnegar and Hamilton’s (2009) Framework for Analysis in order to explore both whether the work studied can be judged trustworthy and what such examination reveals about the process of establishing the trustworthiness of S-STEP studies.

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METHODOLOGY Having framed our study to scrutinize the trustworthiness of S-STEP research practice using the Framework for Analysis (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009), we decided to choose for analysis one of our own studies because we claimed our research used S-STEP methodology and we have been doing what we call S-STEP research for a long time. To begin, we selected a published work using the following criteria: the study would be one conducted using S-STEP methodology, the study would be published in a peerreviewed text indicating that others had considered it to be trustworthy enough as scholarship to publish it, and the study would contain textual experimentation common in S-STEP research work. We reviewed our published work and selected: Arizona Group. (1995). Becoming teachers-of-teachers: The paths of four beginners. In Russell, T. & Korthagen, F. (Eds.) Teachers who teach teachers: Reflections of teacher education (pp. 35 55). London: Falmer Press.

We scoured the text documenting its deficits and merits from evidence within the chapter and our assessment of them in terms of the Framework for Analysis. As we commented on the evidence of trustworthiness by applying the Framework for Analysis, we also responded to our understanding of how the work did or could have provided evidence of our trustworthiness as researchers. Specifically, we asked questions about purpose, definition of S-STEP, situation of self, transparency of methodology, data collection/analysis tools, connections of data and evidence, use of authority of experience, portrayal of self, and location of the study within the larger research literatures. We began our work by analyzing the selected text individually. We responded to each question by identifying specific evidence in the chapter in response to the question and articulated how the evidence did/did not document the trustworthiness of the study and of the authors. To deepen our analysis, we explored our text and our responses together, negotiating our agreements and disagreements about the textual evidence of trustworthiness and our reasoning along with insights about how S-STEP research/ers establish themselves as trustworthy and their work as examples of rigorous scholarship. We considered carefully what we identified as evidence and our individual reasoning regarding accuracy and appropriateness. We worked until we developed shared understandings of deficits, merits, reasoning, and commentary concerning trustworthiness of the scholarship of this text and of trustworthiness generally. Across this work we

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searched for the negative and disconfirming: We actively sought to find evidence of a lack rather than a surplus of trustworthiness. We then jointly constructed our responses using the Framework for Analysis to communicate and unpack our understandings.

FINDINGS In the application of the Framework for Analysis (see the Appendix), we uncovered evidence that we attended to some but not all of the criteria. Using each category from the framework as a heading we unpacked our analysis of the ways in which our work provided evidence for each framework category and the ways in which attention to that category established the trustworthiness. Purpose The statement of purpose begins by articulating what readers should not expect. By raising and articulating what might or might not be explored, we demonstrate our understanding of the larger research conversation or potential research conversations about becoming teacher educators. Purpose has this function since it delineates what a particular study is about and provides readers with evidence that the researcher knows the research conversation surrounding the focal point of this research. Informed readers would immediately be aware of whether the purpose stated would, in fact, move scholarship forward and contribute to the conversation identified or whether the study seems obscure or redundant. Issues of trustworthiness also arise when an article contains multiple non-equivalent purpose statements at points within the text, particularly if the statements conflict, since this communicates lack of focus or attention to detail on the part of the author. Our chapter begins with a paragraph that builds with each sentence to align and clarify the direction of our study for readers: In this chapter we present and analyze accounts of how we learned about teaching teachers. Our purpose is not to examine the meaning of being a teacher of teachers or to provide strategies for training teachers-of-teachers. We are not trying to create a recipe for socialization or to illuminate the underlying pattern of learning to teach teachers. Instead we present a multi-vocal account of the individual process we went through in becoming a teacher of teachers. (p. 35)

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Here, we assert a focus on individual accounts, but intend to explore our accounts as a way to provide a more inclusive representation of the learning-to-become-a-teacher-educator process. Readers can expect both individual and cross-case thematic analysis of the work to demonstrate potential for these accounts to contribute to a broader understanding of the learningto-be-a-teacher-educator research. The initial assertions about what we are not attending to communicate our understanding about the various aspects of research on learning-toteach. The statements concerning what could be explored parallels the various lines of research on teaching and learning-to-teach underway at the time the chapter was published. We do not reference that work directly, but the phrasing of the sentences communicates to the teacher education community that we are aware of the research base and could provide these references if we were undertaking that research. For example: We believe this analysis of our experience in becoming teachers-of-teachers offers a unique perspective. Current research on the new professor … focuses on how outstanding, effective, fast-start new professor shape their work and organize their time. Our study differs from this work because we are documenting and interpreting our own experience as new professors. (p. 35)

By providing a clear, consistent statement of purpose, we are accountable to readers to meet our purpose across the study. In some ways our setting of purpose is the first step in establishing authority of experience. This is evident in the way we delineate the problem the study addresses as well as in the quotes that begin the chapter.

Definition of S-STEP Research We do not explicitly name our work as intimate scholarship or S-STEP research. However, as we unpacked research that informed our study we interrogated the work in terms of our own experience as academics. We presented significant research and situated our work within the larger arena of research on beginning professors that informed our analysis. For us, our experience offered a unique view distinct from other new professors studied at the time. While current (at that time) research stressed a focus on “the ‘more important’ concerns of getting ahead with our research,” we found ourselves caught in concerns “with and about teaching [that] could not be easily or systematically resolved” (p. 36). Interrogation of the findings allowed us to assert our own self-understandings in relationship to the

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larger research conversations concerning academics, interweaving what research on teaching might contribute to the research conversation about beginning professors from our place of becoming teachers-of-teachers within academia. At this point in the chapter, we can see that the study displays LaBoskey’s (2004) five characteristics of S-STEP research; yet, her chapter was written eight years after our study was published. As a self-initiated, self-focused study we demonstrate our authority of experience in how we frame our literature review and provide evidence that we can answer the “so what?” question of good research. Our interrogation of the research, establishes that our experience is informed by the research in the field and gives us authority to speak. As LaBoskey specifies, our work aims toward improvement. However, even more importantly it is oriented toward developing an understanding of our development as scholars that can inform our practice as well as that of others. As a result, from the beginning, the chapter sets a frame for our turn to the self (wherein S-STEP researchers reveal not only what they learned from the study but also their practical knowledge in relationship to their findings). Aligning with LaBoskey’s work, the study is interactive and uses qualitative strategies. Indeed, the narrative accounts we lay against each other seem to assert that we have developed exemplar validation; yet, the text of the methodology section only weakly supports that. Evidence can be found in our (Arizona Group, 1995) use of phrases from our text in the conclusion to the section on Biography and Questions “the vow of a ten-year old” (p. 40), “sobbing on the last day of school” (p. 43). Our linking of these explicit statements from our journals implies an exemplar validation since it raises our understandings and aspects of our narratives from their status as individual accounts to a position of their becoming communally shared understandings. Key elements in situating the self to establish trustworthiness include positioning the self in relationship to practice. In S-STEP work, there exists a continuum from self to Other, but for such work to have integrity as an empirical foundation from which knowledge of self-understanding can be developed the author must provide an empirical foundation from which she/he can question his/her self-understanding. Because we are constructing accounts of our learning-to-teach process, this study focuses more on the self-end of the continuum. Across the study we often say that we see the preservice teachers differently as we remember our own journey in becoming teachers. There is evidence that we have available evidence from which our assertions come

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because these accounts are based on records of our experience journals, emails, and letters that contain our thinking and our record of events and situations and can be examined and re-examined to question and address the veracity of our accounts and the assertions we make. A vital feature in the establishment of trustworthiness in qualitative studies is the grounding of the research in particular methodologies and strategies through citing the texts that guided the author in the research and the provision of evidence that the tenets of scholarship required by the methodology and strategies used as outlined in the text were followed. When this chapter was published, S-STEP was barely resident on the horizon of teacher education research, and there were few methodological texts from which to draw and frame this kind of research. However, in demonstrating rigor and trustworthiness we report our research processes specifying them in relationship to research methodologies that did exist and anchor this work within that tradition in this case qualitative research. Although we return to issues of trustworthiness throughout the chapter, we begin that discussion early in the chapter as we locate our work within the literature or point out how our study differs from existing work. For example, we wrote, “Our study differs from this work because we are documenting and interpreting our own experience as a new professor” (p. 35) and framed our work as a collaborative investigation of our experience (S-STEP research, implied not explicit). Additionally, we included the elements of our research process and reported that we examined records of our practice as teacher educators to understand our development as teacher educators. Our situating of the self and our demonstration of our understanding of the larger research conversation marks us as informed and intelligent guides exploring the questions we raise and meeting our larger purposes in the chapter. In addition the details in our telling of our stories of becoming teachers-of-teachers position us as teacher educators within our institutions. In this way we place ourselves contextually in the larger research conversation of teacher education as well as within local conversations of teacher education. In contrast, we might have used autobiographical statements like, “I had this experience and therefore it is significant” without evidence of inquiry and scholarship. For us, a critical aspect of strong S-STEP research requires that we situate our work within the larger and local research conversations as we did when we wrote: A strand of research begun in the 1970s and updated recently examines the role of the female academic (Aisenberg, 1988; Chamberlain, 1988). While this research informs us

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and provides echoes of themes we have lived, and … accounts remarkably well for our experience within the university community, it does not account for … our experience. More importantly, it does not represent how female academics negotiate the troubled waters illuminated in the studies …. (p. 36) Powerful restatements and assessments of academic lives, like those of Eble (1988), Booth (1988) and Getman (1992) were written by experienced, respected professors, not in the moment, but in retrospect. From the front porch swing in the later, tenured, revered years of successful academic lives, they relive sagas of old academic wars …. (p. 36)

Furthermore, we account for ourselves as individuals with particular paths to becoming teacher educators while presenting their shared features. We argue that by providing a multivocaled account of individual and collective experience we create a space where theory and practice merge that supports the integrity of the findings and their applicability to the field.

Definition of S-STEP Methodology We make clear as we describe our analytic process that individually and collectively in our study we are central actors. Our data come from our individual journals, our collaborative and individual articles, our shared e-mails, and our data from earlier studies. We reviewed these independently, and then collectively to determine the questions to interrogate our past experiences and create narratives accounts of becoming teachers-of-teachers. These questions emerged from our analysis of the data documenting our experience. Next, we constructed accounts that responded to the questions and articulated our experience. When completed we shared our accounts with each other and identified shared elements. A weakness of the chapter and a threat to trustworthiness is our lack of detail regarding the analytic process. While the accounts included unique and individual elements, we consciously chose to highlight and identify only those elements that emerged across all accounts. With our description of our methodology and attention to trustworthiness missing, we make it difficult for readers to take up our work as a guide for their own work. Although questions of trustworthiness emerge, we can claim our work as SSTEP research as exemplifying LaBoskey’s characteristics, attending to Bullough and Pinnegar’s (2001) criteria and adhering to our own (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 1998) requirements for S-STEP research.

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Rigorous Research Practice A fundamental requirement for researchers to demonstrate scholarly rigor and establish trustworthiness is the need to reveal competence as researcher/researcher-as-participant. Researchers must expose their abilities to consider threats to trustworthiness and attention to them, including relevant research design, data collected that provides evidence and through explanation of the analytic process that address questions that might arise. While general qualitative researchers may attend to this issue, in S-STEP studies, the subjective position of the researcher as the researched, vigilant attention to the research process is fundamental to establishing trustworthiness and should be visible in the text. Unfortunately, it is not very visible in our text. We identify our data sources and they appear to be sufficient to explore our questions and potentially sufficient to support the narratives we present. We wrote: In constructing these narratives, we return to a re-examination and analysis of earlier experiences I light of our current experience. We re-read our earlier papers, journal, letters and other accounts of our experience. Then we identified salient features of this process in terms of our current experience. (p. 38)

We do articulate a frame for our analytic process that led to three elements of our journey (questions and biography; memory, images and metaphors; and process). However, we were not clear enough about how we moved from our individual data to the questions into the construction of our narratives. We do not provide a clear account of our collaboration, interrogation, and negotiation with each other about the narrative accounts that we ultimately produced and which served as data for the final stage of our analysis. As people involved in the process, we remember the negotiations and interactions that forged the guiding questions along with the interactive feedback and critique around the narratives that were constructed and emerged as text in this chapter, but that dialogue is not evident in ways that would make it clear enough that other researchers could engage similarly. Instead, our text makes it appear as if one of us provided a set of questions and others answered them and claimed that we built our responses on the literature we reviewed. We asked broad questions: • What were our experiences? • What were our questions?

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• Where did we look for answers? • What did we learn? And described our analytic process as: Re-examining these questions guided our individual analyses and led to the construction of the narratives. Analysis of data and reflection on our actions and interaction has been ongoing, informing and shaping of each layer of data collection and analysis. (p. 38)

In fact each of us read all of our writings carefully. We talked to each other about the themes of our individual narratives. We returned to re-read personal journals, along with the e-mails and letters we exchanged. Then we negotiated again before writing individual narratives and forged a set of questions that guided our individual narratives about becoming teachersof-teachers. None of this is evident in the text. However, we do offer some description of our analytic process: Although not always clearly visible as such, we have been involved in cycles [similar to] action research (McNiff, 1988). As Woods (1986, p. 121) suggests, our analysis went through several stages: ‘1) speculative analysis; 2) classifying and categorizing; and 3) concept formation’. Our task in these stages was to interpret and make sense of the data; analyzing so that finding would be trustworthy. (Ely et al., 1991, p. 38)

While our voices are compelling, we think this is not sufficient for judgments of trustworthiness. Yet, we suggest here that the ways in which we structured our literature review, the introductory statements for each of the shared elements of our journey, the way we cut and juxtaposed the text and finally our discussion of meaning provided at the end of each section can be used to argue for the trustworthiness of our interpretation and as a demonstration of our rigor as scholars. We believe that in presenting an S-STEP study the researcher must also demonstrate attention to the potential for self-bias and imposition of meaning on data in the account of the analytic and interpretive processes. Since the self is both researcher/researched, attention to self-imposition of meaning without evidence must be addressed or questions about the interpretation and trustworthiness of the study emerge and are difficult to counteract. In the findings researchers need to assert the reasonableness of the interpretation based in the evidence to demonstrate themselves as researchers with integrity. S-STEP researchers must provide evidence that they have attended consistently to the subjective nature of the research and can be judged as having developed an ontologically accurate account. Our dialogue represented in what is said here as the plans for data collection,

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data analysis, and use of findings from the larger research arena does not provide clear statements about our moves from data to narrative, our analysis of the narratives to identify elements, or our decisions about narrative selection to communicate our collective story. This lack raises questions about the trustworthiness of our study. Moreover, since dialogue almost always involves the use of others there is no evidence in the chapter that this was done. While we may have talked privately about the analysis, we do not make that conversation explicit. Still, we can argue the centrality of dialogue it is evident in the quotes from the data, in the ways in which the introduction and conclusions addresses the elements, the juxtaposition of the stories, and our explanations of the research that informs and pushes us forward. These points argue for the trustworthiness of our account.

Explicit Evidence One of the ways in which qualitative researchers demonstrate the applicability, viability, and trustworthiness of their research occur when they articulate what they found and the relationship between their explanation and the explicit evidence they provide. Since qualitative researchers cannot claim generalizability in the same ways quantitative researchers can, applicability becomes important. If research is to inform the larger research conversation in teacher education, applicability of the understandings developed to settings beyond the practice of S-STEP researchers conducting the study becomes vital. The review of literature and the connections to other studies within the findings and conclusions sections of S-STEP studies can be a strategy for demonstrating applicability. We have already commented on the way in which our review of literature where we describe a study, identify what it accounts for and recognize the ways in which the study attempts to move beyond the current research provides a platform from which readers are positioned to see how what we say and do in the study would be applicable in their own settings. The juxtaposition of our narrative accounts is another way we strengthen judgments of applicability particularly if readers resonate with the details of the experiences shared or our analysis of individual situations. When readers find connections between their own experience, understanding, and ideas as they read a study, they are more likely to see ways in which the study can inform their own practice or their understanding of

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research. When the study connects to other research and readers are drawn into an alternative understanding, then the study and the findings gain prominence if readers grasp how the interpretation presented makes sense of the larger field of study. In our chapter we argue that our narrative accounts of becoming teachers-of-teachers have three shared elements that we labeled as questions and biography; memory, images, and metaphors; and process. We began the presentation of our narrative accounts with the element of questions and biography. We provided an introductory paragraph that defines the element. We then juxtaposed sections of our narratives of experience identified by our names. We ended our presentation of the element with a summary that brings together the definition and the evidence presented as quotes from our summary statements about the parts of the narratives presented under that element. The introductory and summarizing paragraphs under each element provide clear interpretation of the meaning of the elements allowing readers to make connections between their experience and ours. They also provided visible evidence of our interpretations that can be evaluated by readers to determine whether it is reasonable and appropriate. In our study, because we do not provide a clear explanation of the analytic processes, the presentation of data and interpretation become even more important for establishing trustworthiness. In this study, we inform readers that they can read the narratives independently by following a single author across the entire text or they can read the account as written as it moves back and forth across authors. One of the things that stabilizes what might have become an unstable, interpretive space are the introductions and conclusions. The introductions provide definitions of the shared elements found in particular segments of the narratives and anticipate questions others might have about the meaning of the element particularly as it could show up in narratives of experience. The conclusions stabilize the interpretations of the juxtaposed narratives since we weave together references to the definitions found in the introduction with textual evidence from the narratives. For example, in introducing the memories, images and metaphor element, we say: “This section refers to our figurative, imagistic, mental conceptions of ourselves, both in our roles as teacher educators and in our understandings of our experiences” (Arizona Group, 1995, p. 45). Here we argue that one element in our becoming teachers-of-teachers is the mental conceptions we hold and that those mental conceptions shape who we are and who we become as teacher educators. We find evidence of the power of figurative conceptions to shape our understandings of our experience in the narratives themselves. Indeed

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Stefinee’s accounts are for the most part a series of images: “a dream vision of community” (p. 46), “the image of the tap dancer” (p. 46), and, “the image of the three person problem” (where the teacher educator teaches the preservice teacher who teaches his/her student)” (p. 48). In the discussion of this image Stefinee says: With the emergence of this image, I saw myself most clearly as a teacher educator, I also found my voice and ways to respond to this image in my academic life. (p. 48)

In contrast, Mary Lynn presents the metaphor of a quilt, she says, …I can see myself sitting in a small desk chair with my quilt surrounding my feet and the chair …. I know each square of fabric represents an idea shared or a strategy suggested by a student or colleague. I am the person creating the quilt selecting the pattern and placing the squares …. I am creating a quilt that represents the story of my teaching life. (p. 47)

In this way our definitions guide readers to trace how the elements as we have defined them appear in the narratives. Details in the narratives provide evidence of the elements including insight into how the elements can be seen within our individual experience as well as that of readers’ experiences. In the conclusion section for each element, we build on the understandings we have articulated and the details of our experiences in ways that further support readers in interpreting this element as we do and then push knowledge forward. For example in the same segment we write: Our images of ourselves as teacher educators are a two-edged sword. They can provide a glimmer, a holistic yet fleeting idea of what it means to be a teacher educator at one moment in time. They sometimes seem nebulous, but because they capture succinctly … how we think we are, they may blind us to how we might be …. We bring with us recollections that limit, direct, and support our current learning … it is these images, memories, and metaphors that generate and regenerate the passion we feel for teaching and teacher education. (p. 48)

The way we structured our argument for, description of and evidence for is as a spiral of data collection, interpretation, data analysis, and interpretation that makes meaning clear and provides evidence that we are trustworthy interpreters of the data we collected. In S-STEP research, generally, and particularly, as we have done in this chapter, the presentation of our meaning-making reveals the turn to the self the place where S-STEP researchers make clear the meaning they are making and the understandings they develop as researchers and teacher educators based on the inquiry engaged in as supported by the data and their analysis. By articulating clearly the meaning being made and the

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evidence we have of that meaning-making, we open a space where we can reimagine who we are as teachers and teacher educators and how our practice might develop. When such work is done skillfully, it develops a foundation for trustworthiness, opens a space where others might find the meaning relevant and helpful in their own work and provides a precursor for answering the “so what?” question good research answers. As we turn back to the self, we solidify connections to other researchers and make contributions to the larger research conversation.

Authority of Experience Munby and Russell (1994) have articulated how we develop authority for speaking about practice based on our experience in practice. S-STEP research (and intimate scholarship as well) gains credibility to the extent that the authors of a study communicate this authority of experience through articulation of the understandings of practice and the ways in which the text demonstrates an insight gained through the interweaving of experience, theory, and practice. Our chapter reports negotiation of text, inquiry into what is meant by the text in relationship to research, critique of what was done and how we were doing it. In other words, it demonstrates our authority of experience. The chapter also provides evidence that dialogue was the basis for our meaning construction and thus the negotiations, critiques, and inquiry established for us authority to speak and the authority of experience as the basis for our thinking. Evidence of dialogue is found in this quote from Karen’s journal: It would not have been possible to come where I am in my journey without the interaction I have had with others students, colleagues, mentors, teachers in public schools, and my family. (p. 44)

Karen articulates a process of inquiry, examination, and exploration through interaction with others. Through this engagement and interaction around experience and ideas, knowledge grows and confidence and understanding shift. It is the discourse raised to a level of critique and interaction focused on inquiry the dialogue that leads to the development of understandings. It is the negotiation of meaning in these collaborative interactions that leads us to trust in the knowledge developed by intimate scholars generally and S-STEP researchers specifically. Through the process of dialogue, we develop and come to recognize our authority of experience and it is from this basis S-STEP researchers assert

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understandings. Thus, over and over again in rigorous intimate scholarship, evidence of dialogue as the basis for knowledge development emerges. On this basis trustworthiness of findings is established and the researcher gains confidence in what has been unearthed and develops authority for asserting it as the potential basis for action or understanding. Dialogue as a way of knowing begins in experience and our articulation and exploration of it. Experience requires interpretation for the development of insight and growth and, in turn, provides a way to question the insight proposed. Because of the lack of detail in our data analysis section, the evidence of dialogue as a basis for trustworthiness is less clear but it is present in our explanation of the juxtaposition of text. Also, in the way we invite readers to consider the text provided against the assertions made and in our own accounts of our growth in knowing and understanding. One place that seems particularly powerful is Peggy’s exploration of her own naivete´ in relationship to that of her current preservice teachers: While I was politically aware … I was not aware of the deep political meanings of my work for the Head Start program …. I was not aware of myself as an agent of the federal government intervening for better or worse, in the lives of children and families … this personal history … takes me back to the place where my students are today …. Most would like to go on thinking of teachers as good and innocent people and schools as benign institutions. (p. 43)

Peggy’s critique of her lack of knowing as a beginning teacher and her initial naivete´ about the political meaning of Head Start, linked to her current preservice teacher understandings reveal both critique and inquiry into her development and that of her students. Of importance to S-STEP researchers is the influence of practice and our memories in interrogating self-understandings as well as the influence of self in responding to practice accounts. This quote from Peggy demonstrates how memories and our experience shape our accounts of learning from practice, how questioning memory in dialogue with current practice shaped our accounts of learning about and from practice and provides clear evidence of our authority of experience. This becomes a basis for judging the trustworthiness of the assertions we make in our chapter. Story of Self The story of self is the representation of the self in relationship to the other within S-STEP research. It demonstrates where along the continuum of self in relationship to other the particular research study falls. It can emerge in

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various ways such as in the expression of the context of the study and in statements about the design and implementation of the study. It can be important for developing trustworthiness. When the study appears to be simply or only assertions about self or the articulation of memory accounts unsupported by interrogation and analysis with little attention to or evidence of the others involved in what is being studied or in the research practice described, then the findings of the study become less viable. In this chapter, when Peggy talks about how seeing her beginning teacher self with more loving eyes leads her to view in more compassionate ways the struggles she has with her own students, she presents a full account of self which resonates with readers and establishes her as an authentic interpreter of her experience. When Mary Lynn talks about her metaphor of the quilt and connects it with her experience in a way that orders and makes sense of the role of the self in orchestrating and yet responding to the experience of becoming a teacher-of-teachers, she not only presents herself but also lays out more clearly the way in which the self as teacher educator and the Other as preservice teachers create the landscape of preservice teacher education. Further, she articulates a complex physical representation of how she developed. The explication of the quilting metaphor engenders a sense of trust within readers that the author understands the account of self and other being articulated which builds the trustworthiness of the study. Similar examples can be found in Stefinee’s discussion of the three-person problem and her presentation of herself as incompetent tap dancer. The power of the story of self to develop a sense of resonance, integrity, and trustworthiness is evident when she articulates her journey as a teacher of teachers. These examples demonstrate how evidence of our story of self contributes to judgments of trustworthiness for this study.

Situate in Larger Literature Clearly in our chapter we situate our work within the larger literature of qualitative research, teacher education research, and the research on becoming a teacher-of-teachers. We ground our thinking within the current literature of the time and place and our previous work along the landscape to provide direction for readers. In fact, we could say that we extend our dialogue beyond our group to include our readers. By doing this we reinforce the power of dialogue in the coming-to-know process and strengthen our position as trustworthy researchers.

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Questions Raised by the Study When we examined this study, we wondered why we did not more clearly specify our individual processes in re-examining our earlier data and studies. For example, we know that we all re-read the set of letters we sent to each other during our second year. We re-read additional e-mails we had exchanged attending to those which articulated our challenges with teaching, with students, with colleagues, and which documented our growth. We reconsidered the AERA presentations both published and unpublished. We identified critical events in our growth and the development of critical understandings about what it means to be a teacher educator. We coded the events and themes in the letters, the e-mails, and the articles. We talked to each other about what we found. From that discussion, we each proposed a list of questions to guide the narratives we had agreed to construct focused on our being and becoming teachers-of-teachers and based on the data we had examined. We then discussed via e-mail and then by phone the questions identifying those we thought most captured themes and elements from our analysis. We followed this with a discussion about the ordering of the questions and another round of refining the questions. Then we constructed our individual narratives that we shared with other teacher educators and then with each other. We interrogated and then refined the accounts. Then we identified common elements in all of our stories. We made decisions about how we would cut and juxtapose the accounts. We critiqued, refined, and negotiated the arrangement of the data. Colleagues insisted that we provide interpretations or explanations of the elements arguing with us about our belief that the data could “speak for themselves.” We accepted their critique and constructed the introductory elements. In this process we realized we needed concluding remarks for each segment that wove together both the introduction and the textual accounts. Yet, none of this process of analysis and negotiation is evident in the text itself. Clearly examining our chapter in relationship to the Framework for Analysis reveals inadequacy in the way the chapter demonstrated trustworthiness. As we examined our chapter using the framework, it also became clear to us the ways in which our handling of the literature review and how we articulated our purpose were of central importance in establishing our authority of experience and positioning the study to respond to the “so what?” question and thus build the trustworthiness of the study and our integrity as S-STEP researchers. Our juxtaposition of the narrative

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accounts moved them from individual to collective accounts increasing their applicability. The communication of the collective nature of the accounts and therefore their potential to inform others was strengthened by the introductions and conclusions presented for each element. We wonder however if using a more traditional format with more explication and definition of the elements would have made our assertions for understanding and action clearer or more powerful. Our analysis leads us to conclude that the way in which we presented our findings provided evidence for the turn to the self. These aspects of the chapter also more clearly positioned the study between self and Other, between biography and history, and between experience and research as articulated by Bullough and Pinnegar (2001). These things potentially demonstrated our trustworthiness. The findings section is clearly centered in ontology, a claim we consistently make about the basis and value of S-STEP work and represents as well our ontological stance. In this way, we feel it establishes the things we say about being and becoming a teacher educator as potential knowledge that could enter the conversation of research on teaching and teacher education. We wonder, however, if this is as clear to others as it is to us. While the story of self both individual and collective seems clearly evident, we wonder if we have been as clear about the Other(s) in the story, our students past and present and the contexts in which we teach. We also believe we see clear evidence of dialogue and the role it plays in establishing a study as trustworthy, but we wonder here as well if others can see this as clearly as we do.

CONCLUSION An important understanding that emerged for us as we took up the use of the Framework for Analysis for examining S-STEP work more carefully is how the turn to self (the explication of what understanding of practice emerged to guide the researcher in studies of his or her own practice), the authority of experience (the way in which the study reveals the author as competent in developing and collecting data about practice, analyzing that data, and developing assertions for action and understanding that are truthful, useful, and believable) and the address of the “so what?” question (developing and articulating understandings that contribute to the larger discussion of research on teaching and teacher education) are hallmarks of quality intimate scholarship, including S-STEP research.

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We see attention to the turn to self is where researchers reveal the meaning of a study. Establishing the authority of experience within a study builds the strength of its integrity. When S-STEP researchers attend carefully to providing an answer to the “so what?” question they demonstrate the value of the work and its potential contribution to the larger research conversation. Through our use of the Framework for Analysis to interrogate our Arizona Group work (1995), we demonstrate four understandings about trustworthiness. First, S-STEP research establishes itself as trustworthy when it attends to Pinnegar and Hamilton’s (2009) criteria. In attending to the criteria, evidence of dialogue as a process of coming-to-know appears in the text and establishes the authority of experience present in the study. Second, through carefully connecting the study to the larger research conversation that informs it and the practice that contextualizes it, authors demonstrate their rigor. This framing provides clear evidence of researchers’ understandings of research and practice contexts. Third, authors can attend to answering the “so what?” question by being clear about their purpose, how they met it, and how that contributes to the larger research conversation. Finally, quality S-STEP research turns back on itself by developing understanding of practice that then demonstrates the usefulness of the work to the self, engaged in the practice, as well as to scholars of teacher education. Any methodology defined as intimate scholarship would have a similar focus. Attention to the ways in which researchers demonstrate trustworthiness has the potential to clarify standards of quality for those who practice intimate scholarship. In doing so, it can guide the work of such scholars. A NOTE ABOUT VULNERABILITY One important aspect of our work that has not been addressed directly is the level of vulnerability brought to S-STEP and other intimate scholarship methodologies. The willingness to risk exposure and set one’s self up as a model of success/failure represents a critical aspect of this work And one that is not often addressed.

Questions What is the purpose that you identify for your study?

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The statement of purpose begins by articulating In this chapter we present and analyze accounts the things we do not expect this chapter to of how we learned about teaching teachers. Our provide. In raising and articulating arenas that purpose is not to examine the meaning of being a we might explore, we demonstrate our teacher of teachers or to provide strategies for understanding of the larger research training teachers of teachers. We are not trying to conversation or potential research create a recipe for socialization or to illuminate conversation about becoming teacher the underlying pattern of learning to teach educators. Purpose has this function since it teachers. Instead we present a multi-vocal delineates what a particular study is going to account of the individual process we went explore. In its formulation it provides evidence through in becoming a teacher-of-teachers. that the researcher knows the research conversation surrounding the focal point of this research. The intelligent scholar would immediately be aware of whether this purpose would move scholarship forward, whether the orientation and study could contribute to the conversation or whether the propose study seemed obscure, trite or redundant. Issues also arise when people provide multiple nonequivalent forms of their purpose statement at several points in the text of the article since this communicates lack of focus and or attention to detail. We assert that in this account we will focus on our individual accounts. Implicit in our final statement of purpose is that we are exploring our individual accounts of this process but because we are producing a collection of

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individual accounts there is the potential for these accounts to contribute to a broader understanding of research on learning to be a teacher educator research. The assertions about what we are not attending to communicate our understanding about the various aspects of research on “learning to teach” since the potential avenues the study could explore parallel the various lines of research on teaching and learning to teach that were underway at the time this study was produced. We do not reference that work here, but the very way the sentences are phrased suggests that we could and communicates to the teacher education community that we know that literature and could provide these references if we were undertaking that research. In addition by providing this clear purpose, we set ourselves up to be accountable to meet this purpose across the rest of the study. In some ways our setting of purpose in this account is the first step in this article in establishing our authority of experience both the delineation of the problem and the quotes that begin this account support this development.

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Definition of What definition of S- p. 35: We believe this analysis of our experience in We do not explicitly name what we are doing as self-study. However, in unpacking the review S-STEP STEP do you use in becoming teachers-of-teachers offers a unique of research that informed this study we the work you perspective. Current research on the new consistently acknowledge the findings of the professor (e.g., Boice, 1991, 1992) focuses on undertake? research but interrogate it in terms of our own how outstanding, effective, fast-start new experience as academics. In this way, because professor shape their work and organize their we have not only identified significant and time. Our study differs from this work because important research that informs the analysis we are documenting and interpreting our own we will undertake and situates the question in experience as new professors. the larger arena of research on beginning p. 36: Our experiences in academia … her professors, we build a strong foundation for students understand and resolve this conflict in considering the research on beginning their own education professors particularly those who are p. 38: Analysis of data and reflection on our beginning as teacher educators as providing actions and interactions has been ongoing, important insights for the field of teacher informing and shaping each layer of data education research. We also assert then our collection and analysis. Although not always own “self” understandings in relationship to clearly visible as such, we have been involved the larger research conversations in teacher in cycles of action research (McNiff, 1988). education and higher education concerning p. 39 52: The findings section presents each of academics but also interweaving what research our narratives that could be read as exemplars. on teaching might contribute since our own P. 45: Conclusion to questions and biography orientation is that of becoming teachers-of“the vow of a ten year old” “sobbing on the teachers. At this point in the article, we are last day of class” clearly following many of the aspects of LaBoskey’s five characteristics. It is selfinitiated and self-focused, but the ways in which we frame the review of literature provides evidence for answering both the authority of experience and the “so what?” question of good research. We position ourselves this way as we lay down the research and argue both for the contribution our stories

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will make to the strands of research we cite; furthermore, the way we position our story asserts that we have informed experience from which we speak which gives us authority to speak. The work is aimed to an improvement but more of understanding of our situation, so that from the beginning the article sets a frame for the turn to the self. The study is interactive and uses qualitative strategies. While the narrations we lay against each other seem to assert that we have developed exemplar validation but the text of the methodology section only weakly supports that. The use of phrases from our text in the conclusion to the section on Biography and Questions “the vow of a ten-year old,” “sobbing on the last day of school” imply an exemplar validation that raises our understandings and aspects of our narratives as communally shared understandings. At this time, self-study of teacher education practices was barely resident on the horizon and there were few if any methodological texts from which to frame and found this kind of research. Thus, an important principle her is that we linked to research methodologies that did exist and anchored our study within that tradition in this case action research.

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Where is the self p. 35 36: See quotes in definition; we clearly situated in this study? contextualize our experience in the larger research conversation. p. 38: We present both individual and group analyses of the process by which we learned about being teacher educators. p. 37: New professors of teacher education must negotiate multiple layers of institutional politics and policies, both in the teaching of teachers and in the participation and negotiation necessary to continue within the academy. p. 38 and 39: Journals, letters , and other accounts p. 46: “As I replay the last day of my first year as a teacher, I gain empathy for what lies ahead for my students and how they feel in my classroom.” p. 50: “Becoming a teacher educator means looking back not in disdain at my beginning teacher self, but with more loving eyes.”

Thus, we framed this work as a collaborative investigation of our experience (self-study of practice but did not name it that overtly) However, we are clear about the elements. We are examining records of our practice as teacher educators in order to understand our development as teacher educators. [We need to here quote our 1998 definition of S-STEP and then identify the ways in which this study takes up and exemplifies that definition]. This situation of the self and our understanding of the research against the larger conversation mark us as informed and intelligent guides in exploring the questions we raise and meeting our larger purposes in the article. In addition within the telling of our stories of becoming teachers of teachers, we position ourselves within our institutions and as teacher educators. This becomes interesting because we position ourselves contextually in the larger research conversation of teacher education as well as within the local conversation of teacher education. Often those who come to self-study of teacher education practices research come with an autobiographical or an “I had this experience and therefore it is significant” orientation. Key elements in situating the self for establishing trustworthiness have to do with positioning the self in relationship to practice. There is a continuum from self to other, but for a selfstudy of practice to have credibility both

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aspects an empirical foundation from which knowledge of self-understanding can be developed and supported as well as an empirical foundation for the selfunderstanding to be questioned by actual data from practice must both be present. This study because we are constructing accounts of our learning to teach process focuses more on the self-end of the continuum, but across the study we often say that we see the preservice teachers differently as we remember our own journey in becoming teachers as teacher educators. In this study we have records of our experience journals, letter etc. These contain our thinking and our record of events and situations from our practice as new teacher educators. We also situate ourselves as individual teacher educators with individual and particular paths to becoming teacher educators as well as having shared features in our journey. As a strategy to contribute to larger understandings in the field, we suggest that providing a multivocaled account where the individual self is situated within a context both of the larger research conversation and local situation of our individual and collective experience creates a space where theory and practice merge.

Section on Outline of our analysis (p. 38 to 39.

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When we articulate our analysis process, it is very clear that we are individually and collectively the central actors. Our data comes from our individual journals, our collaborative and individual articles, our shared e-mails, and our student data from other earlier studies. We reviewed these independently, and then we came together and determined what questions we would use to interrogate our past experiences and create our narratives of becoming teachers-ofteachers. We then used these questions to guide the creation of our accounts. We then shared our accounts with each other and independently identified what we determined were the shared elements in our journey to become teacher educators. We do not state it in the article, but this was a collective process and while each of us had unique and individual elements in our accounts of our process of becoming teachers, we chose to include only those elements that were evident and appeared across all four accounts. Thus, we clearly engaged in a methodology of self-study of practice and while there are elements of the account missing that would allow others to engage in a similar kind of process what is provided demonstrates that we are engaged and that we exemplify both LaBoskey’s characteristics as well as adhere to our own (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 1998) account of what self-study of teacher education practice research is.

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Definition of When describing S-STEP your methodology, methodology how is it apparent that you are engaged in S-STEP? How do you describe your methodology?

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In self-study of teacher education practices “Context of practice, context of research” research, there are a number of requirements Lit review again that are vital to the research credibility. First Journals, letters, conversations (transcribed), there is the need to demonstrate the self as a narratives, other accounts (included published participant in the research, competent in his/ studies individual and collective) her stance as a researcher one who identifies Engaged in data collection about our process of and collects data relevant to the question and coming-to-know our path as teacher educators which allows the researcher to question both through development of questions that would his/her interpretation through data that could guide us in a dialogue in which we shared our provide oppositional accounts of both the self relevant experiences, provided evidence of and the other in the practice. The competent them, and interrogated each other about the researcher designs the data collection aspects accuracy of our interpretive accounts in of the study in such a way that when questions relationship to our actual experiences. arise about is there evidence that X happened We had the conversation about our experiences. or that X is indeed a theme and not an We returned to the conversation and identified imposition of the self on the research, the the themes in our accounts that our researcher has evidence collected within the conversation about them revealed. experience of the research that can be used to We identified the themes we sought examples answer such questions. While general of them in our narratives. qualitative researchers may attend to this issue Then, We cut our text to reflect the themes with memoing or other strategies, in S = STEP We reconsidered whether the text we identified for because of the subjective position of the the themes represented the theme we identified researcher as researched this is fundamental in it with. establishing trustworthiness and should be We developed an account that communicated visible in the text. Unfortunately, it is not very how our evidence supported and substantiated visible in our text. We identify our data our insistence on the themes. sources and they appear to be sufficient to explore the question we want to explore and

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potentially sufficient to assert the narratives we construct and our analysis represented by the three elements of our journey that we identify (questions and biography, memory and images, and process). However, we are not clear enough about our process in moving first from our individual data to the narratives we provided. In addition, we do not provide evidence of the ways in which we collaborated, interrogated, and negotiated with each other about the texts that we ultimately produced as our narrative accounts of our process in response to the questions that guided their construction. We also are not clear about the process by which we arrived at the questions we determined would guide these narratives. As people involved in that process, we remember the negotiations and interactions we had in forging those questions and the feedback and critique we provided to each other around the narratives that were constructed and emerged as text in this article, but none of that dialogue is evident in a way that other researchers could engage similarly. Our text makes it appear as if we one of us provided a set of questions and the others answered them and then we claimed that of course these were built on the data we had collected for other articles and the articles themselves. In fact each of us read our articles carefully. We talked to each other about what we thought the themes of our individual

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narratives were. We returned and re-read personal journals and we read the e-mails and letters we had exchanged. Then we talked again deciding to writing individual narratives and forging the set of questions that would guide our individual narratives about becoming teachers-of-teachers. None of this is evident in the text we constructed. While our voices are compelling, we think credibility for the findings emerges in the ways in which we structured our literature review and the introductory statements for each of the elements we identify in our journey, the way the text was cut and juxtaposed, and finally in the discussion of meaning provided at the end of each section. In addition, the researcher must also demonstrate attention to the potential for self-bias and imposition of meaning on data in the account of how data was analyzed and further questioning of results in any interpretive processes. Since the self is the researcher and researched this means that attention to questions of self-imposition of meaning without the potential for evidence that could be invoked to question interpretation the credibility and trustworthiness of the study can be raised and is difficult to counteract. The

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researcher is able to assert the reasonableness of the interpretation based in the evidence from the data or the data analytic process or the larger research conversation in order to demonstrate him/herself as a researcher with integrity who has attended consistently to the subjective quality of this research and attended to developing and ontologically accurate account. Dialogue represented in what is said here as the plan for data collection (the kinds of data available to substantiate interpretation), the plan and activity of data analysis, and the use of findings from the larger research arena both in terms of requirements for trustworthiness used in research generally and qualitative data specifically as well as research findings relevant to this work do provide some support for any claim we make to credibility and trustworthiness. Yet, we do not provide clear statements about exactly how we moved from data to narrative, how we analyzed the narratives to identify the three elements, and how we then made decisions about how to cut apart the narratives to communicate our collective story. In addition, dialogue almost always involves the use of others either within the practice studied or within the analysis of the data to raise difficult questions of action, interaction, analysis, and interpretation. While we may privately have talked to others about the analysis, we do not make that evident in this

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In what ways do you connect the data collected with the assertions made in your study? For example, if you said that you interviewed people, how do you display the data collected? Will the evidence you collect allow for the insights you claim?

Review of literature the way we explain studies and then what our work can contribute to understanding provides evidence of our data Findings section pg. 39 52: the introductory explanations of what the element is about and then the conclusion in which we return and interpret the findings for our readers overcomes the fragmentation that might have occurred had we just presented a title for the element and then the juxtaposed narrations. The juxtaposed narrations, which move from one author to another, allow the reader to judge whether our interpretation of the data is valid.

Commentary (from both authors) about Trustworthiness piece. The way in which the introduction and conclusions to the three elements, the juxtaposition of the stories, and our explanations of the research that informs us and how we will push forward are all representations in our article that dialogue was a central feature of it. These three things support the trustworthiness of this account. One of the ways in which qualitative researchers demonstrate the applicability, viability, credibility, and trustworthiness of their research is in the ways in which they articulate what they found and the relationship between that articulation and the data they provide. Since qualitative researchers cannot claim generalizability in the same ways quantitative researchers can then what we call here applicability but others might call resonance becomes important. For us applicability of the understandings developed to settings beyond the practice of the self-study of practice researchers conducting the study is vital if the research is to inform the larger researcher conversation in teacher education. The review of literature and the interweaving and interconnection to other studies within the findings and conclusions sections of S-STEP studies is vital in this regard. We have commented on the way in which our review of

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Explicit Evidence

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literature where we describe a study, identify what it does account for and then identify the ways in which this study attempts to move beyond that provides a platform from which the reader is positioned to either resonate with the work or to see how what we are saying and doing in the study would be applicable. The juxtaposed narrative accounts provide strength to judgments of applicability when or if the reader resonates with the details of the experiences shared or our analysis of our individual situations. The introductory and summarizing paragraphs beginning and ending each element provide clear interpretation of the meaning of the elements and hopefully support the reader in linking them to their own experience. These are the ways in which this article attempts to demonstrate the applicability of the findings to the lives and experiences of the reader. When a reader finds connection between their own experience and understanding and the ideas asserted in the report of a study, they are more likely to see the ways in which the study can inform their own practice or their understanding of research in an area. When the study connects to other research and the reader is drawn into an alternative understanding, the study and the counter-intuitive findings gain prominence if the reader grasps how this counter-intuitive finding makes sense of the larger field. In this study, because we have not provided a clear explanation of how we came to the

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findings we assert, then the way in which we present the data and our interpretation of it becomes even more important. The majority of our findings section are juxtaposed quotations from our narratives. We inform readers that they can read the narratives independently by following a single author across the entire text or we can read the account as written wherein it moves back and forth across. One of the things that stabilizes what might have become an unstable and un-interpretive space are the introductions to each section. In these introductions we provide definitions of what the elements are. In constructing the introductions, we attempted to anticipate questions others may have had about the meaning of the element and how it might show up in narrative accounts. In the constructing the conclusions, we attempted to return to the accounts provided and weave in textual evidence with the initial definitions we provided. In introducing the memories, images and metaphor element, we say “This section refers to our figurative, imagistic, mental conceptions of ourselves, both in our roles as teacher educators and in our understandings of our experiences.” Here we argue that one element in our becoming teachers of teachers is the mental conceptions we hold and that those

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mental conceptions shape who we are and who we become as teacher educators. In the juxtaposed section of the narrative, Stefinee’s accounts which are for the most part a series of images: “a dream vision of community” (p. 46), “the image of the tap dancer” (p. 46), and “the image of the three person problem” (where the teacher educator teaches the preservice teacher who teaches his/ her student) (p. 48). In the discussion of this image Stefinee says “With the emergence of this image, I saw myself most clearly as a teacher educator, I also found my voice and ways to respond to this image in my academic life” (p. 48). Mary Lynn in contrast presents the metaphor of the quilt, she says “…I can see myself sitting in a small desk chair with my quilt surrounding my feet and the chair … I know each square of fabric represents an idea shared or a strategy suggested by a student or colleague. I am the person creating the quilt selecting the pattern and placing the squares …. I am creating a quilt that represents the story of my teaching life” (p. 47). In the extracts from our data we name and explain our conceptions and then articulate how these conceptions relate to our understandings and actions as teacher educators echoing the explanation in the introduction. Then in the concluding section we build on the understandings we have articulated and the details of our experiences in ways that first

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help the reader interpret this element as we do and then push knowledge forward: “Our images of ourselves as teacher educators are a two-edged sword. They can provide a glimmer, a holistic yet fleeting idea of what it means to be a teacher educator at one moment in time. They sometimes seem nebulous, but because they capture succinctly … how we think we are, they may blind us to how we might be …. We bring with us recollections that limit, direct, and support our current learning … it is these images, memories, and metaphors that generate and regenerate the passion we feel for teaching and teacher education” (p. 48). What we argue here is that in our article it is the combination of interpretation, data, and interpretation that make meaning clear and provide evidence that we are credible and trustworthy interpreters of the data we collected. In self-study of practice research it is in the meaning-making that we often reveal the “turn to the self” for it is here that we make clear the meaning we are making of the data we collected and the experience we had for ourselves. In articulating clearly the meaning we are making and the evidence we have of that meaning making, we open a space where we can reimagine who we are as teachers and

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teacher educators and how our practice might develop. When such work is done skillfully, it also develops a foundation for trustworthiness, opens a space where others might find the meaning relevant and helpful in their own work and thus provide a precursor for our answering of the “so what?” question good research answers. It provides evidence for whatever we assert as we turn back to the self, solidify connection to other researchers and make contributions to the larger research conversation. Implicit in this report of this study there is The beginning quote on page 35 Authority of How do you situate continual evidence of negotiation of text, experience the authority of your The intermixing of the personal voice in the inquiry into what was meant, critique of what literature review where we identify what the own experience in the we were doing and how we were doing it. All research says and how what we are doing study? How do you of this provides evidence that dialogue was the contributes we sound confident and situate yourself in the basis for our construction of meaning and that knowledgeable. study so that the the negotiations, critiques, and inquiry The exploration of the complications of education readers (when you established for us authority to speak and the teachers on page 37. are ready to present authority of experience as the basis for our Quote on page 40 your work) will thinking. Evidence of dialogue is found in this accept your work as quote from Karen’s journal: trustworthy? It would not have been possible to come where I am in my journey without the interaction I have had with others students, colleagues, mentors, teachers in public schools, and my family. (p. 44) Karen articulates a process of inquiry, examination, and exploration through interaction with others. Through this engagement and interaction around experience and ideas knowledge grows and confidence

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and understanding shift. It is the discourse and interaction the dialogue the uncover understandings. It is the negotiation of meaning in these collaborative interactions that leads us to trust in the knowledge we have developed. This leads us to both develop and recognize our own “authority of experience” and from this basis we assert understandings. Thus, over and over again in rigorous selfstudies, evidence of dialogue as the basis for knowledge development emerges. On this basis trustworthiness of findings is established and the researcher gains confidence in what has been unearthed and develops authority for asserting it as a basis for action or understanding. Because of the lack of detail in our data analysis section, the evidence of dialogue as a basis for trustworthiness is less clear and evident but it is present in our explanation of the juxtaposition of text, in the way we invite readers to consider the text provided against the assertions made and in our own accounts of our growth in knowing and understanding. One place that seems particularly powerful is Peggy’s exploration of her own naivete´ in relationship to that of her current preservice teachers:

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“While I was politically aware … I was not aware of the deep political meanings of my work for the Head Start program … I was not aware of myself as an agent of the federal government intervening for better or worse, in the lives of children and families … this personal history … takes me back to the place where my students are today … Most would like to go on thinking of teachers as good and innocent people and schools as benign institutions” (p. 43). Peggy’s critique of her lack of knowing as a beginning teacher and her initial naivete´ about the political meaning of Head Start, linked to her current preservice teacher’s understandings reveal both critique and inquiry into her development and that of her students. Note as well the influence of practice and our memories of it to interrogate self-understandings and the influence of self in responding to practice accounts to shape them to reflect underlying processes of practice. Both dialogue and our accounts of learning about and from practice provide clear evidence of our authority of experience as a basis for the assertions we make in this article. Dialogue as a way of knowing begins in experience and our articulation and exploration of it. Experience requires interpretation for the development of insight and growth and experience then

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The study conducted by four individuals still provides evidence of the self in the study. The Lit review again provides an initial basis. The return to our exploration of our earlier work. The findings section that provides our interpreted and juxtaposed accounts of our development in becoming teachers-of-teachers.

Commentary (from both authors) about Trustworthiness provides a way to question the insight proposed. When Peggy talks about how seeing her beginning teacher self with more loving eyes leads her to view in more compassionate ways the struggles she has with her own students, she presents a full account of self which resonates with the reader and establishes her as an authentic interpreter of her experience. When Mary Lynn talks about her metaphor of the quilt connecting it with her experience in a way that orders and makes sense of the role of the self in orchestrating and yet responding to the experience of becoming a teacher-of-teachers, she not only presents herself, but lays out more clearly the way in which the self as teacher educator and the other as preservice teachers create the landscape of preservice teacher education. Further, she articulates a complex physical representation of how she developed. The explication of the quilting metaphor engenders a sense of trust within the reader that the author understands the account of self and other being articulated which builds the trustworthiness of the study. Similar examples can be found in Stefinee’s discussion of the threeperson problem and her presentation of herself as incompetent tap dance. The power of the story of self to develop a sense of resonance, credibility,

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Story of self In what ways is the self portrayed in the study? Where is the self in relation to others? How is the self-evident?

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Questions raised in/by study

In this category you Our outline of analysis on page 38 Our introduction to the findings page 39 ask yourself questions that arise as you review your own work and/or engage in your study.

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Within what research See other sections for reference literatures do you situate your work? How do you bring depth to your understandings of your field of focus?

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and trustworthiness is evident when she articulates her journey as a teacher of teachers. While the story of self is important for developing credibility when the story is only assertions about self or unchallenged memory accounts or contain little evidence of the others involved in practice or in research on practice then the account, the research strategies, and the findings of the study become less viable. Clearly in our article we situate our work within the larger literature of qualitative research, teacher education research and the research on becoming a teacher-of-teachers. We ground our thinking within the current literature of the time and place our previous work along the landscape to provide direction for readers. In fact, we could say that we extend our dialogue beyond our group to include readers. By doing this we reinforce the power of dialogue in the coming-toknow process and strengthen our positions as trustworthily researchers. When we return to our study, we wonder that we did not more clearly specify our individual processes in re-examining our earlier data and studies. For example, we all re-read the set of letters we sent to each other during our second year. We re-read additional e-mails we had exchanged attending to those which articulated our challenges with teaching, with students, with colleagues and which documented our growth. We reconsidered the AERA presentations both published and unpublished. We identified critical events in our growth and

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the development of critical understandings about what it means to be a teacher educator. We coded the events and themes in the letters, the e-mails, and the articles. We talked to each other about what we found and from that discussion. We each proposed a list of questions to guide the narratives we had agreed to construct focused on our being and becoming teachers-of-teachers. We then discussed via e-mail and then by phone the questions identifying those we thought most captured themes and elements from our analysis. We followed this with a discussion about the ordering of the questions and another round of refining the questions. Then we constructed our individual narratives that we shared with other teacher educators and then with each other. We interrogated and then refined the accounts. Then we identified common elements in all of our stories. We made decisions about how we would cut and juxtapose the accounts. We critiqued, refined, and negotiated the arrangement of the data. Colleagues insisted that we provided interpretations or explanations of the elements. Arguing with us about our belief that the data could “speak for itself.” We accepted their critique and constructed the introductory elements. In this process we realized we needed

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concluding remarks for each segment that wove together both the introduction and the textual accounts. None of this is evident in the text itself. There are key places in this framework that pointed out to us the inadequacy of our work. As we examined this article with the framework, it became clear to us the ways in which our handling of the literature review and the way in which we articulated our purpose were of central importance in establishing both our authority of experience and positioning the study to respond to the “so what?” question. In addition our juxtaposition of the narrative accounts moved them from being individual accounts to a collective one. The collective nature of the accounts was strengthened by the introductory and concluding elements provided for each of the three elements discussed. We wonder however if we had used a more traditional format with more explication and definition of the elements would have made our assertions for understanding and action clearer or more powerful. Our analysis leads us to conclude that the way in which we presented our findings provided evidence of the turn to the self and more clearly positioned the study between self and other, between biography and history, and between experience and research. The findings section is clearly centered in ontology a claim we consistently make about the basis and value of S-STEP work and

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represents as well our ontological stance. In this way, we feel it establishes the things we say about being and becoming a teacher educator as potential knowledge that could enter the conversation of research on teaching and teacher education. We wonder however, if this is as clear to others as it is to us. While the story of self both individual and collective is clearly evident, we wonder if we have been as clear about the other(s) in the story, our students past and present and the contexts in which we teach. We also believe that there is clear evidence of dialogue and the role it plays in establishing a study as trustworthy and creditable, but we wonder here as well if others can see this as clearly as we do. One of the important understandings that emerged for us as we took up the use of the Framework of Analysis for examining S-STEP work more carefully is how the turn to self (the explication of what understanding of practice emerged to guide the researcher in future studies of his or her own practice), the authority of experience (the way in which the study reveals the author as competent in developing and collecting data about practice, analyzing that data, and developing assertions

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for action and understanding that are truthful, useful, and believable) and answering the “so what?” question (developing and articulating understandings that contribute to the larger discussion of research on teaching and teacher education) are hallmarks of quality self-study of practice research. What was made evident to us is that attention to the turn to self is where researchers reveal the meaning of a study. Establishing the authority of experience within a study builds the strength of its credibility. When self-study of practice researchers attend carefully to providing an answer to the “so what?” question they demonstrate the value of the work and its potential contribution to the larger research conversation. Source: Adapted from Pinnegar and Hamilton (2009).

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SECTION OVERVIEW

INQUIRY

So, here we stand at that research portal, looking. Where are the mountains, the valleys, the mesas, the rivers, the deltas and how do those landforms affect collaboration in [intimate scholarship]? The absence and presence of these landforms help situate our work. We pause and think, who are we, these two “I”s? We are teacher educators attempting to make sense of the unsteady land with its rise-and-fall, heaving from the weight of modern science, straining with the pressure for certainty. (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2013, p. 5)

This quote is drawn from a study that made public what we understood about the relationship between collaboration and knowledge construction as teacher educators in teacher education. An examination of the quote reveals many of the dichotomies, tensions, dilemmas, and quandaries that lie under our notion that inquiring into our practice as teacher educators provides the best source for contributing to the research conversation in teacher education. Practice is always something taken as tangible and particular and is simultaneously vulnerable to situation and context as a result it is decidedly liable to unforeseen and unpredictable change making it and our understandings of it an ideal site for research on teaching and teacher education. These dichotomies, tensions, dilemmas, and quandaries represent the content we explore in this section. Our initial positioning of ourselves as standing at “that research portal, looking,” captures the friction between formal and informal explorations of our practice, our knowing of our practice, and our identity presenting us here as doing formal research. Our specification of “that” portal a specific one and our statement that we are “trying to make sense of the unsteady land,” suggests our understanding of the research we stand in as intimate scholars. As intimate scholars, we recognize that examination of our own particular situation and experience, positions us in a space that is inherently vulnerable. Not just because it is our own situation but also because such research is conducted on shifting terrain where the pathway toward developing knowledge is open, uncertain, and evolving. The quote also points to our recognition that in doing work from a perspective of intimate scholarship multiplies the vast array of unanswered questions that remain unexplored within research on teacher education. It also makes 247

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public our knowing that to extract meaning from the bubbling mass that is experience we must focus we must be “looking” at a particular place from our position in relationship to and often within that space. The questions about the landforms and their relationship to each and to who we are individually and together open space wherein we can direct our attention to a single formation within our landscapes as well as wonder about a cluster or constellation of formations and their relationship to each other. We argue that both “The absence and presence of these landforms” situate our work within what is not immediately obvious that is, under or behind the visible landscapes. What is implied then is the need in research to look at our implicit knowing of our experience and practice as teacher educators. Our understanding that teacher educator researchers to contribute to the knowledge base must consider our puzzles against the distant landscape while we look up close at the particular experiences, memories, and understandings that inform us as teacher educators. With Greene (1997) we recognize that seeing small (the horizon) and juxtaposing that seeing against our particular place, space, experience (seeing large) enable us to reimagine our own particular experience as well as the larger terrain of teacher education. From this vantage point we can open our imagination to new ways of being, seeing, and acting. The landscape our positioning within it, our questions about it reveals our stance as an ontological one. We are not attempting to take up questions that require foundational criteria for knowing (as our reference to “modern science” makes clear). Instead we are interested in what our explorations of what is in the terrain of our practice as teacher educators reveal about teaching, teacher education, and teacher educators. Our assertion of ourselves as individuals and a collective “I” hints at our understanding of the need to engage others to challenge and support our thinking, our naming of ourselves as the person looking or doing the research the owner of it. The assertion of the “I” positions us as subjective in our orientation and as researchers who engage in intimate scholarship. We recognize that we work from our perspective and that what we contribute emerges from our knowing, acting, and remembering our experience. We are willing to accept responsibility for our knowing in this terrain and our acting within it. This underlies again our ontological stance, our ethical and moral positioning as a researcher, our dependence on responsive others, and our understanding that dialogue represents the basis of our knowing. Our questions about the landforms indicate that we do not come naively to inquiry, that we understand we come to any question with experience

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and a perspective on it that directs our looking. Naming landforms and the ordering of our questions reveals our orientation and potential bias. We recognize the landforms, context, the milieu we can see what is and what is hidden or potentially missing. Our identity as teacher educators evolves in this space and was and is being shaped by it. We know that the new understanding of who we are and are becoming in relationship to the terrain of teacher education informs our scholarship and is a productive focus for the inquiries we pursue. Thus, our focus on “looking” also indicates our understanding of the need to collect evidence observations, representations, interpretations. Our quote also reveals our sense that the terrain of teacher education, our experience within it, our understanding of it is the basis for our inquiries, the basis of intimate scholarship, and is a rich resource for our inquiries into teaching and teacher education. Forming an identity as a teacher educator becoming a teacher educator is an ongoing process, an ongoing act of becoming. We learn new things, we take up new roles, we have new experiences. We think about our lives and ruminate on our goals and values as we enact our practice as a teacher educator. In this process our identity forms and reforms. Just as our experience as a teacher educator and the meanings we make from it form our identity, these experiences and our explorations into them develop our personal practical knowledge (Connelly & Clandinin, 1985). As As Fenstermacher (1986) articulates the commitments, beliefs, and embodied knowing emerge as action (as practical arguments) based in our practical knowledge. Our identity forms and is continually forming and reforming through our experience, action, and rumination on it within our practice as teacher educators. We can explore this learning through the use of intimate scholarship through formal exploration of our practice, experience, and reflection from our own knowing of it. Consideration and exploration of these and the meaning revealed in the actions we take and the understandings we form and the interpretations we make is a rich source for inquiry resulting in teacher knowledge of the practical (Schwab, 1970). Exploring our practical and tacit knowing from an ontological perspective and through the orientation of intimate scholarship can inform teacher education and teacher educators. As the quote above indicates, profitable inquiry that attends to the responsibilities and actions of teacher educators can add to the knowledge base in teacher education. Such works hold promise to uncover, explore, map, and reveal the terrain of teacher education. At this point then, we take up an exploration of inquiry (holding what we know in relationship to the understandings we have revealed about identity and intimate

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scholarship). We consider what inquiry is, how it can be harnessed to uncover what we know, and why and how it can be an important source of knowledge building for research in teacher education. We turn then to a consideration of designing inquiries through the use of intimate scholarship focused on teacher educators’ learning. We explore the processes involved in such inquiry. Finally, in doing this we provide guidance to those who have named themselves as teacher educators and have embraced an orientation of intimate scholarship in directing the studies they make focused on the terrain of teacher education that they seek to make sense of in relationship to their own experience with it and their knowing of it.

CHAPTER 12 KNOWING THROUGH INQUIRY INTO EXPERIENCE We have asserted that our learning in becoming a teacher educator when explored through the lens of intimate scholarship is a rich, useful, and important source for knowledge in this area. Such inquiries formalized through presentation and publication hold great promise for both informing and shaping research on teaching and teacher education. As teacher educators, we live our lives within this context, learning all we can about preservice, beginning, practicing, developing teachers and our colleagues both on campus and in other educational institutions that support and work toward the ongoing improvement of educational environments that hold out the best promise for supporting the well-being of children and youth. We begin our exploration of inquiry and its contribution to what we can learn and know about teaching and teacher education by examining knowing that occurs through inquiry into experience, practice, and our thinking about it as we continue in our path of becoming teacher educators. We begin this exploration focused on the claim made by most teachers that they taught themselves to teach and the similar claim made by teacher educators they taught themselves to be teacher educators. We explore how reflective practice or teacher research provides a way to engage in a systematic examination of teaching practice and its promise for adding to our understanding of teaching (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1990, 1992, 1993, 2009; Lyons, 2010; Rodgers, 2002). We explore the role of teacher educator and teacher education to educate teachers who can meet the obligations teacher educators hold for the positive growth and development of children and youth through education. We review the newness of teacher education as a field of research and the opportunity to take up intimate scholarship rather than more general qualitative or traditional quantitative research paradigms and thereby make significant contributions. We consider more carefully, the knowledge available for inquiry from the perspective of becoming teacher educators. 251

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THE CLAIM Most teachers hold a secret story (the story we live behind the cover stories we tell) (Olson & Craig, 2005) that they taught themselves to teach. While other teacher educators may dismiss this assertion, we believe teachers make this assertion because they did teach themselves to teach. Confronted with the dimensions of classroom life immediacy, simultaneity, multidimensionality, history, and publicness (Doyle, 1986) that are the norm of teaching, teachers enact curriculum drawing on their planning, their teacher preparation, and their experience. Their task not just as they begin teaching but across their life as teachers is to develop their personal, practical knowledge (Clandinin, Davies, Hogan, & Kennard, 1993) in such a way that it guides them to be able to enact responsive and productive teaching practices that will sustain their students. No matter how well-prepared teachers are by their individual preparation and their personal knowledge and past experience, it is in the moment with a particular group of children in a particular social milieu, when they enact teaching that they are teaching themselves to teach. (This happens not just as they begin their careers but across their careers since the terrain of their practice shifts and changes moment to moment, day to day, and year to year.) In this process they are informed by all they have experienced and learned as children and adolescents participating in classrooms and learning. They are also informed by their other life experiences, the courses they take, the content they learn, the experiences they have as they gain skill in developing talents and engaging in hobbies. Just as importantly, their becoming teachers are informed by the lessons they learn and courses they take at the university, particularly those they take in teacher education integrated with field experiences, mentoring, and supervision. Across time their personal practical knowledge for teaching will evolve and shift routines, patterns for action, personal knowledge, and practical knowledge (Clandinin, 1985; Clandinin et al., 1993), where they will be the primary actor. In the process of enacting curriculum in their classrooms, they will teach themselves to teach. For us, teaching one’s self to teach is the culmination and fruition of teacher education. In our own practice as teacher educators, we orchestrate our curriculum and try to design programs that will enable teachers to become better and better at teaching themselves to be teachers (Clandinin et al., 1993; Kroll & Black, 1993; LaBoskey, 2012; LaBoskey & Richert, 2002; Whelan, Huber, Rose, Davies, & Clandinin, 2001). The beginning teacher, the experienced teachers, the school context, as well as teacher education and teacher educator have obligations to and hold responsibility for the teacher who emerges (Hamilton, Pinnegar, & Guilfoyle, 1997). Teachers continue across their career to build their

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personal practical knowledge (Clandinin, 1985; Clandinin & Connelly, 1996) as they teach themselves to teach and as we work with them in that process (Friedus, Feldman, Sgouros, & Wiles-Kettenmann, 2005). Just as we would assert that we taught ourselves to be teachers, we would also argue that we taught ourselves to be teacher educators (Arizona Group, 1995). Beginning teachers and beginning teacher educators often feel overwhelmed, vulnerable, and uncertain (Pinnegar, 1995) because they do not have surety in their experiences or narrative frameworks (Arizona Group, 1996) that can provide confidence and sustain them in their practice. They are uncomfortable standing in this space of uncertainty yet their responsibilities and obligations demand that they act. As they plan, take action, and think through and respond to troubling situations, they put in place routines that ameliorate the unpredictability and as a result of experience recognize the trouble spots and gain confidence in their ability to navigate them. For example, the Arizona Group (1996) examine how they worked to “walk our talk” developing narrative frames that could guide their action. As we learn to be teachers and teacher educators (even as we continue in the act of becoming) we learn to be comfortable standing in uncertainty as we interact with people and take action within diverse contexts. Intimate scholarship can inform us concerning this process. Brubaker (2010) provides an interesting account of how he used research and experience to gain understanding of how he learned to negotiate with students about grades and assignments. LaBoskey (2012) examines how observing the practice of teachers she taught supported her in guiding her practice as a teacher educator, clarifying her understanding of how her action as a teacher educator was evident in the practices of her former students. Systematic observation of these experiences, our experiences in teaching ourselves to be teacher educators, and the experiences of the teachers we work with engaged in teaching themselves to become teachers provide rich sources for developing understandings that can guide teacher development, teaching, teacher educators, and teacher education.

THE PROMISE IN EXAMINING TEACHING PRACTICE AND EXPERIENCE The bustling space that is a classroom (including teacher, student, and content) within a school, within an administratively related collection of schools, within a society is a space of uncertainty a space of growth, change, learning, development. It is also a space for education through

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experience. The two criteria of experience that Dewey (1938/1997) argues are essential for education from experience to occur continuity and interaction support and sustain teacher educators learning to teach teachers. Practice as a teacher is an ideal space for learning to teach. For the same reasons, the spaces where one takes up the duties, obligations, and responsibilities of teacher education is an ideal space for learning to be a teacher educator. While there has been much research focused on the learning to teach process, the thinking of teachers, and teacher learning (CochranSmith & Zeichner, 2005; Craig, Meijer, & Broeckmans, 2013; Sikula, 1996), this research may report intimate scholarship but that orientation is seldom the preferred mode of scholarship. Examining such spaces from the perspective of the one experiencing it holds great promise for research on teaching as Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1990, 1992, 1993, 2009) and advocates of action research (McNiff, 2013a, 2013b for a more recent assertion) have long argued. Teacher preparation its, content and experience, form part of the knowledge base that new teachers draw on as they take up the task of being and becoming a teacher. Because the space of teaching practice is a learning space, one that will potentially move and shift as teachers take up the task of learning to teach, studying teaching practice is increasingly recommended as the most appropriate professional development for beginning teachers (e.g., Howard & Aleman, 2008) and even experienced teachers (Bullough & Smith, 2016). Based on this understanding, most programs educating teachers focus on teaching them to be reflective (e.g., Huber, Li, Murphy, Nelson, & Young, 2013). Edwards and Thomas (2010) argue that the messiness and unpredictability of teaching practice and the fact that teaching is fundamentally relational means that teachers do and will think about and problem solve about their concerns, their pedagogy, and their practice continually, “Reflection is already necessarily embedded within the practice; it does not need to be taught, encouraged or developed” (p. 407). They suggest: Development in teaching is not the elimination via reflective practice of inaccuracies in teachers’ “conceptual schemes.” Though teachers’ prior experiences certainly influence the problems it is possible for them to set, the point of their activity is not to verify or refute these prior expectations but to resolve the problem as they have framed it. (p. 409)

Teaching is an uncertain space and most of what is learned that will be helpful to teachers will be practical knowledge embodied and tacit rather than propositional and explicit knowledge found in books about teaching and learning. Propositional knowledge becomes practical as teachers use it

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in their practice. As teachers draw on their propositional knowledge in their action and experience as teachers it becomes connected to their past and current holistic, embodied, tacit knowledge. While reflective practice may or may not need to be taught, teachers’ studies of practice may lead to improvement and reify further teachers’ sense that they taught themselves to teach. Unfortunately, what teachers learn from and about their practice from systematic study of it seldom enters the research conversation. Indeed, what is learned by teachers from teaching and by teacher educators through teaching and enacting their other roles, obligations, and responsibilities will be made available to others as local knowledge (sometimes labeled as practical wisdom) shared in informal conversations around the acts of teaching and teacher education. Knowledge of practice resides in teacher educators’ understandings of and experiences with the assignments they give preservice teachers. Krieger and Porcelli (2010) report a study of their own work in supporting teachers in developing academic skills they need if they are to be strong teachers. They teach a unique group of teachers who were educated in drastically under-performing schools in poor inner-city neighborhood and who have deep desires to teach in the schools that educated them; yet provide a better education than the one they received. In their research, Krieger and Porcelli (2010) explore their responses and interaction with these teachers seeking to better understanding what supports these teachers in developing the skills they will need. Mansur and Friling (2013) explore their identity development as part of a teacher education collective through the lens of the experiences they had and the knowledge they uncovered in developing and enacting open learning experiences with their preservice teachers in Israel. Syllabus construction and evolution (Brubaker, 2011; Craig, 2010) is another potential exploration of the shifts and transformations we undergo as we develop as teacher educators. Teacher educators’ beliefs about teaching, teacher education, and the preparation of teachers are a fruitful avenue of exploration that can be conducted through journaling, interviews, analysis of course documents, etc. (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009). One such study was conducted by Lovin et al. (2012). In this study of the relationship between teacher educators’ beliefs about teaching mathematics and how such beliefs show up in their practice as teacher educators, they (Lovin et al., 2012) revealed that in their thinking as mathematics teacher educators their focus was most often on how to teach public schools students mathematics. Yet, while the study demonstrated their understanding of how teacher educators could teach mathematics, the researchers realized that their knowledge of teaching

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mathematics include little concerning teacher education for future teachers. In fact understandings of and beliefs about pedagogies to do this were almost completely absent from their thinking about teaching teachers. Study of the movement from teaching in public schools to being teacher educators provides rich insight into the process of becoming a teacher educator as well as deeper understandings of the collaborations we engage with (e.g., Arizona Group, 1996; Bullock & Ritter, 2011; Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2013a, 2013b). Inquiries into how enacting regular teaching practices as teachers within our roles as teacher educators informs and influences our university-based teacher education work (Rice & Pinnegar, 2010; Snow & Martin, 2014). Autobiographical or narrative studies that examine the ways in which our past life experiences inform our practice in relationship to our teaching and acting as teacher educators hold great potential for developing understanding of teaching and teacher education (Chan, Keyes, & Ross, 2012; Clandinin, 1995; Coia & Taylor, 2005, 2013). Teacher educators across the globe have great potential to contribute to our understanding of teacher education its practices and its participants. Indeed, potential studies focused on the practice, the experience, and the thinking of teacher educators is limitless, productive, and positioned to make significant contributions to our understandings not only of teacher educators but also all aspects of teacher education as an enterprise. Because we always exist in the space of BECOMING teacher educators rather than in a static state of arrival, we are constantly positioned to bring new understandings and develop new assertions for action and understanding concerning teaching and teacher education.

THE ROLE OF TEACHER EDUCATOR AND TEACHER EDUCATION Teacher educators play a central role in the education of new teachers. They are involved in professional development for teachers. They support teachers through engagement with projects in k-12 education. They engage with teachers providing education in graduate coursework. Teacher educators, as Goodlad (1994) and the Holmes Group (1986, 1994) argue concerning partnerships and professional development schools, have obligations and responsibility within the three spheres that influence teachers and teaching university, college of education, and public schools, and as a result they have intimate knowledge of the practices, thinking, policies, interactions, and

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negotiations in those spheres. Teacher educators are often involved with state offices of education in determining and delivering state mandates and policies for accreditation and assessment. Teacher education is the nexus and crucible where this kind of work is conducted and negotiated. Teacher educators always have a stake and maneuver to be at the heart of this work. Because of their positioning, their intimate knowledge and involvement with, and their own perspectives that bridge across all these arenas, teacher educators can also play a central role in developing research studies from the perspective of intimate scholarship that can provide insight into the practices, experiences, and knowledge of teacher education as an enterprise. From a position of intimate scholarship taken up from the perspective of a teacher educator positioned in the midst of teacher education, we, individually and collectively, can advance knowledge of teaching and teacher education. As teacher educators attuned and committed to the future education of public school students through rigorous preparation, education, and development of their teachers, we not only have a stake in developing research that can guide and shape practice; but we are also best positioned to provide that insight. As teacher educators engaged in intimate scholarship, an amazing range of investigations is open to us. We can contribute by carefully exploring the relationship of our past experiences as students on our practice as teachers and teacher educators. We can examine the bread and butter (every day) elements of our practice syllabi, assignments, interactions, routines, structures, influences on preservice teachers’ thinking and action. We can engage in studies of the policies, interactions, negotiations, and development that emerge in program development and implementation. We can examine from an insiders’ view processes of accreditation and assessment. We can explore the relationships with public schools and teacher education at the student, teacher, and institutional level. There are indeed already some research studies on many of these initiatives but little of this work is oriented from the basis of intimate scholarship and therefore is missing the perspective of those who have a central role and stake in the work. Because of our part as teacher educators engaged in intimate scholarship, we recognize that most of what is learned through our experience and practice will be available in the research on teacher education only to the extent that it is formally studied and documented. This kind of knowing of teachers, teacher development, teaching practice and teacher educators’ growth and practice and teacher education as an enterprise only enters the conversation on research on teacher education to the extent that those who engage in inquiring into their embodied and tacit knowledge are able to

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articulate, provide evidence of, and publicly and formally share what they know. Thus, careful study of experience through formal inquiry into practice as teachers and teacher educators has the greatest potential to contribute knowledge for teaching and teacher education.

TEACHER EDUCATION AS A FIELD OF RESEARCH FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF INTIMATE SCHOLARSHIP The study of teacher education is a fairly new enterprise. The first Handbook of research on teacher education (Houston, 1990) emerged as late as 1990 and what was reported focused not on the learning of teacher educators or teacher educators knowing and understanding of teaching or learning to teach. Instead this and subsequent handbooks (Cochran-Smith, Feiman-Nemser, McIntyre, & Demers, 2008; Sikula, 1996) are focused on knowledge of teachers and their knowing and development. The AERA study of teacher education (Cochran-Smith & Zeichner, 2005) also focused not on what is known about teacher educators, their development, and their knowing of teacher education but on what through the lens of more general quantitative and qualitative research orientations is known about teaching and teachers. Hamilton (1998) published the first collection of studies that looked at teacher education its practice, the growth, and learning of teacher educators, and their knowing of teacher education and teachers. In 2004, Loughran, Hamilton, LaBoskey, and Russell produced the first research handbook that took a similar orientation of looking at teacher education and teacher education practices from the perspective of intimate scholarship. Lyons (2010) produced a handbook focused on the development of reflection and the process of reflective inquiry within teacher education, again an intimate scholarship perspective. Teacher educators play a central role in the education and preparation of teachers regardless of whether the route to teaching they are involved in supporting occurs within an apprenticeship, through an alternative route program or through traditional teacher education. In all of these situations, the press, the busyness and the messiness of the work of teacher education means that teacher educator voices are usually absent from the discourse concerning research on teaching. Those teacher educators who do contribute to this knowledge base often do so, not through their own subjective knowing but by taking up the distant and distancing practices and epistemological lenses

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of more traditional approaches to inquiry. Indeed the highly touted work on teacher education (Cochran-Smith & Zeichner, 2005) is usually conducted not by the teacher educators standing on the frontlines of teacher education but by researchers sometimes housed in teacher education but frequently not overly involved in the day-to-day practice of it. Although this work provides a horizon for knowing about teacher education as an enterprise, what Greene (1999) calls a perspective of “seeing small,” it is as this work is brought against studies of the particular, contextually situated, practices, and experiences of teacher educators (what Greene labels “seeing large”) that as Greene explains, the imagination is released and we see anew and differently. In that space we are able to reimagine and respond in unique ways to the dilemmas of practice fundamental to teaching teachers.

THE KNOWLEDGE AVAILABLE FOR INQUIRY IN THE PROCESS OF BECOMING TEACHER EDUCATORS We have already argued earlier (and referenced examples of) the range and variety or potential studies possible for teacher educators engaged in intimate scholarship focused on their own experience, practice, and action. The power of this work resides in the unique perspective we each bring to this scholarship and our willingness to be vulnerable, orient ourselves to understanding what is, embrace the particular and explore what we know in a space of becoming, inconclusiveness, and uncertainty. Our willingness to reveal our mistakes as well as our celebrations of success and what we learn within and from each offer both new and deeper knowing concerning teacher education. In his description of a character playing a piece on the piano, Kundera (1980) argues that the second infinity is variation. He describes how each time the character played the piece on the piano, it was different. Kundera labeled this the second infinity. Each time we enact a practice or routine of teaching, it will never be the same but will vary. Our own physical capability for exact reproduction, the context, the others in the practice, the slight nuances of differences in our movement, our understanding, our explanations, and our interaction result in each instance being unique. As we experience this variation, it shapes and informs our meaning making and as Greene (1999) argues enables us to reimagine. As we read our own work in relationship to the research of others and the variability we

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experience in our practice, we can continually engage in wondering how the parameters, what we know, and what we experience might be different. Intimate scholarship in teacher education has from its inception always been played out in an international arena. A central tenet of this book is that teacher education is a global enterprise but one represented as Local Variation rather than Global Culture (see, the final section of this book for a more detailed examination of this distinction). This is important because it is the variability of the ways in which field experiences, student teaching, assignments, institutional structures, supervision, mentoring, and interaction of preservice and inservice teachers and teacher educators occur that broadens and deepens our knowing. Investigations into such spaces and actions once published enable teacher educator researchers to develop deeper, more helpful, and more interesting understandings of teacher education. Rigorous scholarship that provides rich description and clear explanations of the particular context, situations, actors, and actions in teacher education has a limitless basis for both studying and contributing to what we know and can know about teacher education. Further, this kind of knowing and research on it opens a continuous basis for reimagining, reshaping, and transforming our practices individually and teacher education as an enterprise within our own country, college, or setting.

CHAPTER 13 DESIGNING INQUIRY Inquiry into teacher education practice, experience and knowing oriented from a perspective of intimate scholarship occurs in a unique inquiry space. When inquiries are focused on practice, and experience, the inquirer is doing research with people rather than on people. The inquiries are as much about creation and improvement in the life of the scholar as they are about books and they never rely on control, objectivity, generalizability, or prediction making them fluid rather than static. In the study of practice attention must be paid to the relationships and learning it is oriented toward rather than distance such work has to take into account the closeness, the interaction, the emotion from a standpoint that is up close, dynamic, and personal. Sometimes such studies either uncover or attend carefully to living contradictions, situations in our practice when we thought and believed we were acting in one way only to discover we were acting in opposition. The intention is learning and the researcher must attend to meeting this intention rather than just studying it. Further, as the study emerges it may be that the emotional, functional, sociopolitical components become of more interest than the learning about learning and teaching. Thus, decisions about what data will be collected, what observations will be made, what will count as data, may shift in the midst of an inquiry. When oriented to experience, human relationships, interactions, interpretation, and the continuity and discontinuity must also be accounted for. Often such inquiries attempt to support the intimate scholar in uncovering relationships to past experiences, the potential that the drawing forward of memory and the reinterpretation of past experience may in the moment lead to insights that suddenly transform or reshape the inquiry and who, what, and how things might be observed can shift. In studies of experience undertaken within intimate scholarship, life intervenes and what we planned to study takes a completely different path or shape. Bullough and Pinnegar (2009) report a study in which Pinnegar, initially, planned to examine how university freshman who were education majors conceptualized learning as they entered the university. She became completely derailed when someone suggested she would know that her students knew that she loved them. As she became entranced yet distraught 261

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wondering about what that would mean about, for and within her teaching, she could no longer attend to the study she had planned. Bullough and Bauman’s (1997) work is another example. Bullough had studied Bauman as a first year teacher and when he returned to study her development eight years later, the study took a life turn since in its midst, Bauman decided to leave teaching. What had begun as a study of how Bauman’s experiences, professional development, changing teaching sites all contributed to her development also became a study of her decision to leave the profession and a re-exploration of Bullough’s decision to leave teaching and attend graduate school over two decades earlier. Sometimes studies of intimate scholarship are oriented toward thinking, how and what we think and understand about other aspects of our practice and the sociopolitical environment in which we teach. Records of our thinking are important in these studies, but as we engage in interviews of ourselves or others, artistic renditions of our thinking, interpretations of poetry we construct from our experience may suddenly become as important to our understanding as the annotations of texts and journaling that originally formed the data base for our inquiry. Data about our interpretation of our data may provide deeper insight into teacher education than the study we planned. The space of an inquiry conducted from the orientation of intimate scholarship is always a slippery, evolving one. The inquiries are not just about contributing knowing to books and past research but also about emotion, creation, relationship, and improvement (change and growth). Design in such a space must attend to our orientation toward ontology while also providing an evidentiary space to record our knowing (epistemology). Such studies occur in a space of fluidity where interpretation, understanding, action shift often in unpredictable ways. Part of the fluidity anticipated in the space will be the growth, interaction, and response of the people the participants and the inquirer (who can be the same persons). Considerations for designing in such a space take both forethought and unexpected adjustments and responses that allow the inquirer to account for both the developments and the emotional as well as intellectual response and the unexpected barriers or help that might emerge.

DESIGN FROM A PERSPECTIVE OF ONTOLOGY IN TENSION WITH EPISTEMOLOGY A fundamental characteristic of intimate scholarship is its orientation toward ontology rather than epistemology. In our discussion of this

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characteristic within the section on intimate scholarship, we argue that intimate scholars orient their discussion toward ontology and that the conception of ontology that orients them is a relational one (Slife, 2004). Relational ontology is informed by our ethical obligations within it (Appiah, 2006). We must honor in our inquiries our immediate obligations to the others with whom we interact and are related. Such obligations extend to the close relationships of family, friend, student, and colleague and include educators across the world particularly fellow teacher educators. We must also demonstrate in our interactions, in our inquiries, and in our academic reporting of them the value of not only human life in general but the value of particular human lives and the practices and beliefs that make them significant. What this means as we design studies oriented to ontology is that we need to make certain that the design of our studies specified data collection that allows us to provide coherent, veridical, and authentic accounts even as we attend to the potential for conflicting and multiple perspectives and understandings that an orientation to a relational ontology entails. As intimate scholars, we always recognize that our own perspective or account of the experience will always inform our work but is not necessarily definitive. Further, others in the study, from different contexts, with different experiences and backgrounds will potentially read our findings differently and potentially develop helpful but almost always additional yet divergent understandings. These understandings that emerge as our readers query and explore the understandings presented in an inquiry hold great promise for informing and strengthening their practices as teacher educators and their scholarship as inquirers. In addition, since the inquiries oriented from this perspective are not frivolous but serious and scholars plan to contribute substantively to the conversation in research on teaching and teacher education, there is a tension in the ontological orientation. In conducting, producing, and presenting intimate scholarship, researchers must attend to the veracity, authenticity, coherence, and resonance of their research accounts their studies need to demonstrate trustworthiness. The intimate scholar is therefore always concerned with collecting and providing systematic and truthful evidence of their seeing in support of their assertions for understanding and action or as a basis for their wonderings. For S-STEP research (one form of intimate scholarship), this means that researchers must respond to what we have labeled the Zeichner paradox (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2015). While lauding the intimate scholarship identified as S-STEP scholarship, Zeichner (2007) also provides a deep critique of it. He argues that to truly contribute such research must meet three

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challenges that are applicable to all inquiries conducted from a perspective of intimate scholarship: develop questions that have potential to inform experience and practice beyond our own, link questions to the wider research conversation concerning teaching and teacher education, and integrate and connect our own inquiries to research conducted from the perspective of intimate scholarship. Meeting these challenges, as well as the fundamental obligation to provide trustworthy scholarship requires careful attention to the epistemological within the orientation to the ontological. As we design research, we must therefore attend carefully to the data we collect, the analysis we utilize, and the interpretations we make. Our care in this work is oriented to providing a clear, cogent, and coherent account of what is from a relational ontology which can also be defended as trustworthy in terms of the knowing, meaning making, and understandings it offers. The disruption at the end of this section uses critique of one of our own studies to make clearer how scholars might productively attend to trustworthiness.

THE FLUID AND EVOLVING NATURE OF ACTION/ EXPERIENCE/LEARNING, INQUIRY AND KNOWING As we have argued across this book, the experiences, actions, situations, and thinking examined in research taken up within intimate scholarship are fluid and evolving. In addition the inquiries themselves exist in this kind of space. This is so because intimate scholars are engaged in human-centered explorations and their orientation is often toward developing deeper connections and improved structures and relationships. The role of the researcher and the researched is never mutually exclusive, the researcher is always a participant. All participants involved those both present and absent (as in autobiographical or memory inquiries) are conceptualized and responded to as active and not passive. Because of the relational nature of their inquiries, intimate scholars must attend to the social, interpersonal aspects of their projects. To capture the potential insights and understandings possible, scholars need to account for and explore multiple perspectives, alternative interpretations, and systematic re-imaginings of what is seen and understood. While concerned with understanding particular contexts, experiences, events, practices, or thinking, inquiries from this orientation are holistic and attentive to the every day. Even though the inquiries might be oriented to understanding

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an aspect of the practice, situation, context, or experience, the inquirer is ever cognizant of the wholeness of the experience. In this fluid space, where myriad things influence, interact, and occur, the inquirer attempts to collect numerous kinds of accounts, documents, interviews, memos, or journals as well as the views and responses of others both inside and beyond the study. In conducting, analyzing, and reporting the study the researcher intentionally takes advantage of the ongoing interplay between reflection and sense making and reflection and action that occurs as the inquiry proceeds from conception, through implementation, interpretation, reporting, and publication (or presentation).

CONSIDERATIONS FOR DESIGNING INQUIRIES BASED IN INTIMATE SCHOLARSHIP Powerful designs for an inquiry based in intimate scholarship satisfy both our needs and our desires as an inquirer and a participant in the inquiry. The design enables the inquirer to attend to historical, autobiographical, and potential emotional connections; aesthetic and sociopolitical qualities; and functional and interpersonal relationships as well as allows for processes of reflection and sense making and reflection and action in the inquiry and in the interpretation of it. Two orientations to design should inform the plan of any inquiry. However, usually one or the other takes precedence. While both require forethought, they also require spontaneity, reflexivity, and adaptation. The first orientation directs the researcher to construct a carefully orchestrated design for the study attending to situations, persons, events, and experiences; data collection strategies and sources; methodological lenses, and strategies; and approaches and techniques for ascertaining trustworthiness. The second is oriented toward embracing the study and the design of it in ways that allow for the free flowing nature of such inquiries and the serendipitous, unanticipated, disruptive, and harmonious opportunities for meaning making that emerge.

Systematic Inquiry Design As a researcher oriented to intimate scholarship determines to begin a project, whether a study of practice, narrative inquiry or research, autobiography or autoethnography, arts-based research, phenomenology or S-STEP

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research, their first step is to thoughtfully consider the elements of the study. Inquirers should consider the advice of Marshall and Rossman (2015) to develop a conceptual framework to guide the design, development, and implementation of the study. In this way, the intimate scholar from the beginning of the project considers areas of research both within education generally, teacher education specifically as well as research and theories from others of the social sciences that can support design, interpretation, and publication. In their consideration, they must attend to creating a fulsome design that provides a record of acting and seeing from the multiple and alternative perspectives that exist. From this base, they create a static design that will capture as holistic a look at the phenomenon, practice, experience, or thinking to be studied in order to attend to the fundamental dynamism with its potential for disruption, adjustment, and alteration. In other words, the inquirer carefully determines the static and systematic in order to examine and account for the dynamic. Being systematic and thoughtful in design enables the intimate scholar to get below the surface. Such care enables developing a clearer and more explicit account of what is and to deepen and enhance the meaning making and interpretation possible. Systematicity, forethought, and care in the design always enhance the potential for readers to judge the study as trustworthy. One way to consider design in such studies is to take a systems approach. Thinking of the design metaphorically as a system of spaces that must be carefully considered with attention to the characteristics and requirements of rigorous research will support the inquirer in constructing meaning and developing insights that can make significant contributions to teaching and teacher education. The inquirer begins by determining what is to be studied. Part of this might be the forming of the question, the puzzle, the topic that will guide the study. However, sometimes when the focus is on understanding a practice the question may be shaped and formed as the study emerges. But a focus for the study should be determined and an attempt to formulate what the inquirer wants to understand should be undertaken. Even if the question or puzzle is later altered, adjusted, or reoriented, beginning by determining focus guides and supports inquiries in designing a study. This determination might not immediately or even ever focus specifically on a phenomenon. More likely the focus will be on a practice, an experience, an event, a series of communication, or particular kinds of interaction. What is important is that the designer thinks about what situation, what context, what persons, what documents will be the focus of the study.

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The intimate scholar just as researchers from any other orientation seriously considers the sample, participants, and procedures. As the study is designed, the intimate scholar attends to both data sources and data collection. Practice almost always involves potential data that provides alternative or longitudinal perspective and multiple orientations that can easily be overlooked. Syllabi, assignments, notes from the class, reports of teacher student interactions, recordings of class sessions, or conversations about the course or practice engaged in with colleagues are some of the potentially overlooked sources (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009). Journals, memos, documents, descriptions of events, narratives of interactions, reflections on a course, e-mails, and student work are more typical. As the inquirer determines the focus of the study, careful thought should be given to the multiplicity of data sources and data types that could provide both confirming and disconfirming evidence and negative cases (Williams, 2011) and enable the researcher to get beneath the surface. Attention should be paid to collecting data from the potential range of people who might inform the work so that the researcher can expand on the simplistic as well as simplify in appropriate ways complex explanations of what is. Such scholars constantly consider and systematically collect and analyze data that has the ability to support but also undermine their explorations, understandings, and interpretation and their ability to communicate their insights and contribute to the research conversation. While these inquiries emerge from the basis of intimate scholarship, attention to the knowing and understanding of the inquirer himself or herself will be important. Since other methodologies will also frame the study they must be attended to as well. As the study is designed the thoughtful research determines in the design what methodology, strategies, or techniques will be used in framing the study and interpreting the data. Considerations concerning whether this is autobiography, studies of experience, narrative inquiries, autoethnography, case study, phenomenology, or S-STEP have implications for the entire study and not just for data collection or interpretation. Thus, as the inquirer develops a conceptual framework, and determines a focus for the study, the scholar also develops and is able to articulate the reasoning behind the use of particular methodology (in addition to the intimate scholarship orientation), techniques, and strategies. As part of the design the inquirer should develop an explanation for why these methodological choices will best allow for insight into the focus of the study (Marshall & Rossman, 2015). Finally, as the design is constructed the inquirer should systematically consider what will best enable the scholar to uncover what is and provide

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an account that can be judged trustworthy. In advance of the study, the intimate scholar considers the potential strategies and techniques to be used to develop an account that can and will be judged as trustworthy.

Design as Free Flowing While thoughtful considerations of design are important to this work, inquiries also develop, shift, or are transformed in the process of living both within an inquiry and within our lives. Design in intimate scholarship can occur when something in the study we are conducting shifts, the context is transformed, or the data we are collecting disrupts what we thought was significant. In these moments, as intimate scholars we must be continually prepared to adjust, collect additional data, expand our view or narrow it. In other words no matter how carefully we plan such inquiries, we must always be prepared to go with the flow and attend to new potential sites for meaning making and the development of insights or attention to developing trustworthiness that were not present when the study began. In addition, as intimate scholars we should also be prepared for serendipitous opportunities to take up studies in a moment of experience or practice. Life events, political mandates, new challenges to name a few may present a unique opportunity to take up an inquiry within our context and experience that hold deep potential to inform teacher education. Sometimes because restrictions or constraints in the contexts in which we practice may alter the terrain we may at that point decide to begin a study. Sometimes we engage in a series of e-mails, collect particular student assignments, read a set of documents, or recall life events that suddenly become significant. Collecting data or uncovering data that can inform us in developing understandings on the fly as it were is serious work. It is at these moments, when we determine to act and inquire, we must also be thoughtful and careful thinking through the opportunities for data collection that naturally occur. Design in intimate scholarship is necessarily free flowing because we may suddenly change our minds. Participants (including the inquirer) in research oriented from the perspective of intimate scholarship are never passive subjects—they are always active agents with potential to grow, develop or be resistant—to support or disrupt the work. Design must therefore provide space and anticipate the ability of people to change their way of being, doing, relating in the world. Inquirers must recognize that all involved are always in a state of becoming. We may intentionally decide in

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the midst of a study to do something in our practice that is in oppositions to what we originally planned, what we think might be best practice, or what we might typically and routinely do. Whether a study is in progress or we determine in the moment to explore, we need to think through what could provide the most fulsome representation of the experience or what is. Intimate scholarship actually promotes adaptation, evolutionary development, and continuous improvement. Design of such studies will involve rapid change and should both encourage and be flexible enough to explore what is and what happens in life, practice, or experience.

CONCLUSION The inquiry space of intimate scholarship is always messy, the knowing developed is partial, uncertain, and evolving. The orientation is always toward uncovering what is and therefore toward a relational ontology but to have credence this orientation to ontology must also attend to the demands of epistemology held by other research paradigms. Inquirers from this orientation welcome changes and new insights or understandings that emerge even late in the study, even during interpretation and perhaps even as part of the development of the research account. Inquirers should anticipate this fluidity and embrace flexibility. While intimate scholars engage in producing thoughtful and systematic designs, they are also prepared to adjust and sometimes take up in the moment something of interest. Since the studies are always positioned within personal knowing and embrace the holistic nature of whatever is studied, design must attend to multiple orientations, perspectives, and dimensions. The inquirer from a perspective of intimate scholarship attends as part of the design process to considerations of the aesthetic, functional, economic, personal, emotional, and sociopolitical dimensions of studies undertaken within intimate scholarship.

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CHAPTER 14 ATTENDING TO THE PROCESS OF INQUIRY IN INTIMATE SCHOLARSHIP Like other research, intimate scholarship is identifiable from other research because it exhibits the characteristics explored in the last section. However, as in every aspect of inquiries conducted from within intimate scholarship with its accompanying orientation to ontology and the particular and its basis in vulnerability and its characteristic of openness, the typical elements of such research while needing to hold to regular tenets that establish quality must also account for and attend to the fluidity, multiplicity, and uncertainty fundamental in inquiries conducted from this orientation. In the next section we will attend to how intimate scholars can and do attend to trustworthiness, coherence authenticity, and resonance in their research account by considering the contribution of the elements of the research report to the establishment and communication of the veracity of the research report. The elements to be considered and explored here include the development of a conceptual framework; the formulation of puzzles and questions; identifications of contexts, focus, participants, and procedures; data sources utilized and collection strategies; construction of interpretations, attention to providing evidence.

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK Marshall and Rossman (2015) provide a clear explanation of what constitutes a conceptual framework to guide and direct general qualitative research studies. The conceptual framework is a helpful research tool that brings together the theories and research that frames the research being conducted. The conceptual framework specifies how the theories and research lie in relationship to each other in terms of how the inquiry is proposing that they exist in relationship with each other. The framework orients 271

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fellow researchers to the study, informs them about the research and theory to which the question, puzzle, or topic of the research will potentially contribute, and guides the scholar in organizing and presenting the research that forms background and theoretical depth to the study. As readers read the introduction and/or literature review of the study, the conceptual framework should of course be obvious. It should be clear how the various strands of research are being linked to situate and inform the study being reported. As the review of literature and the arguments, and explanations that hold references in relationship to each other unfold, the scholar will have positioned the reader not only to accept the research question, puzzle, or approach to the topic but the reader should actually have anticipated it. The reader should be thinking that the purpose, question, or puzzle expressed by the inquirer is exactly the work that needs to be done. The intimate scholar productively utilizes this tool; however, because the study is oriented from the perspective of the scholar and utilizes the personal voice, the explanation of the conceptual framework should make clear the thinking and interpretation of the researcher. Within the conceptual framework, the intimate scholar is free to critique, question, reimagine the research and theoretical frames presented. The questioning and interpretation of the research that informs the study as much as the straight forward presentation of earlier research on which the study is being built should form a part of the presentation of the conceptual framework. In this way, the study from the beginning of the research report communicates the unique conceptualizing, interpretation, and imagining of the researcher. Also, in introducing, exploring, and explaining the conceptual framework and the research that informs and shapes the study, the intimate scholar has opportunity to respond to the Zeichner paradox articulated by Hamilton and Pinnegar (2015). The researcher can support the framing and significance of the research, frame the work within the extant research on teaching and teacher education forming the study, and link the work to other examples of related intimate scholarship. Mansur and Friling (2013) meet the demand both in the way in which they articulate how they designed the assignment and the shifts in their practice accounted for in their study. Lovin et al. (2012) attend to research and on mathematics teaching and learning in the conceptual framework of the article including studies of mathematics teaching conducted from the perspective of intimate scholarship. In addition, they attend in their methodology section to the ways in which the techniques and strategies used by other intimate scholarship formed and shaped the ways in which

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they collected and analyzed their data. Schuck and Russell (2005), since their study focuses on an exploration of the use of critical friends in intimate scholarship to support and interrogate interpretation within studies, build their conceptual frame, form their data collection and analysis, and explain their findings based in the intimate scholarship that explores this concept. All three studies are good examples of how researchers have attended to the challenges inherent in the Zeichner paradox articulated by Hamilton and Pinnegar (2015).

FORMULATION OF QUESTIONS Attention to the research literature on a particular topic is always helpful for those designing research studies, regardless of the paradigm. Intimate scholarship is focused on the practice, experience, contexts, lives of the scholar conducting the study. This creates unique challenges for those designing such inquiries. The researcher must negotiate the contrast between understandings built through utilization of a distanced perspective on the situations of teaching and the holistic orientation of questions taken up by the intimate scholar. They position themselves to “release the imagination” as explained by Greene (1999) and to invite their readers to do this as well. Regardless of the study, the inquiry is always personal, always relational, and always attends to the particular. Formulating questions so that researchers from other paradigms can see the potential contribution to the research conversation as a whole is always a challenge for intimate scholars. First while they are not conducting mixed-methods studies, they will use research across disciplines and paradigms that may not co-exist comfortably together. In this process, they will need to articulate both the details of the study and the insight from it that are of significance to the intimate scholars’ thinking concerning this study. In addition, they must honor their commitment to their own learning and development while articulating how their intimate perspective can and will inform and could potentially shape conversations focused on research on teaching and teacher education: They must provide explanations about the work that provide a satisfactory answer to the “So What?” question the contribution to the research literature as a whole and the contribution to their own personal learning and understanding (see the explanation in the next chapter on the “turn back to the self ”).

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SELECTION AND IDENTIFICATION OF CONTEXTS, PARTICIPANTS, AND PROCEDURES As discussed in the section on design, the specifics of the contexts of a study, the participants involved and the procedures employed provide interesting challenges to intimate scholars. Of course they attend to the concerns of bias raised and articulated by other general qualitative methodologist. However, within the orientation of intimate scholarship, the attention is not focused on ensuring objectivity or shoring up the distance and interpretative ability of the researcher, instead the focus here is on providing the reader of the study sufficient detail and insight so they can identify the relevance to their own thinking or practice. In their description, the researcher should account for the context, participants, and procedures clearly and complexly and thereby communicate openness and rigor. The contexts intimate scholars employ for their research are complex and multilayered and since they also live in them, it may be difficult to conceptualize all the ways they might contribute to and constrain the study. The researcher, given the space limitations of most studies, will not necessarily be able to provide extensive detailed descriptions of the context and participants though they should express these but the focus of the scholar should be on identifying the unique and typical features that would be most helpful and salient to researchers determining how the work could be utilized and illuminate their own thinking and practice. Often since some of the procedures being used are embedded in the life experience, memory, and practice of the intimate scholar and potentially supply both data and shape or constrict the study conducted, the intimate scholar needs to carefully consider what procedures for data collection might be hidden from view. The inquirer needs to be concerned about how embodied knowledge and past experience that might be implicit, routine, or non-conscious might be guiding the study or informing interpretation. Thus, the author should examine each of these elements (context, participants, procedures) thoughtfully and determine what must be written so that the reader’s understanding is supported. Doing this potentially enables the reader to add the experiences of the intimate scholar to their own experience and allow it to become part of the readers’ practical knowledge within their experience as teacher educators. Narrative inquirers begin their studies with careful consideration of the past experiences in their lives. Through the identification and

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articulation of annals and chronicles, they become mindful of the subtle and sometimes more obvious ways that their past experiences orient their current interest. This process allows them to both shape their research puzzle and be awake to the ways in which experience is constraining and informing their puzzle. In addition, narrative inquirers construct a narrative account (which may or may not officially become part of their research text) that fleshes out their experience in relationship to the puzzle they will take up (Clandinin, 2013; Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). Thus, when they take up an inquiry from an orientation toward intimate scholarship the regular strategies of narrative inquiry will guide their study (e.g., see Chan, Keyes, & Ross, 2012). In research text, the intimate scholar needs to provide significant detail (both unique and typical features) that allows the audience to make determinations not only about the researchers’ understandings of generalizability but also potential applicability. As stated earlier it should allow the reader to reimagine their own practice and determine how the findings could inform their practice or experience and actions in teaching and teacher education. Before communicating these details, the intimate scholar must unearth as well as attend to the contribution of these elements in shaping, constraining, forming, and transforming the study and the understandings developed within it.

COLLECTION AND SOURCES OF DATA Intimate scholarship takes up the study of experience, practice, situations, contexts from the perspective of the person who owns and enacts them. Decisions about data sources and strategies for collection of data are often tricky. When scholars investigate their own teaching practices or their experiences as teacher educators, they do so in the midst of the work. This means that the inquirer pays attention to how what occurs in the practice or the experience can in the enacting or experiencing of it generate in a natural and coherent way evidence that can be used to authentically represent and account for the particular under exploration. The dilemma for studying the practice of the teacher educator enacting the practice is articulated by Brophy and Pinnegar (2005) when they say: A dilemma arises anytime a teacher, in the moment of teaching, tries to determine what or how much the class understands. This is the question of whom to ask: The least

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knowledgeable student, the quickest intellect, the plodder, the average student, etc. This decision will determine to some extent what the teacher learns about the understanding or skill of the class, which in turn will guide the teacher’s next action. Of course, asking only one student will not provide a comprehensive view of the knowledge of the class as a whole. In a similar way, researchers’ and teacher educators’ decisions about whom to ask about [their practice and experience] will determine what they learn. (p. 1)

As this quote suggests, the space of the study of practice, experience, and contexts, like enacting teaching is fluid making it difficult to provide an appropriate trace and account of it. Intimate scholars must think carefully and creatively in order to be able to collect data and attend to data sources that will allow them to create authentic and complete accounts of the projects they undertake in the midst of their practice or the fluidity and press of their lives. Further, unlike other scholars sometimes recordings or note taking in the situation of the study can be viewed as demeaning or condescending, may be impossible, or may actually impede rather than support the flow of the action the researcher wishes to explore. Clandinin and Connelly (2000) discuss the strategies narrative inquires employ in the face of this challenge. They argue for field notes constructed in reflection, the collection of artifacts, the use of photographs, and products produced within the setting. They also recommend interviews to gain additional insights. Clandinin and Connelly (2000) provide clear examples and explanations concerning data sources and data collection within this methodology. In addition, Chan (2006), Clandinin (1995), and Craig (2010) in examples of intimate scholarship provide examples of how such work can be done. One of the things that is central in this work is that the data sources not only include data to track participants thinking or action and inform the study but the researcher also needs to determine how they will provide a trace of their own thinking and experience as they experience the practice and as they make sense of the data they collected. The use of journaling, emailing colleagues, letters to students, or recordings of the thinking and interactions involved in the interpretive process are all potential data sources and collection strategies (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009). The technique of memoing introduced in grounded theory work can also be helpful, since it is an excellent way for the intimate scholar to track the understandings developed and the interpretive decisions made during the data analysis process. Thus, in intimate scholarship while attention to data collection and data sources is part of the initial design of the study consideration concerning data may continue through data analysis as well.

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DATA ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION Hamilton and Pinnegar (2012, 2014) articulate the difficulty of the process of data analysis and interpretation in intimate scholarship. Whenever studies explore particular practices and experiences from the personal perspective of the inquirer, the response the inquirer may often have is, “it depends.” Almost immediately, often even within the space of the unfolding of the practice or experience or in examination of the context or situation, the intimate scholar can potentially imagine how things might be different. From the beginning of the study, the researcher may already be wondering about how differences in context or participants could have impacted the exploration or the experience. This human property of being able to imagine things differently, as we suggested in the section on intimate scholarship, contributes to the reality that interpretation never completely solidifies and never becomes closed in the ways that interpretation within other kinds of research does. If findings are represented artistically, the graphic, poem, reader’s theater utilized introduce potential alternative interpretations and multiple perspectives within the presentation of the findings that will never be under the complete control of the researcher. In addition, as Hamilton and Pinnegar (2014) demonstrate interpretations from an earlier study can be revisited and reimagined and unsettled even by those who made the initial interpretation. Using co-autoethnography, Coia and Taylor (2013) provide an insightful exploration of the evolution of their understanding of feminist pedagogy revisiting interpretations and understandings developed in earlier work in relationship to their current understanding, experience, and practice as teacher educators. Intimate scholarship engages the reader personally and invites him or her into interpretation. The intimate scholar should recognize that because of the orientation to scholarship embraced the reader is a co-participant in interpretation. The unsettled, partial, and inconclusive nature of findings presented by intimate scholarship is valuable because it invites other scholars to imagine the results differently, to engage in wonderings, and to think about their own experiences and situations. Juxtaposing explanations of evidence against the expression of the findings open space for pondering and reframing. Intimate scholars draw the audience into Bakhtin’s (1981) zone of maximum contact that place where past, present, and future are brought into proximity and interaction with each other. As we have argued continually in this work, interpretation within intimate scholarship always partially or completely exists in a zone of inconclusivity. This presents

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interesting and provocative challenges to the researcher trying to create authentic and helpful accounts of what is on the one hand with a recognition and valuing of the openness and inconclusiveness inherent in such work. We (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2014) in reporting a study of interpretation and re-interpretation of their data as beginning academics in relationship to their current experience argue: “Our point here is that establishing trustworthiness of interpretation at one point in time does not bind meaning of experience or pin it down. We have the potential to re-open interpretation and understanding of gendered experience within the academy” (p. 55). Intimate scholars attend to the challenge of the shifting nature of interpretation by attending carefully to the sources and collection of data and articulating clearly and coherently the details of these processes. In the study they report as completely and carefully as they can the analytic processes they engaged in how data were handled, how interpretation was arrived at, how they utilized interaction with others to support their process. Being clear about the data used and the process employed ironically both help anchor interpretation and simultaneously open it for further interpretation.

ATTENTION TO EVIDENCE One of the ways in which intimate scholars stabilize, make authentic, and enhance interpretation of their findings is by anchoring their interpretation with evidence that represents and supports the ideas they articulate and the understandings and assertions for action that they present. For intimate scholarship, even more than other forms of research, then these scholars must attend carefully to the evidence quotes, diagrams, artifacts they provide in support and explanation of the things they have come to understand within their studies. Brophy and Pinnegar (2005) discussing articulating and supporting findings and results in more general qualitative work suggest: Whatever the sources of their information and the [strategies] used to collect and analyze data, researchers need to make good decisions about how to represent their findings clearly to help others understand what their research reveals about teaching, teacher thinking, or teacher education. (Brophy & Pinnegar, 2005, p. 286)

Being wise and artful in the selection and presentation of the data representing the study is crucial in the explorations into and representations of

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intimate scholarship. One example of this discussed earlier is captured by Huber and Clandinin (2005) in their report of their study focused on their experience of a field trip participated in by a group of diverse children and their teachers and the docents at a museum. Through their use of image poetry and their wonderings about it, Huber and Clandinin provide both clear evidence of their understandings and immediately re-open it for reimagining the potential lives of children in schools. Another example of how the use of evidence and explanation of it can both anchor interpretation and yet allow it to remain open to additional scrutiny is evident in our explanation (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2014) of how two images from an initial study when revisited shifted: When we consider this fragment through the lens of positioning theory, we examine the juxtaposition of the tradition of Famous Men’s Hallway against the image of a different tradition of community than the one we inherited. In the first piece, the image of Famous Men’s Hallway is one of forced accountive positioning wherein the novice is brought under the scrutiny of those in power and forced to walk the gauntlet her worthiness judged by the men in the portraits. In this piece, K (in an act of performative self-positioning and through the account’s illocutionary force) repositions herself and her colleagues at the center of the universe with children coloring in her office as she attends to the responsibility of grading and as colleagues come by as friends with good wishes and kindness. Notice the imagistic change from linear path to a circle of community with family and academic obligations and responsibilities balanced and fulfilled in harmony. The ethical image of these two fragments and a reading that holds these two images in tension with each other shifts the landscape. It invites readers into a zone of maximal contact and offers promise for living out a balanced life and meeting competing obligations. (p. 58)

In this passage, we account for our original interpretation of Famous Men’s Hallway and K’s image of coloring in mom’s office and then we articulate how we re-opened this interpretation to later lived experience. In our exploration of the images and the processes we engaged in re-interpretation, re-experiencing, and re-imagining in relation to our current lives as academics. We also articulate how intimate scholars invite readers into interpretation and account for how we attend to and establish trustworthiness in these processes. Because intimate scholarship is undertaken from the perspective and orientation of the researcher conducting the study, the systematic collection and exploration of evidence as well as the wise selection of data to represent understandings and findings is crucial. Sometimes the evidence provided can be as helpful to audiences of the research as they further their own understandings and reimagine how they can act in their own practice and experience.

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CONCLUSION As they design and implement intimate scholarship, scholars engaging in this work must attend both to the specification for conducting such research based on recommendations to qualitative researchers generally (Miles & Huberman, 1994). However, intimate scholarship requires additional attention to each element of research design, implementation, presentation, and reporting. This chapter has articulated the challenges and potential responses intimate scholars might make as they develop a conceptual framework, form and articulate the research puzzle, identify contexts, participants, and procedures for their inquiries, determine data collection and sources, construct interpretation, and provide evidence for their findings.

CHAPTER 15 TRUSTWORTHINESS, COHERENCE, RIGOR Scholarly examinations of teacher education from the orientation of intimate scholarship began in the late 1980s and are a fairly recent innovation on the landscape of teacher education research. Indeed, this effort was central in the introduction of concern about understanding the thinking and development of teacher educators (Clandinin et al., 1993; Loughran, Hamilton, LaBoskey, & Russell, 2004). Since the researcher in this effort is the researched in experience, life, thinking, or practice, the work is always located and conducted in in-between spaces between biography and history, ontology and epistemology, self and other, and knowing and acting. The explorations (even autobiographical ones) are always developed, constructed, and reported from the perspective and understandings of the self developed from an evidentiary basis. Fundamentally, the studies explore the teacher education from the perspective of the teacher educator/teacher who is always becoming. Within the process of becoming a teacher educator, the inquirer explores experiences, contexts, practices, memory, and thinking to develop new understandings to guide the intimate scholar in improving the quality of teaching and teacher education individually and collectively. Because of the orientation to understanding from the perspective of the self and the community of teacher education, which is fundamental in these inquiries, intimate scholars have always been concerned that their studies be judged trustworthy, coherent, and rigorous scholarship (Hamilton, 1998; Northfield & Loughran, 1996). Inquiries framed in intimate scholarship but utilizing various methodologies and strategies are designed, developed, implemented, and reported within a shifting landscape as they attempt to study and understand and improve simultaneously their insights, interactions, and practices as teacher educators across international landscapes. This grounding and the integrity of the scholars (Bullough & Pinnegar, 2000, 2004) require special concern with and attention to quality and rigor. Of course, intimate scholars conducting inquiries attend to the suggestions and recommendations that more general qualitative research guides 281

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require (Marshall & Rossman, 2015; Miles & Huberman, 1994). However, inquiry in intimate scholarship because it always ends in reframing of practice and understanding (Northfield & Loughran, 1996) must, therefore, attend to establishing trustworthiness, rigor, and coherence not just in terms of analysis but also in every phase of an inquiry. Further, intimate scholars are committed to meeting their obligations to the unseen students that the teachers they educate will teach. This means that what they learn from their research will be evident in their practice and thinking as teacher educators (Arizona Group, 1997). In the previous chapter we identified the unique concerns faced by intimate scholars in conducting inquiries. In this chapter, we explore how intimate scholars can attend to each aspect of the development and presentation of their inquiry in order to develop trustworthiness of their studies and communicate themselves as rigorous scholars. This chapter will provide guidance to intimate scholars in designing, engaging in, and producing intimate scholarship. To explore and provide support in developing trustworthiness for inquiries based in intimate scholarship we will utilize as an organizing framework four guidelines that most reviewers typically use in evaluating proposals and papers for publication. We focus our analysis and suggestions in terms of concerns for those constructing intimate scholarship: positioning inquiry; design, implementation, and production; context (both practice and research); aims and objectives of the study, methodology, quality writing, specific characteristics for intimate scholarship. We begin by considering our positioning as intimate scholars, guides for work in intimate scholarship and then turn to context, aims and objectives of the study, strategies, and specific characteristics that communicate trustworthiness.

POSITIONING INTIMATE SCHOLARSHIP IN ISSUES OF QUALITY As teacher educators, whenever we choose to study some aspect of our practice, our experience, our lives from our own perspective and thereby determine to develop a deeper understanding of it, we are in essence engaging in intimate scholarship. From the perspective of this work teacher educators commit themselves to acting with integrity in their research and in their lives as teacher educators. However, whether or not the study (both as designed and as ultimately written and produced) is identified and published as intimate scholarship, Pinnegar and Hamilton (2009) argue that

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there are three traits of a research design that mark the work as emerging from the methodological genre of self-study specifically and intimate scholarship more generally. These are that its claims for trustworthiness are based in ontology rather than epistemology, that its pattern or process for coming to know is empirically grounded in dialogue rather than the scientific method, and that it is grounded in a study of personal practice, experience, life events, and institutional contexts in the space between self and others in the practice. One critical determinant of these features is the grounding of claims by the author in the authority given by the experience of the self-conducting the research (Munby & Russell, 1994). LaBoskey (2004) identified five characteristics that mark research as S-STEP research and are germane to the design and practice of intimate scholarship utilizing other methodologies such as action research, autoethnography, biography, phenomenology, narrative research, and narrative inquiry. LaBoskey (2004) asserts that this research is self-initiated and focused, interactive (or collaborative) and uses qualitative methodology and exemplar validation. Researchers engaged in inquiries from the orientation of intimate scholarship seeking to develop deeper understanding as well as stronger teaching practices, work to make certain that what they believe is evident in their practice. When we study our practice, we may simply argue that we seek to improve it. The claim to improve practice is a deceptively easy one. As Polanyi (1967) argues, the knowledge that guides our practice is tacit and embodied and holistic, and Clandinin (1985) makes similar claims concerning personal, practical knowledge. What this means is when we refine our understanding of our practice or thinking about it and we adjust our practice as a result, such refinements and adjustments can impact multiple aspects of our practice, our interaction with our students, and sometimes even require our advocating for changes in the teacher education program as a whole. Indeed many in the larger research community of educational research believe that research directed toward studying one’s own practice or experience from a perspective of self is easier than studying the practice and life experience of others. Since intimate scholars hold a dual commitment to bringing inquiries into their practice forward into the discourse of research on teaching more generally and to altering their own practices based on what they learn, then intimate scholars’ research as well as their teaching have a personal and private as well as a public commitment attached. Often those in the larger community of educational research, ridicule or make light of the work of intimate scholars who, in their research efforts, are focused so determinedly in uncovering their embodied and tacit knowledge from their personal perspective. They sometimes flippantly represent the

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research process of intimate scholars as sitting around and creating research articles by just writing down whatever we are thinking at the moment. Instead, like other research methodologies, researchers who take up the orientation of intimate scholarship commit fully to enacting the tenets of the research methodologies, strategies, and techniques they take up. They recognize as well their need to face straightforwardly the demands that embracing the subjective requires. Our experience has been that the integrity, attention to risks to trustworthiness in design, data collection, data analysis, and data representation are neither straightforward nor simple and in contrast with other work we have done lead us to seek harder for disconfirming evidence and alternative constructions of the data than we have in other work. Intimate scholars as they work through analysis and interpretation find themselves consistently and continually asking do I have clear evidence that this is what is going on or given the evidence that can I provide adequate and coherent support for the assertions or explanations that are emerging. Engaging in intimate scholarship demands vigilance and commitment to make certain that the evidence of your findings is sufficient and coherent and that you have rigorously engaged in using the recommendations for establishing trustworthiness.

GUIDES FOR DESIGN, IMPLEMENTATION, AND PRODUCTION FOR INTIMATE SCHOLARSHIP In the section on intimate scholarship and in the previous chapter, we have articulated concerns for design and attention to the elements of a study characteristic of intimate scholarship. We take these concerns up here to provide advice to the intimate scholar in terms of guidelines in attending to establishing trustworthiness. In beginning research projects from the basis of intimate scholarship, there are several sources one can go to for ideas and guidance. One of these is Pinnegar and Hamilton’s (2009) book, which develops the theoretical basis for self-study of practice research and guides researchers through both the technical and pragmatic aspects of this work. In addition, Pinnegar and Hamilton provide two important tools to guide the work of researchers. They label both tools as frameworks: one guides the planning of such inquiry and the other guides researchers in analyzing self-studies of practice research (both work done by one’s own and work done by others). Two books by Clandinin (Clandinin, 2013; Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) offer support to narrative inquirers.

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Various methodological texts that can be taken up to guide intimate scholarship from the perspective of those methodologies can also be helpful such as McNiff’s (2013a, 2013b) work on action research, Ellis’ (2004) on autoethnography, Onyx and Small’s (2001) on memory work, Roth’s (2005) on autobiography, and Van Manen’s (1990) phenomenology to mention a few. Further Trainor and Graue’s (2013) guide for reviewers of qualitative work of various kinds including many of the methodologies and techniques utilized by intimate scholars is also a helpful source of guidance. Depending on where the researcher is in the process (design, implementation, or analysis), other sources may also be helpful. If the researcher has already decided to use as data autobiographical records, memory of events, correspondence, or e-mail (interactive digital dual-voiced materials), then Bullough and Pinnegar’s (2001) article outlines guidelines for consideration. In addition, other articles written to guide researchers from various methodological perspectives can also be helpful (e.g., Ellis, Adams, & Bochner, 2011).

CONTEXT Because studies of intimate scholarship develop their understandings from within a particular space or focused on particular practices and experiences, then inquiries designed from this perspective exist in and are interpreted through contextually based lenses. While even quantitative as well as general qualitative studies argue that context matters it is fundamental and central for intimate scholars. The close attention to explanation and description of the context is an important feature of intimate scholarship. Describing and accounting for context (including relevant institutional constraints and details and features of the setting) is vital. Intimate scholars must attend to more than one source of context that frames, shapes, and constrains their studies. The first source of context they must reveal in their inquiries is the lens and perspective provided by the practice context or cultural milieu where the study is being designed and conducted. The second is the lens provided by the context of the research conversation in the field of teacher education or educational or social science research that informs and frames the study, the practices studied, or methodologies, strategies, and techniques utilized.

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Practice as Context As we argued earlier, fundamental to intimate scholarship is the fact that researchers using this methodology are centrally focused on what is happening in their practice, experiences, thinking, memory, or lives. They are seeking to understand themselves better and these potential foci for their study in relationship to each other. We argue that such work attends therefore more centrally to accuracy in accounting for ontology in order to articulate what is known by the author(s) who speak from the authority of their own experience (Munby & Russell, 1994) rather than on the politics of knowledge which is grounded in epistemology (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009 and the chapter on ontology in this text for a discussion of this distinction). It is this ontological grounding that makes context and the discussion of features of the practice context a crucial element in intimate scholarship. For example in the journal Studying Teacher Education, which was created and is an excellent potential source for studies of intimate scholarship of various kinds, context often is the introductory or framing feature of articles describing the research published. In other publications, this element may show up in the strategies section (with the recognition that setting may be as much a contributor to the findings as participants or practices are). Wherever it occurs, setting the context appropriately requires the intimate scholar to consider the features and elements of the situation in which this research is being conducted that are vital in shaping the study or will be vital for those wishing to use the assertions for action or understanding in their practice and understanding as teacher educators. If a researcher works in a faith-based institution then findings that include language about blessings, love, testimony, or other elements of religious commitment and spiritual growth may abound in the data and the representation of it. In contrast, a researcher may work in a large, research one, state university with a very small teacher education program where much of the teacher education work is conducted by doctoral students and adjuncts. Inquiries conducted by an intimate scholar in such a context may provide clearer insight about what teacher education looks like when it is a neglected step-child or a research laboratory (depending on the university) (for a fuller discussion of the place of teacher education at the university, see Davey, 2013). Inquirers conducting studies in any country should make clear how the cultural milieu or the politics in that context is relevant to the reader and to the study reported. The feel or ethos of the study, the data collected, and the relationships involved may even seem abstractly similar

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across different contexts. But the context will always constrain, shape, and form the study and impact, as a result, interpretations and understandings developed; thus things that might be labeled in similar ways may be quite different from each other. As we articulate in our discussion of the international connections at the end of this text, in this age of talk of globalization of culture, we believe there is not a World Culture but that even when labels or ideas cross cultural boundaries, the context of the culture or country will result in Local Variability. When considering how to describe the context, intimate scholars must consider and articulate carefully. Due to constraints of space not every feature may be included, the inquirer must select carefully but include those characteristics that supported interpretation, shaped the contour of the experience, impacted the data itself, or will help the reader understand what the author asserts or understands. Sometimes we forget as we describe context that our readers may be from other countries or contexts very different from our own. In every case, intimate scholars, need to be aware that labels like mentor teacher, field experiences, student teaching, teacher educator that often transcend country borders may in fact mask significant differences. We suggested in the section on identity that intimate scholars should always be aware that things considered fundamental to teacher education programs and practices particularly working across country borders but also merely across institutions often are not indeed uniform. Thus, inquirers must consider carefully all elements of the context being especially cognizant of those vital for shaping the understandings and actions described within the study.

Research Conversation as Context Inquiries conducted by intimate scholars could focus on explorations of their team-teaching experience. The study itself may focus carefully on interaction with a team member and the contribution of that interaction to the learning of teacher candidates, but the researcher may fail to connect to both the rich research conversation about team teaching generally and the one that exists in other intimate scholarship. Zeichner (1999, 2007) has on two separate occasions both lauded and critiqued this kind of research. The critique on both occasions focused on the need for such research to utilize educational and social science research to provide context for this kind of scholarship and for researchers to re-contextualize

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their assertions for action and understanding within the larger research conversations in teacher education. Another situation that makes some intimate scholars blind to the contribution other scholarship might make to the design, interpretation, and conclusion of their studies is the way in which determining to take up intimate scholarship feels unique and new. Often when we review studies conducted from the perspective of self-study of teacher education practices research for publication in journals, the researchers are unaware that there is a history of this kind of research with tenets and guidelines. The scholars suddenly realize they might study their own practice as teacher educators and they fail to consider that others might have been doing so for some time. With this blindness to the ongoing conversation from this methodological orientation, they fail to seek out the research literature already in existence and ignore the rich research base that could inform them in their work. Since intimate scholars invariably use qualitative methodologies, then contextualization within the research discourse of teacher education or teaching is vital. One of the ways that intimate scholars demonstrate virtuosity and scholarly rigor is through the reviews of literature that intellectually frames their work. In the last chapter, we discussed the importance of framing work using a conceptual framework (Marshall & Rossman, 2015) to frame and guide their review of literature to position their study. Demonstrating careful attention to previous research, early classic studies, and contextualizing the current study and its findings within this trajectory in the research conversation is important in developing the credibility of the research and the authority of experience from which the scholar speaks. The studies selected for inclusion in the review and the ways in which the author discusses, responds to, and integrates the research allow the author to demonstrate their virtuosity as a scholar. Artful and rigorous development and articulation of a review of pertinent research provides a publicly visible and auditable evidence of the scholar’s prowess as a reader and interpreter. Through the review of research and reasoned articulation of the basis for the study, the author develops his or her credibility providing a basis from which the reader can determine whether he or she can trust the analysis of the data presented. When conducting a review of the literature, developing a conceptual framework for introducing the study, or determining when and where to interweave research results into the analysis, discussion, and conclusion sections of a study, the intimate scholar needs to determine what research is germane to this inquiry, where the spaces between research discourses that this inquiry both informs and resolves are, and how this particular work

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contributes to the larger research conversation in teaching and teacher education. More than in other kinds of work, the intimate scholar needs to demonstrate what this study taken up from the personal perspective of the researcher can contribute to the research conversation. Contextualizing the study in the research conversation coupled with a reasoned thoughtful explanation of the contribution of the study and the need for the study to utilize the perspective allowed by intimate scholarship positions the work to be taken seriously and have creditability.

AIMS OF THE STUDY Because teacher education and becoming a teacher educator is a holistic process, then often when we are asked what it is we are studying our general internal answer is “my practice,” “my experience,” “my memories,” or “my thinking.” Ironically, then focusing on these issues makes our attention both more particular (our own individual practice, our own past experiences, our own memories, our own thinking) and more general (the whole of the elements of practice interacting, the research conversation on experience, etc.). However, research conversations in teacher education generally have emerged from a modernist epistemological research tradition which often requires that researchers focus on fragments or pieces rather than the whole. Thus, intimate scholars, as they develop representations of their research, use statements about the purpose of their studies to focus their research. In their review of literature or specification they will often provide personal critique and utilize first person voice in explaining the work and articulating its aims or purpose. Attending carefully to the objectives or aims of a study works like motivation does in our personal lives: it gives strength and direction to our work. When intimate scholars are clear about the purpose of their inquiries, it provides guidance about what research literature is needed, what data to collect, what analytic processes will be most helpful, and what of all we come to understand is most essentially presented here. When intimate scholars are clear about our purpose and consistent in expressions of it, their statement of purpose provides guidance as they conduct the study and helps the research both focus and articulate the research in ways that add credibility to the study and support in attending to matters of trustworthiness and merit in conducting the research and writing it up for publication.

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METHODOLOGY One of the complications of conducting research within an orientation of intimate scholarship (regardless of methodology) is that some of them do not stipulate research strategies or even which more general qualitative techniques will be used in the study. Naming a project intimate scholarship indicates clearly to the reader three things: the researcher conducting the research is also a participant in the research itself, the researcher is committed to adjusting practice to account for the things learned, and the focus of the research will be on practice, experience, life, or thinking as it is occurring or is being reinterpreted. All three of these aspects immediately introduce features of what has traditionally been considered, by other social scientists and educational researchers, an almost overwhelming potential “bias.” For these reasons, as Bullough and Pinnegar (2001) and our own discussion in this text indicate, intimate scholars have increased obligations to document their research processes and demonstrate they have attended to potential concerns. The intimate scholarship features the use of personal voice and perspective, and as well as particularity, vulnerability, relationship, and dialogue can be potentially problematic and must be attended to in establishing trustworthiness. The chapters focusing on them in this book as well as the chapter on design and research process provide direction. Here we turn to two of the five characteristics LaBoskey (2004) explores for S-STEP research, a form of intimate scholarship that is pertinent here. These characteristics are interactive and exemplar validation. Collaboration (particularly in terms of dialogue as a process of coming to know) supports scholars in attending to places where others might claim misinterpretation or bias, but only when research partners and collaborators are honest in their responses. This makes it important that as inquirers we seek out others who will respond honestly to engage in dialogue with us in interpreting our work. Sometimes the dialogue we engage in to interpret studies is not so much other people but other voices such as our own past experiences, our understanding of the thinking of colleagues we have worked with in the past, or contradictory or complementary research. As we consider these in interpretation, we need to attend to, respond to, these critiques allowing them to push us to question, seek additional evidence, seek other voices, and express our concerns with others. For engagement in dialogue to add strength to and confidence in what we are learning, as intimate scholars we need to make certain that we engage in the kinds of collaborations, interactions, and thinking that create an environment where

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the merit of our interpretation is tested and where our ideas are exposed in ways that enable deep and nuanced understandings to emerge. Consideration of what are exemplars and how validation of exemplars proceeds is imperative as authors articulate what data they chose to collect, how they analyzed it and constructed interpretations, and how they attended to representing the assertions for action and understanding that emerged. In this discussion of exemplar validation, Mishler (1990) makes the following point which is relevant to our discussion about attending to trustworthiness in intimate scholarship. Mishler (1990) says: As a first step, I propose to redefine validation as the process(es) through which we make claims for and evaluate the “trustworthiness of reported observations, interpretations, and generalizations. The essential criterion for such judgments is the degree to which we can rely on the concepts, strategies, and inferences of a study, or traditional inquiry, as the basis for our own theorizing and empirical research. If our overall assessment of a study’s trustworthiness is high enough for us to act on it, we are granting the findings a sufficient degree of validity to invest our own time and energy, and to put at risk our reputations as competent investigators. As more and more investigators act on this assumption and find that it “works,” the findings take on the aura of objective fact …. (p. 419)

Intimate scholars then, as we have argued and as Mishler suggests, have the onus of demonstrating their rigor and virtuosity showing how in the design, implementation, and reporting of their studies they have been cognizant of the demands of developing trustworthiness. Having done that, they recognize and release to the judgment of readers whether or not the study can indeed inform their own setting, experience, or practice. Developing findings that meet the requirements and standards attached to exemplar validation requires that intimate scholars actively seek alternative voices and multiple perspective searching for negative cases (Williams, 2011), disconfirming evidence, or potential alternative interpretations. In utilizing dialogue and attending in these ways to our data analysis and interpretation our understandings are often deepened, more likely to be judged trustworthy and are ultimately more helpful for our own practice and that of other scholars. Authors of articles written from the basis of intimate scholarship must also attend carefully, through references and articulation of details of the process, to the traditions of research strategies, or methodologies that they are marrying with the methodology they employ in conducting inquiry based in intimate scholarship. Evident attention should be paid to prescriptions for research practice from the methodological tradition or guidance for the techniques and strategies used. Intimate scholars should present, in describing analysis, the ways in which combining intimate scholarship with particular traditions offers the most critical guidance for the study. They

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must also express how they have attended to the traditions in terms of the characteristics of intimate scholarship by articulating how these tenets guided and shaped the scholars’ research design, and guided the implementation of it as well as the analysis of data. When a researcher acts with integrity in conducting research from an orientation of intimate scholarship, the demands on the researcher are complex and weighty. For example, it is difficult to mark an “endpoint” to the project since the study is of you and your experience as a teacher educator and both continue after any artificial endpoint is reached. In addition, since a common occurrence during the inquiry is the shifting of practice or understanding of it as meaning making occurs as we are in the midst of the inquiry. In response to the developing research understandings the terrain of the research shifts which makes it difficult to mark where the endpoint of the research actually is. A typical demand in ethnographic work is that the researcher continues interviewing and collecting data until they reach saturation they are not hearing new conceptualizations or idea. Because of the open quality of intimate scholarship, the expectation is that saturation of this kind may never be reached. Thus it becomes more a judgment that every effort to seek out ideas and allow them to contribute understanding has been reached and the researcher feels confident and has, what he or she feels is, sufficient evidence to make the assertions reached an even more tenuous endpoint. The embedded nature of such research endeavors means the intimate scholar may take steps that ensure trustworthiness but not specify them. More than authors using other research traditions, intimate scholars must articulate their research design and analysis and demonstrate themselves as trustworthy. Nowhere is this demand more vital than in the strategies section of a particular study. When authors are clear about data collection, analysis, and interpretation processes and both reveal and anchor the decisions made in the literature that guides research practice in qualitative research or particular versions of it, then assertions for action and understanding are more likely to be valued and found trustworthy.

CHARACTERISTICS THAT COMMUNICATE TRUSTWORTHINESS There are three phrases, often used by experienced intimate scholars of practice researchers (particularly those who in engage in S-STEP work)

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when they judge whether or not a particular piece is quality research, that can be irritating to more novice scholars. These are “authority of experience,” “the so-what question,” and “the study turns back on itself.” The first comes from work by Munby and Russell (1994), but Tom Russell continues to develop and articulate it in his work. We have discussed this and its importance in an earlier chapter. The idea is that intimate scholarship is grounded in our experience and our understandings of our experience developed through projects that focus on our life, experience, thinking, or practice deepen and develop that grounding. Intimate scholarship that is well designed (as explained in the previous chapter) emerges from this authority and develops in the reader a sense that the author speaks from that place of authority which means that in the design and articulation of a study, the researcher demonstrates that they own the practice or experience from which they speak, even if they are attempting to change or reshape it. The conception for the so-what question is a test of whether or not the study is quality intimate scholarship. This is the typical question that must be answered by a study of any kind for researchers to consider the work of value. This concept as applied to intimate scholarship emerged early in this research literature and is based in work from Northfield & Loughran (1996) and Loughran and Northfield (1998). The so-what question, as we indicated, is a general test of research (scientific, educational or from the human sciences), but it has particular import for intimate scholars. This concern is clearly linked to the critiques of this research from other qualitative researchers. Intimate scholars must always ask themselves, “What have I learned that is significant and valuable not just for me and those engaged in my practice but that can deepen and extend the research conversation in teacher education specifically or educational research more generally?” Often when we review studies of intimate scholarship, we find that inquirers are either completely ignorant of or ignore research already conducted and published concerning the aspect of their experience they are at this moment exploring. In review of this work, we can often find phrases like “this research was valuable because it deepened my understanding of my life,” they are not usually helpful in answering the so-what question. Such responses also communicate the researcher as uninformed about the larger research conversation and their understanding of their own work in relationship to that larger discourse community. The third phrase, “the study turns back on itself,” is more puzzling. It is a phrase born in the S-STEP research community in particular, but is also something that intimate scholars might also attend to. When a novice

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colleague first drew Stefinee’s attention to the phrase, she didn’t even realize she said it. But it is connected to both of the earlier phrases examined here. What it means is that intimate scholar always stands in a space between: between the self and the others engaged in our practice, between history and autobiography, between teaching (or teacher education) and research. The purpose of such scholarship is to develop understanding of teacher education that turns back on itself to be useful to both the self engaged in the practice or experience and others who are practitioners. It isolates and communicates to the reader of intimate scholarship what from the personal perspective of the person conducting the study was learned or how practice or thinking was reframed or transformed. It is one of the most powerful and yet most subtle indicators of what makes intimate scholarship unique and valuable. We may study what we learn about the development of reflective capacities in our teacher education students as they engage with us in practices designed to promote this development. The study turns back on itself when the teacher educator reveals and supports with empirical evidence the new understandings of and assertions for practice that emerged as the teacher educator questioned again the practices being used and what they revealed about what the teacher educator now knew about reflective practice and the teaching of it. In order to reach this stage, the researcher must collect data that has the ability to provide an evidentiary trace of their own learning across the project. This was discussed in the chapter that focused on elements of an inquiry particularly in relationship to both data collection and sources and to analysis. When researchers demonstrate that a research article is indeed intimate scholarship, the reader can clearly identify the characteristics and features of intimate scholarship from our explanation of them in those chapters of this book. However, just as importantly intimate scholarship is couched in the authority of experience of the practitioner/researcher. It provides a clear answer to the so-what question. Finally the study turns back on itself and thus produces deeper more nuanced answers to the so-what question by implicating the personal understanding and insight of the teacher educator/ researcher’s assertions for action and understanding uncovered.

CONCLUSION Quality inquiries from the base of intimate scholarship require that researchers attend carefully to design, implementation, and reporting.

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While we have not discussed the articulation of findings or quality of writing, these features can also become problematic for judgment of the quality of intimate scholarship. Simply put the assertions for action and understanding that emerge from intimate scholarship should respond to the purpose of the project. They should be clearly based on the data collected and analyzed and support in the form of evidence should be provided. In presenting evidence of findings, the intimate scholar should not treat evidence as if it is self-interpreting but clearly articulate the links the scholar perceives between the assertions made and the evidence provided. When studies do not appear to be connected to the purpose or based on the evidence then their quality is questioned. Intimate scholarship requires artful and sophisticated write-ups. When authors attend to the demands of writing conventions and can carefully and cogently articulate the ideas and procedures used in a study, quality intimate scholarship has been produced. Since intimate scholarship emerges out of experience from the perspective and understanding of scholars themselves, creating such inquiries is a rigorous process which requires not only careful attention at each phase, but also integrity and commitment on the part of the intimate scholar.

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CHAPTER 16 INQUIRY CONCLUSION In 1990, Cochran-Smith and Lytle argued for the need for teacher research. They say: “We propose that teacher research, which we define as systematic, intentional inquiry by teachers, makes accessible some of the expertise of teachers and provides both university and school communities with unique perspectives on teaching and learning” (p. 2). Researchers who promoted teacher research as the quote from Cochran-Smith and Lytle indicates argued that they were engaged in the learning to teach process, in exploring their own practice and thinking, they were in a better position than researchers to uncover the tacit and embodied knowledge that they drew on in teaching. We have made a similar argument in this book. However, in addition we assert that teacher educators exploring their own practice from their perspective of the person conducting the practice are in the best position to contribute vital knowledge to the research on teaching and teacher education community. Teacher educators’ inquiries focused on uncovering their personal practical knowledge provide invaluable knowledge and insight concerning teacher education and the work and understanding of teacher educators. We have also asserted that teacher educators are always in the process of becoming teacher educators. The experiences they have and their consideration of it and their everyday responses to it shift, shape, and transform who they are as teacher educators, and examination of these experiences and processes provides a deep and continually evolving knowledge base for teacher education. Further, intimate scholarship with its characteristics of focus on the particular, openness, vulnerability, dialogue as a process of coming-to-know, and an orientation toward ontology would be the most powerful perspective from which to take up inquiries into teacher education. It is because it is fundamentally relational and undertaken and reported from the perspective of the person orchestrating the inquiry, that intimate scholarship holds such promise. We assert here that such scholarship, regardless of methodology, is the most profitable source for informing the knowledge base of teacher education. Teacher educators conducting such inquiries are best positioned to uncover, explore, map, and reveal the terrain of teacher education. Since they are potentially architects and 297

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participants in every aspect of teacher education (field experience, coursework, program design and implementation, and accreditation activities), they have insider knowledge and potentially unexplored wisdom concerning the responsibilities and actions of being a teacher educator. We have explored what inquiry from the perspective of intimate scholarship might look like and what it might contribute. We argue that since teachers (and teacher educators) as a natural condition of their practice reflect on it moving from a natural condition of reflection on-and-in action and on-and-in practice to systematic inquiry of it provides a constant source for professional development and knowledge for teaching. These formal explorations particularly when made public support teacher educators in meeting their obligations to the unseen children that will be taught by the teachers they are teaching (Arizona Group, 1997). Teacher education is a fairly new field of educational research. Earlier work that might have been labeled research on teacher education targeted not so much teacher education and teacher educators but on the growth and development of teachers and the mechanisms that supported them in learning to teach. Regardless of the contribution of teacher education, teachers routinely claim that they taught themselves to be teachers and we agree with this assessment. In preparing to be teachers, teachers receive education orchestrated to developing them as teachers. In contrast teacher educators are left to teach themselves to teach. This is in fact one of the reasons intimate scholarship conducted by teacher educators on their own experience is of crucial importance if the research on teacher education community seeks to develop deep, provocative, and insightful theories and insights into teacher education and the knowledge of being teacher educators. Regardless of the years of experience or the kinds of experiences they had, teacher educators are always in a process of becoming and this allows significant opportunities to explore the embodied, tacit, and explicit knowledge of teacher educators. Formal inquiry into this evolving space of learning and growth allows teacher educator researchers to move what they know from informal usually embodied knowing to the larger research conversation. Because of the attention inquiry from the perspective of intimate scholarship pays to context, studies conducted within this perspective enable scholars across country and cultural boundaries to see how an examination of the particular experiences, practices, and memory of an intimate scholar can be usefully applied to their own contexts. This space of inquiry is fluid and the inquirer is positioned between what they know and potentially intuitively are acting on in their own

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practice and what they know from studying the research base on teacher education more generally. As Greene (1999) explains, this kind of positioning it releases the imagination and allows readers to imagine their own work and context in new ways, develop new wonderings about it, and devise provocative responses. However, the fluidity, uncertainty, and shifting nature of inquiries conducted from the perspective of intimate scholarship require not only that the research considers all they know about how to design rigorous research from more general guidelines for qualitative research, but they also must consider in every phase of the study the impact of the characteristics of this kind of scholarship on an inquiry. At every stage of the inquiry from design, through enactment, interpretation, and articulation, the intimate scholar must attend to the dual commitments entailed in this scholarship requirements of general qualitative research and the unique challenges of this orientation to research. As we are studying our practice and our experience, it disrupts and yet informs our work as scholar and teacher educator pushing us constantly into a state of becoming. This means teacher educator researchers have a potentially endless source of inquiries that can be taken up. Since these inquiries are orchestrated from a space of personal knowing and experience, they present unique challenges for communication of the trustworthiness of the work. We have articulated how intimate scholars communicate themselves as trustworthy as researchers by attending to the demands in every aspect of the research report. The work is always grounded in the authority of experience, but that authority emerges as the intimate scholar demonstrates himself or herself as trustworthy. Credibility for the study is also gained as the research attends to answering the “So what?” question of good research and reveals how the work “turns back on itself.” As you reconsider what you have learned about inquiries conducted from a perspective within a range of research methodologies using particular techniques and strategies, you might engage in wondering about yourself as an intimate scholar by responding to the following questions: 1. What counts as inquiry? 2. What is knowledge for teacher educators? 3. What is knowledge for teachers/teacher educators in relation to each other? 4. How might examining your own particular experiences in becoming a teacher educator inform the larger research conversation in teaching and teacher education?

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5. How do I conceive of inquiry? 6. What puzzles do I have regarding my own practice as teacher educator? 7. What experiences, practices, programmatic structures, and memories am I curious about that inquiry using intimate scholarship might enable me to explore? 8. What experiences of cognitive dissonance would intimate scholarship enable interesting insights into? 9. What might exploration of experiences or memories that haunt me provide guidance about? 10. How can I explore my action in meeting my commitment to my obligations to unseen children? 11. Who might engage with me to sharpen and improve the value of dialogue within the inquiry space? 12. How can I examine more carefully the constraints and enabling aspects of context? 13. What influence does (or might) taking an ontological stance have on my inquiries? 14. How is dialogue as a process of coming-to-know visible in my inquiries? 15. How can my studies demonstrate my authority of experience as a researcher and teacher? 16. What influence would taking up a perspective of intimate scholarship have on my inquiries? 17. What strategies or techniques could enable me to demonstrate my trustworthiness as a scholar? 18. What is the relationship between inquiry, identity formation, and intimate scholarship? 19. What is the role of inquiry in becoming a teacher educator in relation?

DISRUPTION BETWEEN INQUIRY, CONCLUSION, AND INTERNATIONAL CONNECTIONS As teacher educators we are always in a state of becoming. The experiences, memories, thinking, and practice that shape this process of becoming and developing understanding of them from our perspective as teacher educators is a rich source for investigations into teaching and teacher education. Exploring those incidents, memories, or interactions that disrupt our sense of our self as teacher educators, or our smooth enactment of routines and practices, or cause us to pause as we express long held assumptions t now questionable can be the focus of our intimate scholarship. Indeed we might us hesitancies, misdirection, or adjustments as opportunities to examine more closely and explicitly our embodied (or sometimes even explicit) knowing of ourselves as teacher educators. We might take up explorations of our action in our practice or our thinking about teacher education more globally from the perspective of the teacher educator who is in the process of becoming. Such investigations constitute intimate scholarship. As we focus on what is of particular interest to us as teacher educators in the process of becoming and interrogate the multiplicity of who we are and what we are seeing or doing, we develop inquiries that can potentially shape, reframe, and push forward knowledge and practice in teacher education. Yet, even as we as teacher educators take up the task of inquiring into our becoming, what we know, experience and are learning, we are confronted with skepticism about our inquiries by those around us. Scholars who use both quantitative and more general qualitative methodologies look askance at us and our work. Because of our vulnerability, intimate scholarships openness, its process of knowing (dialogue), its focus on the particular and its orientation to ontology, questions consistently arise from those who are oriented to a positivist epistemology about validity. Intimate scholars focus their concern on developing a rigorous base of interpretation and argumentation that enables others to recognize our work as creditable and worthy of trust. Indeed, since intimate scholarship inquiries 301

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are oriented toward relational ontology (Slife, 2004) and seek veracity by attending to evidence and accuracy in that sphere, the researcher reporting the study from the perspective of intimate scholarship is more concerned with demonstrating him or herself and the studies as trustworthy and rigorous. Inquiry into teacher education from within an orientation to intimate scholarship has implications for every aspect of doing research. It influences the design, implementation, and reporting of the work in ways that are, of course, shared with the larger research community but are also unique because of the orientation to personal knowing, thinking and understanding and a commitment to enacting what we learn in our practice as teacher educators. In addition, inquiries based in intimate scholarship require that the researcher attend to demonstrating rigor and integrity as a scholar in every phase of the study. Our concern about the practical every day aspects of developing trustworthiness and gaining credibility and respect as rigorous scholars guided our explorations in the section on inquiry. Here we disrupt our text one final time with an example of an inquiry which demonstrates our evolving understanding of trustworthiness based in a critique of exemplary studies based and conducted within the framework of intimate scholarship.

COMMENTS DISRUPTION FORMING, FRAMING, AND LINKING IN DEVELOPING RESEARCH QUESTIONS ABSTRACT The Zeichner Paradox presents the Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices (S-STEP) research community and other researchers engaged in intimate scholarship with three challenges to the viability of our methodology: the development of questions significant to the larger research base of teaching and teacher education; the use of existing research to frame our questions; and the connection of our current research to the works of other researchers to inform our work. Based on identified exemplar studies, we demonstrate tools that might be used by researchers to strengthen the presentation of our work and explore the challenges to reveal links between and among them.

We presented this work at the AERA conference in 2014. Pinnegar, S., & Hamilton, M. L. (2014). Forming, framing, and linking in developing S-STEP research questions. A paper to be presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Philadelphia, PA. We include this work here because it illustrates how, as intimate scholars, we can bring to bear our understandings of inquiry to promote a careful exploration of promising methodologies. While the points we address in this section can apply to any study that takes up intimate scholarship, we use our work in S-STEP methodology as one example to explore these issues.

When Zeichner (1999) named Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices (S-STEP) as the most promising methodology within the genre of 303

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research on teacher education and subsequently provided a deep critique of it (2007); we began to think seriously about what we came to label as the Zeichner Paradox within the S-STEP research community. (A reader might ask: Are you giving power to a critique that we should ignore? To that we say that as strong researchers we need to take seriously any critique so that we might counter challenges if we see value in that action.) The praise is selfevident but his critique focuses on three interrelated challenges: • The first challenge is to develop questions of teaching and teacher educator practice that extend beyond our own; • The second challenge is to link our questions to the wider research conversations; and • The final challenge is to integrate and connect our research to the work of fellow researchers to strengthen our place within the teacher education knowledge base. As an alternative qualitative research methodology, this Paradox situated S-STEP along with other methodologies that take up intimate scholarship as having/not having promise positioning us as researchers to live in a limbo of defending our work. In this text we take up the Paradox and seek to uncover how strong S-STEP studies counter his critique to ask significant questions, connect to the wider research conversations, and integrate findings from earlier research using this methodology.

CHALLENGES FROM THE ZEICHNER’S PARADOX In his AERA Vice-Presidential Address, Zeichner (1999) declared self-study of teaching and teacher education practices as one of the most important and promising methodologies for research in teacher education. A few years later (Zeichner, 2007), he published a critique that called into question his earlier declaration. His critique focused mostly on these three challenges. He argues that S-STEP scholarship falls short of its promise because of these weaknesses. While the methodology and the work have matured, its ontological stance of improvement and understanding of practice from the perspective of the self (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009) challenge more traditional views of qualitative research and these issues continue to plague intimate scholars, such as those using S-STEP methodology. Standard advice to young scholars in academia includes the need for worthwhile and significant questions to drive their research. Yet often the

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person giving the advice does not articulate how to identify questions of worth and value to the researcher in a way that conveys that worth and value to the research conversation as a whole. Researchers involved in intimate scholarship are particularly vulnerable in this regard because, since the research we pursue focuses on ourselves, our students, our contexts, our actions, and our practice how could it not be of value to our practice and us. Thus, while we may see the answer to the question of value ourselves, we may not conceptualize and frame our studies in ways that convince other researchers in the broader educational research community of that value. Another aspect of these challenges comes from some scholars’ embrace of modernist epistemology. This epistemology seems to have power over educational research generally as researchers desire to be “objective and generalizable” in their findings and devalue the experience of the particular. Both requirements are oppositional to the fundamental nature of intimate scholarship wherein the ontological orientation with its embrace of subjectivity, personal ways of knowing experience, and the value of the particular are foundational to our work. S-STEP research, like other intimate scholarship, emerges out of what Hilary Putnam (2005) labels the Third Enlightenment. He argues that modernist epistemology has not succeeded in providing objective, generalizable answers to the most difficult human problems. Instead he asserts that more promise for addressing these problems comes in the careful exploration of particular incidences of success and failure. Doing this thoughtful people can take up applicability as they resolve problems of practice within their own spheres. Thus, connecting a particular study to the wider research conversation so that other researchers can try out and adapt findings within their own contexts provides the promise for developing more helpful responses to human problems. Researchers involved in intimate scholarship, like S-STEP research, engage holistically in studies of their practice. Consequently, as Pinnegar and Hamilton (2009) argue, it becomes difficult to identify one specific focus of a study. Practices have many facets. Here, our personal practice, emotions, ethics, and vulnerability to critique of our practice and methodology become a fundamental part of the work. In turn, the focus on personal practice can blur our vision of how the work of the other scholars engaged in intimate scholarship might apply to practice and support our explication and refinement of the question or practice being examined. For this work, we examine how intimate scholars might identify questions, frame them in wider research conversations, and use the work of others to strengthen assertions for action and understanding that emerge from our work.

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PLAN FOR ADDRESSING THE CHALLENGES In this work, we explore how we, as intimate scholars, might shape worthwhile questions of practice, how we link our particular studies and contexts to the wider research conversations about intimate scholarship, and finally, how we demonstrate the ways our work, grounded in particular contexts and based on particular understandings, uses the work of other intimate scholars as a foundation. To prepare for this study we reviewed past intimate scholar research across venues (for example, journals like Journal of Teacher Education, Teachers and Teaching, Studying Teacher Education, books and chapters written by intimate scholars and the Proceedings of the Herstmonceux Castle Conferences). During our review, research strands emerged relevant to our endeavor: relationship between belief and practice, examination of particular practice (whether new or typical), and exploration of teacher education as an enterprise. These themes guided us in selecting articles to examine. We recognize the possibility that some scholars may feel an absence of their line of research, yet we feel that most studies could be categorized within these strands. Furthermore, we are aware of the research that focuses on identity formation as a teacher educator both for novice and experienced researchers: we saw this work as a fit with the belief/practice strand. Considerable work explores development of doctoral students and some work grapples with intimate scholarship as a methodology we labeled these as philosophic underpinnings of teacher education and research on teacher education as an enterprise. We selected four studies as exemplars of these strands for our exploration. These studies met and overcame the challenges we identified: Berry, A. (2007). Tensions in teaching about teaching: Understanding practice as a teacher educator. Dordrecht: Springer. Lovin, L., Sanchez, W., Leatham, K., Chauvot, J., Kastberg, S., & Norton, A. (2012). Examining beliefs and practices of self and others: Pivotal points for change and growth for mathematics teacher educators. Studying Teacher Education, 8, 51 68. Mansur, R., & Friling, D. (2013). “Letting go” vs. “holding on”: Teacher educators’ transformative experiences with the kite syndrome. Studying Teacher Education, 9, 152 162. Tan, Y. S. M. (2014). A researcher-facilitator’s reflection: Implementing a Singapore case of learning study. Teaching and Teacher Education, 37, 44 54.

In our exploration for/of selected exemplar studies, we identified two tools to help us explore aspects of these studies the Framework-for-

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Inquiry Planner and the Framework-for-Inquiry Analytic Tool (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009). We created these tools to guide ourselves and other intimate scholars in the design, analysis and critique of our work along with the work of others because we believe these frames help us think more carefully and clearly about S-STEP research and other forms of intimate scholarship. The Framework-for-Inquiry Planner (see Table 1) asks a series of questions that explore issues that provoke. Although written in a linear fashion, we recognize that S-STEP research or any form of qualitative research methodology cannot be characterized as linear or sequential. We designed these questions to help situate ourselves in the midst of our work and our wonderings about that work. These questions ask researchers to consider interests, curiosities, and contradictions as a way to identify potential research directions; invite context-setting and more fully explore practice as the researcher defines it; address research strategies and analysis; and situate ideas within a broadened literature, practice and theory base.

Framework-for-Inquiry Planner To support our Framework-for-Inquiry Planner, our Framework-for-Inquiry Analytic Tool supports researchers in their examination of their own work and the work of others. These Frameworks sharpen our thinking about the work we hope to do (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009). The Framework-for-Inquiry Analytic Tool situates intimate scholarship, like S-STEP methodology, explicitly in relation to general qualitative research methodology. To us, that means that the topic column identifies Table 1. From Pinnegar and Hamilton (2009). What am I interested in exploring? What do I identify as problems in my practice, where my actions do not seem to match my values (living contradictions)? What issues do I want to further understand? What do I want to learn about these interests, issues, and concerns? How could I explore these concerns and issues? What contexts might be most fitting? Who are the most appropriate participants me? My students? What strategies might I use? What would count as evidence? What work in teacher education research (or other research fields) will guide my inquiry? What beliefs are embedded in my questions? What values do I embody in my practice and research? How will I hold myself accountable? What do I expect to contribute to the knowledge base?

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issues any qualitative researcher might address regarding their study as they design it. The middle column brings the research design alongside a series of questions that focus on self and practice. The third column simply represents space for notes. We believe both frameworks allow intimate scholars to inform ourselves and colleagues less familiar with this work about the operational hows and whys of our work (Table 2).

Framework-for-Inquiry Analytic Tool Once we selected and re-read the exemplars, we systematically analyzed the exemplars by responding to the queries and categories within each framework. Beginning with the Framework-for-Inquiry Planner, we independently read each article and, based on the text, we answered the questions as fully as we could. We identified places where the authors articulated how they began and had taken up their study. Then using the same strategy we revisited the articles using the Framework-for-Inquiry Analytic Tool. We responded to the categories and questions from that framework summarizing and selecting quotes to provide evidence for our responses. Finally, we considered the studies collectively examining differences and similarities. Using this process, we uncovered ways in which these studies address the challenges identified by the Zeichner paradox.

EXPLORATION OF CHALLENGES We begin our exploration by considering each challenge individually and examining how intimate scholarship and researchers can and do meet these challenges. We also utilize evidence from the exemplars to demonstrate, explore and articulate how the studies individually and collectively met each challenge and what other researchers can learn from this work.

Forming Questions As we examined our exemplars using the Framework-for-Inquiry Planner, we discovered that good questions seem to emerge when researchers have deep curiosity about or interest in some aspect of their practice. This curiosity is the sort where a person attempts to excavate their understandings

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From Pinnegar and Hamilton (2009).

Author Topic Purpose Definition of selected methodology for intimate scholarship Definition of methodology

Rigorous research practice

Explicit evidence

Authority of experience

Story of self

Situate in larger literature

Questions raised in study

Questions What is the purpose of the study? What definition of intimate scholarship does the author use? Where is the self situated in this study? When the author describes methodology, how is it apparent that the study is intimate scholarship? How does the author describe the methodology? What data collection and data analysis tools are used? How are the aspects of the methodology described? How did the author make apparent thoughtful research practice? As part of making a study rigorous comes in the context selected for study, in what way or ways does the context support the rigor of the study? In what ways does the author connect the data collected with the assertions made in the study? For example, if they said that they interviewed people, how is that displayed in the evidence? Does the evidence collected allow for the insights the author claims? How does the author situate the authority of her/his own experience in the study? How does he/she situate themselves in the study so that the readers will accept their work as trustworthy? In what ways is the self portrayed in the study? Where is the self in relation to others? How is the self-evident? Within what research literatures does the author situate their work? How do they bring depth to the understandings of their field of focus? In this category ask questions that arise as you review this study work and/or engage in the reading of the study.

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and actions and the many facets of that curiosity. Curiosity like this seems evident as we read about conversations with colleagues in which the authors articulated and discussed their practices and wonderings about it. When preparing to engage in her study, Berry (2007) shaped her questions about what S-STEP research revealed about teacher educators’ practice through her discussions with participants within the S-STEP research community. As a teacher educator who wanted to understand and improve her practice, her curiosity about teacher educators’ knowledge blossomed as her conversations with others shaped that curiosity leading to the development of her initial questions. In the case of the Lovin, Sanchez, Leatham, Chauvot, Kastberg, and Norton (2012) study, their interest emerged because they steeped themselves in their conceptual understandings of mathematics, the ways in which children learned mathematics, and the relationship they saw between teacher beliefs and teachers’ mathematics practices. As teacher educators they expressed their own beliefs about whether mathematics teacher educators shared common conceptual beliefs about mathematics teaching and learning. Through extended conversations they identified their shared educational heritage and understanding about mathematics teaching/learning and raised questions about the ways teacher educators might research teaching mathematics. Mansur and Friling’s (2013) study provides an interesting variation. Their curiosity emerged as they experienced surprise when reading their preservice teachers’ responses to an open-spaced learning curriculum environment. In turn, this surprise led to conversations with colleagues about their wonders regarding teacher educators’ interactions with preservice teachers. In another variation Tan (2014) uses the works of others to propel her curiosity and unravel the “black box” of understanding professional development. Another important understanding about the formulation of good questions emerged when we applied the Framework-for-Inquiry Planner to this set of studies. Good questions in intimate scholarship evolve, re-form, and sharpen as the study progresses. This also occurs in any rigorous study within any qualitative research methodology. While questions support the design of the study, they develop and strengthen as researchers review literature, converse about understandings, examine initial data, and attend to ways in which practices and understandings shift during the study. In the studies we explored here, engagement with the educational research literature, including S-STEP work, and methodological guidelines

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for rigorous research influenced and shaped the questions. This is evident from Berry’s (2007) work as her exploration moved from a list of findings to the revelation of tensions related to being a teacher educator and enacting teacher education. In the Lovin et al.’s (2012) study they shaped questions by returning to the teacher beliefs work fundamental to teaching mathematics teachers and their engagement with other intimate scholars. This process helped them begin to think more specifically about mathematics teacher education and explore differences in mathematics practice and beliefs about the teaching of mathematics teachers. Mansur and Friling’s (2013) consideration of their theoretical roots led to shaping their questions as they engaged in their study. For Tan (2014), her desire to navigate the literature helped strengthen her thinking about her questions and her study. In our exploration of these studies we learned that interest, surprise, and curiosity are key ingredients in orienting intimate scholars in their work. These studies also taught us that engaging in dialogue about your research can orient, deepen, and sharpen questions. When intimate scholars consider formulating questions for their research and in relationship to their practice, questions become more resonant as they relate to larger questions of research on teacher education. As researchers consider their data collection and analytic strategies, questions can also sharpen and focus. This suggests that in the work of intimate scholarship while good ideas about what to explore are utilized to guide the study design, the potential exists to improve the quality of the question by sharpening its focus, clarifying its connections to the research literature, and deepening understandings about the significance of the question. Thus, good questions in intimate scholarship do not necessarily emerge initially but are shaped, sharpened, clarified along the way. Careful attention to all aspects of the process and deep interrogation of questions and emerging findings leads to the refinement of stronger research questions both in the study being reported and in guiding future work.

Connecting Questions to Literature in Educational Research To respond to Zeichner’s (2007) paradox, S-STEP work, along with other forms of intimate scholarship needs to link to the wider research conversation in research on teacher education. We find Zeichner’s assertions to be valid as we think it demonstrates the trustworthiness and power of our work if we can situate it firmly in the broader research context. In turn,

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this helps scholars with little familiarity with intimate scholarship to see where our work fits with their own. Such linking needs to be done as it helps readers/researchers link with and see the pursued conversations so that other researchers begin to see the potential for S-STEP and other intimate scholarship to contribute to larger conversations. Because this work is grounded in practice, making these connections can become both more difficult for researchers and more helpful to the educational research community. Lovin et al.’s (2012) study demonstrates this. This study links to the ongoing research conversation concerning the relationship between beliefs and practices in mathematics education. The researchers’ attention to particular S-STEP work contributes nuance and direction to their exploration of their own beliefs as mathematics teacher educators and its relationship to their practices (see Schuck, Pereira, Alderton and Goodell, p. 53, in their article and their attention to work). The engagement with both research conversations enables their contribution concerning the need to better understand the pedagogy for teaching math teachers and the trajectory from mathematics student to math teacher to mathematics teacher educator. Links to the wider research literature occur as S-STEP researchers connect research on teaching and teacher education with methodologies and strategies beyond intimate scholarship or the boundaries of the practice itself. One way this occurred is in documenting the research literature that supports and directs their practice. Mansur and Friling (2013) reveal how theories of teaching in particular learning environments and their understanding of Dewey’s work supported the shaping of assignments. Lovin et al.’s (2012) study began in conversations of particularity where participants found themselves interrogating theories about mathematics teaching in relationship to their work as teacher educators. Tan (2014) focuses on the literature regarding lesson study and how that work relates to professional development. Here we wonder how intimate scholars might frame their work within educational research. Since the practices of teacher educators seem multi-faceted, framing a study within larger research conversations and determining which strands of research are most helpful in that framing is not a simple task. For example, in the Mansur and Friling (2013) study, the researchers express surprise regarding student responses to a particular assignment. This surprise suggests they had interest in the assignment structure, the student responses, and the effects their actions had on student learning. When Mansur and Friling connect their study to research conversations beyond their study, several research strands are identified as a

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framework, yet the practices themselves, not the logic of argument, bring the particular constellation of research strands in relationship to each other. The study occurred because Mansur and Friling experienced surprise in preservice teachers’ responses to an assignment that they had carefully constructed to engage preservice teachers in the exploration of settings and content that related to teaching but was not specifically about their classroom practices. For Mansur and Friling studying their practice meant they needed to identify research that supported the creation of a learning environment. Surprise emerged in the realization that the context and focus of the study on a set of practices brought elements in relationship to each other. The holistic quality of practices and their nesting within contexts brought vibrancy to their work. However, this can confound the links to the larger research conversation because of its focus on the particular. In Berry’s study she saw a lack of research about teacher education practices in the broader knowledge base along with an absent relationship between the larger research base and intimate scholarship. Another example of these links to deeper understandings can be recognized as authors refine their questions and study design. In fact, the integration of relationships among research strands and the researchers’ exploration of the basis of their practice, enables researchers to interrogate their study design as they determine the data collection and analytic strategies. In the Mansur and Friling (2013) study the authors unpack and describe their context, their theoretical frame, the relationship among the researchers that shaped their study, the questions they asked, and the data they collected. In the Lovin et al. (2012) study this becomes evident as they shape their argument for the study and refine their cycles of data collection. In these studies, researchers connected with the wider research conversation when unexpected experiences created tensions in their understandings. In turn, the researchers sought out research that could deepen and support those understandings. For example, Mansur and Friling (2013) returned to the research on adult learning and transformation to make sense of their findings. Ultimately, this action pushed forward their assertion concerning the need for experts to position themselves as non-experts as they worked with their students. By identifying the commonalities in beliefs among the math teacher educators, Lovin et al. (2012) link to research on teaching mathematics and contribute to our understanding of mathematics teacher educators’ knowledge by exploring the ways in which the common understanding and practice context shaped their responses and the changes they made in their practice.

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These researchers also link to broader conversations concerning methodological strategies. They articulate and demonstrate qualitative research strategies beyond those associated with S-STEP methodology. Lovin et al. (2012) provide evidence of this as they explain their use of the oral inquiry strategy from the work of Cochran-Smith and Lytle (as cited in Lovin et al., 2012, p. 56). In unpacking their methodology, Mansur and Friling convey the ways in which they utilize particular analytic strategies based on those used in general qualitative research methodology. Each study describes their analytic process where they ground their decisions in relationship to works in the wider literature. Intimate scholars and their work gain strength as they substantiate their inquiry and strategies in the research literature in and beyond their selected methodology. These connections shape the study and frame the question, the research design and the interpretation of the findings. By framing our work within the larger research conversation, the findings from this particular study can contribute more broadly to research on teaching and teacher education.

Integrating Other Intimate Scholarship into Our Own Work While it is important to situate S-STEP research, or other forms of intimate scholarship, within the larger research conversation, Zeichner (2007) also argues for S-STEP researchers to integrate the work of their fellow intimate scholars into their thinking and the presentation of their work. Indeed, to meet its promise as a genre of teacher education research this must be done. These intimate scholars can strengthen their arguments as they position their own work next to other studies like their own using them to add depth and nuance to their inquiries. When we as intimate scholars articulate and integrate findings and contributions from our work and the work of others, intimate scholarship and its methodologies will gain status. Integration of S-STEP work within the articles we examined appeared in two ways. These intimate scholars examined the S-STEP research literature to expand and enhance their literature review. They also used S-STEP text that focused on methodology to guide the design of their studies. Overall, however, we found relatively few citations. In a scan of Google Scholar we discovered that the premier publication of the S-STEP community Handbook of Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices has only 205 citations after 10 years on the market.

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Intimate Scholarship, like S-STEP Research, within the Literature Review Within our exemplars, the authors integrated the published works of intimate scholars into their literature reviews. Their use of intimate scholarship in relationship to more general research allowed them to present more nuanced accounts of their arguments. This is especially evident in Lovin et al.’s (2012) work as they used references to such work to narrow and refine their topic. They also used references to identify gaps in the research literature and document the way in which their study could contribute to the larger teacher knowledge base. Mansur and Friling (2013) used intimate scholarship to support their long-term involvement in a research consortium that has engaged in intimate scholarship. They integrate reviews of these studies to establish the theoretical basis of their context and their practice. In addition, like Lovin et al. (2012), they use intimate scholarship to pinpoint gaps in the research and the contribution of their work to that knowledge base. On the other hand, Tan (2014) only mentions S-STEP as a methodology and refers to S-STEP initially but keeps her focus on lesson study rather than on intimate scholarship. As intimate scholarship methodology evolves, like that work found in SSTEP research, and studies conducted on practice continue to emerge, reporting and reviewing the research as part of the literature review and integrating its findings into the research context demonstrates to those beyond the S-STEP research community how this work provides nuances and contributes to the wider research conversation. As the Mansur and Friling’s (2013) and the Berry’s (2007) work suggest engaging in such integration also positions the work as a frame for future intimate scholarship and research conducted by those using other methodologies.

Exploration of Literature about S-STEP Research as a Methodology S-STEP research is a form of intimate scholarship methodology (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009) that uses strategies shared with other qualitative research methodologies. Studies conducted according to this methodology exhibit the characteristics articulated by LaBoskey (2004) but engage strategies that are not specific to S-STEP methodology. As demonstrated in the studies selected for this text, S-STEP work is a form of intimate scholarship (Hamilton, 1995) conducted from an ontological orientation and the coming-to-know process that emerges in dialogue (Pinnegar & Hamilton,

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2009). Sometimes, S-STEP researchers argue for the use of S-STEP or offer a defense of it. Instead our exemplars demonstrated why S-STEP methodology best supports their study (as in the work of Mansur & Friling, 2013; Berry, 2007; Tan, 2014). In this way, as the wider research community reads various studies in various venues they become aware of the potential contribution of S-STEP methodology and become more open to the possibility of using in their own work. In addition to naming something a S-STEP study or another form of intimate scholarship and explaining why that methodology was chosen, Lovin et al. (2012) provide evidence of another way this research can be integrated within the wider conversation. In their work, as they discuss their data collection and analytic strategies, they reference various S-STEP works indicating how that work guided their analysis. Thus, they integrate the use of intimate scholarship by incorporating it within their methodological explanations. These actions are also present in the Mansur and Friling (2013) work and the Berry (2007) work as they reference studies throughout their work. In contrast, Tan (2014) makes little mention of intimate scholarship or other studies. Since S-STEP work has a holistic quality and resonates as a form of intimate scholarship, other researchers may have difficulty connecting this work and the wider research conversation. When considering the readers from the wider research community we encourage intimate scholars to review intimate scholarship in terms of research content and integrate it into their literature review and other aspects of their work. Moreover, they can explicitly situate their studies within intimate scholarship, in this case S-STEP methodology, and articulate the contribution of other intimate scholars that guide their work.

CONCLUSION We began this work in response to a living contradiction we experience within the S-STEP research community in which Zeichner (1999, 2007) named S-STEP methodology as the most promising within the genre of research on teacher education and then subsequently provided a deep critique of it. As an alternative qualitative research methodology with a focus on intimate scholarship, this situated S-STEP as having/not having promise where as researchers we lived in a limbo that required defense of our ongoing work. We took up this tension and sought to uncover how strong

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studies countered the Zeichner Paradox. Specifically, we examined current studies that seemed to ask questions, connect to the wider research conversations, and integrate findings from earlier S-STEP work. To identify our exemplars, we read through the literature and distinguished three common strands of intimate scholarship. We used these strands to guide our selection. Then using the Framework-for-Inquiry Planner and the Framework-for-Inquiry Planner Analytic Tool (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009), we identified four strong, recent examples of intimate scholarship published in educational journals and as academic books. Using categories from our frameworks in relationship to each other both within and across texts, we uncovered how these studies met the challenge. In our analysis, we focused particularly on how our examination could be helpful to researchers. We found that developing worthy questions is a process that occurs in relationship to curiosity or interest in an idea or practice and those questions are shaped throughout S-STEP research. We could see the ways in which these researchers framed their work within the wider research literature to shape their literature review and the study itself. They also used research beyond intimate scholarship to provide explanations for findings that enabled them to push their understandings even deeper. Thus, in making their study clear, strong intimate scholarship often draws on these resources to explain their practice and the gaps of understanding they explore. Through our analysis of these exemplars, we developed clearer understandings of how intimate scholarship might gain skill in identifying worthwhile questions, frame questions within the wider research conversations in ways that demonstrate significance, and link research from other intimate scholars to focus and illuminate their work. Importantly, we came to new and deeper understanding of intimate scholarship methodology as a process and the ways we as researchers can enliven our contributions to the research base of teaching and teacher education. As researchers we engage in intimate scholarship to develop assertions for action and understanding and refinement of our practice. For intimate scholars, including S-STEP researchers, to make a more critical contribution to teaching and teacher education, we must consider the Zeichner paradox and insure that we address these challenges in the work we do.

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FINAL SUMMARY At times we have wondered how much our perspectives as beginning teacher educators add to the literature because our experiences are similar, in some respects, to those of beginning teachers (Knowles & Cole, 1994). While the teacher socialization literature (e.g., Zeichner & Gore, 1990) has helped us think about our experiences, it has always been ironic for us because we are asked to lead students at a time when we feel just as vulnerable as they do to pressures of socialization, status, and context. We would be the first to admit that becoming a teacher educator shares some features with becoming a teacher (Pinnegar, 1995), but we now realize that it is also quite different from becoming a teacher, in several important ways (Arizona Group, 1995, p. 37). We begin our conclusion with a quote which opens with a wondering around which we still experience tension: How much can and does research that anchored in relational ontology, focused on the particular experience wherein researcher and researched are the same person, and conducted within intimate scholarship contribute to the conversation of research on teaching and teacher education? While we feel we have contributed, we still often re-examine that question. We continue to find it ironic that from our vulnerable vantage point within the context of teacher education, we are asked to lead teachers to become advocates, take on the institutions they are hired into, and enact teaching practices most likely to be productive and most likely to meet resistance from teachers, administrators, and students. Davey (2013) articulates well the tenuous nature of the position of teacher educators in the academy and in their relationship with public schools. While we think we are well socialized, confident in our understanding and know our context, we find the terrain of teacher education always in motion, and the ground uncertain. We have the confidence to act as teacher educators in teacher education at our institutions, but across time and even in this moment things shift. Our status as teacher educators and academics never a highly venerable one is still in flux as we move across our various roles professor in graduate courses, service to and interactions in public schools, work on university committees, and action within our communities and responsibilities. As new deans come and go, teacher education reform 319

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movements recede and return with a vengeance; rank and tenure status documents are renegotiated; new faculty join us and others retire; department structures are adjusted and modified; financial support waxes and wanes; positions and assignments change; and institutional and government policies and mandates are revised, the context in which we work is altered and we re-experience a sense of unease, being new again, uncertainty. Acting as teachers of teachers, we have come to understand as we asserted over two decades ago that what it means to be and become a teacher while they share commonalities is not the same thing as becoming teacher educators. The ethical commitments, moral obligation, and the kind of knowledge needed to teach teachers make the situation more complex and more unstable. The decisions we make about all aspects of teaching practice must be negotiated against the obligation we feel to the education and wellbeing of the students of our students. As we have gained experience and inquired into our practice, experience, thinking and memory, we have also come to understand that being a teacher educator is always a vulnerable place. These shifts in the terrain, our sense of vulnerability, and our knowing of uncertainty are a rich resource for the intimate scholarship we engage in. Like Hamilton (1998), our book ends by a return to our beginnings. Yet, it is through a return to our beginning understandings we are best able to illustrate how as teacher educators we are always in a process of becoming and never quite reach arrival. In Hamilton and Pinnegar (2015) we demonstrated through anchored reinterpretations of early work revisited and reinterpreted from our perspective of feminist, positioning and gender theory, that experience and revisiting it are indeed a rich source for uncovering personal practical knowledge about teaching and teacher education. As teacher educators in today’s context things shift and we develop new, alternative, and multiple interpretations of earlier data and experience. In that work, we were able to articulate through examples that while each subsequent interpretation of the same two pieces of data could be judged trustworthy (and still in play) our current interpretations were also trustworthy our understandings deepened, layered, and more nuanced. What our analysis of the initial quote and our 2014 chapter demonstrate is three things relevant to this book. First, as teacher educators we continue in a process of becoming teacher educators. Second, inquiries conducted from the perspective of intimate scholarship focused on the particular conducted in vulnerability in an unstable space but through intimate scholarship can communicate findings in ways that lead them to be judged trustworthy.

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Finally, (third) intimate scholarship has much to contribute to the research conversation in teaching and teacher education. Our purpose in writing this book has been multiple. We have reasoned using exemplars from our own scholarship, references to the work of other intimate scholars, and arguments from the conversation in research on teacher education that • first, we are always in a process of becoming teacher educators developing embodied and tacit knowledge which are a rich resource for making contributions to educational research, • second, examining our practice, experience, thinking and memory from the perspective of intimate scholarship offers the strongest basis for research oriented to uncovering tacit knowledge, and • inquiries using intimate scholarship as the basis can contribute to the knowledge base of teacher education when issues of credibility are attended to across the process. To articulate the possibility intimate scholarship offers, we draw segments, mostly narrative fragments, from a study focused on our second year as beginning professors (Pinnegar, 1995). While produced by one of us, the fragments we share here come from fragments we both contributed to this earlier work (because the work is unpublished and the fragments were drawn from our data informing the study we do not provide page numbers or references). We will utilize these text fragments to expose our current and former interpretations. Within the earlier interpretive space, as we did in exploring the quote with which we began this conclusion, we will demonstrate that while we have developed deeper understandings concerning what we knew about teacher educator initially we continue to engage in the work of BECOMING. As we unpack segments of this earlier text, we integrate it with other research articulating our understanding of becoming, acting, and knowing as teacher educators within teacher education. We offer these segments in terms of living in the midst and moving backward to move forward in developing understandings of teaching and teacher education. We then turn back to a discussion of how the book enables teacher educators who do or desire to undertake inquiries from the perspective of intimate scholarship to meet obligations and commitments. We look forward to an exploration of how teacher education pedagogy supports teacher educators in all three arenas explored in the book. Finally, we turn toward the potential contribution of international scholarship to teacher education research.

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LIVING IN THE MIDST We begin with fragment from the theoretical framing of the earlier study: The first level of representation suggested by Polkinghorne (1988) as well as the interwoven processes of emplotment and interpretation suggested by Kermode (1980) are similar to a phenomenon discussed by Leitch concerning soap operas, there is no closure. Our narratives do not end they continue. They continue both forward and backward. New experience occurs and old experience suddenly becomes a beginning whereas before it was only event. Kermode (1980) points to the emergence of Judas in the narrative of the betrayal. He speculates that Judas only became a character in the narrative at the point of betrayal and therefore he had to be expanded backward from that point. King (1998) makes a similar point in an essay entitled, “The child is father of the man.” He talks about the ways in which the stories of our childhood, adolescent or other past experience emerge in the current narratives we construct of our lives. In fact sometimes these past events become closure rather than beginning when before we had experienced them as independent narratives or middles.

Our reference to Polkinghorne’s (1988) (first level of narrative linked with the ideas of Kermode, 1980; Leitch, 1986) are similar to points made by Clandinin and Connelly (2000). Before we can tell a narrative we must live the experience. Our becoming teacher educators always begin in living and as Clandinin and Connelly assert both our living and our inquiry into it are always “in the midst.” We have also articulated the significance of the zone of maximal contact based in our reading of Bakhtin (1981), wherein past, present, and future come together at a moment in time and in doing so disrupt what we thought we knew in our past, the impact of the reformulation in our present experience and the reorientation that adjusts and alters the trajectory of future experiences. Our explanation of the way in which an interpretation of an experience or action was initially constructed to provide evidence of our knowing what at that time we were unaware of becomes a starting or ending point of the narrative we construct as evidence. As we assert here this is further complicated by the fact that in order to optimize our evidence or clarify our understanding we may actually place the initial events at the end of the narrative account created. Also of importance is the reference to the story of Judas, who became significant and distinct in the narrative of Jesus Christ after the betrayal at which point his earlier interactions with Christ are uncovered and drawn forward into the current interpretation of the narrative. We know as teacher educators that during preservice teacher education and even in early teaching experience, like Judas our contribution to the

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development of a teacher may be invisible, but if or when teachers become more sure as teachers they can potentially remember their experiences with us and draw forward what they learned and enact it in their current teaching practices. Thus we see from LaBoskey’s (2012) work as she visited teachers who had once been her students both she and they developed new meaning of their earlier experiences together. Stefinee’s (Pinnegar, 2005) work on moral authority as a teacher educator provides other evidence. We have articulated across the book the significance of the zone of maximal contact in our becoming teacher educators and for intimate scholarship focused on understanding teacher education. Here we point out that exploring preservice teachers’ learning from teacher education in their first years of teaching may not provide an accurate picture of their learning. When their thinking and memory result in experience in a zone of maximal contact or zone of inconclusivity, all that they learned from us may be reexperienced and reinterpreted and result in the shifting of their current grounding in practice and re-orient their direction and practice as teachers. Mostly teacher educators think of their contribution to the development of new teachers as dropping off as they enter teaching. However, what our arguments here suggest is that the time we spend with preservice teachers has the potential to continue to inform their development as teachers and sometimes even as teacher educators (see Bullough, 2005). These understandings offer hope to teacher educators about the durability of their work.

MOVING FORWARD BY LOOKING BACKWARD We explore here one theme in our work that accounts for tensions around learning narrative frames that could make our experience as teacher educators more coherent and more livable in the concrete (for additional themes see Arizona Group, 1997). This theme focused on how to make sense of our lives in the midst of living them. Since we negotiate and make meaning as we experience life, (Polkinghorne’s (1988) first level of narrative and Clandinin and Connelly’s (2000) articulated pattern of living, telling, retelling, and reliving to reimagine it), we argued that we created frames backward. In our accounts of our second years, we note tension around bringing the disparate pieces of our lives into a coherent narrative that accounted for the whole. This excerpt quoted here is representative of our attempts of bringing experience into coherence. We present one of our

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experiences with a child, that captures this tension in learning the narrative of interactions with the schools from the space of being busy academics in a household where both parents are trying to create a narrative of their own lives as well as negotiate the balance of the narrative of parent, child, and schools: Some mornings just getting [my child] to school with a bag of cheerios to eat …on the way and a taste or two of milk as [my child] sails out the door is about all I can manage. But every day, it’s making sure [the child] has the snack, are [the] gym shoes back at school because [my child] wore them home last time, did I remember something for show and tell not on any day but only on [my child’s] day to have show and tell. Did we do the activity on the activity list, can we find the activity list … The teacher only wants things on the day that they are due. So the teacher sends home the picture money thing. We send it back the next day. She says I don’t want this until next Tuesday. We get a reminder next Tuesday, but what if we can’t find the check by then. I know how hard it is as a teacher to keep track of stuff so I understand, but I wonder at households other than my own and their ability to do what the teacher wants. (10-23-90, K.)

This narrative fragment captures the discontinuous quality of experience in trying to live the narrative. Notice the immediacy in the language in the tense of the passage and in the questions that interrupt and the question about how do people bring this piece into harmony into a lived narrative which creates a way to both live and tell the narrative of academic lives differently not only in the telling but also in smoothing the living? This segment provides insight into and evidence of the way in which intimate scholarship exists in between spaces. This narrative fragment from our second year documents that while teacher educators attempt to negotiate and reconcile obligations from multiple priorities both the personal and the public the vary act of negotiation leaves intimate scholars vulnerable. We make visible here our floundering as a teacher educator and its disruptive impact on our trying to enact our plot of teacher educator in relationship to our lives as human beings. We also reveal our knowing of being a teacher and the needs a busy teacher has for parents to support her in being organized and meeting the competing demands of her life. In the description of the demands of the teacher on parents and the struggle of this teacher educator to meet those demands, the details position the teacher educator to see herself as incompetent as a mother and a professional. The fragment enables us to see how collecting data about our experience provides evidence that intimate scholarship exists in a position of vulnerability and it reveals intimate scholars themselves as vulnerable. It also makes obvious how the particular details of a lived experience coupled with an interpretation reveal the disrupting power of everyday life. Implicit and

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interpretable from the fragment there is evidence of the potential competing and conflicting stories (Olson & Craig, 2005) the teacher educator lives. The shadow of these two kinds of stories provides depth of meaning and allows the reader to embrace the experience revealed as their own in contrast or similarity with their own lives. While this data emerged in the second year or our experience as academics, we continue to experience similar conflicting and competing stories around issues of student teaching, curriculum making, and program reform. Research focused on our particular experiences (similar to interpreting this narrative fragment) could potentially provide knowledge about such practices and experiences. The fragment made explicit the power of taking the stance of relational ontology in developing trustworthiness in our studies. The emotion is identifiable here and whether vulnerability emerges around trying to be the competent and professional mother or some other negotiation of roles, teacher educators can identify with the emotion and tension revealed, relating it to their own negations of conflicting roles and responsibilities. Events disrupt and dislodge us and when we design or take up inquiry from the orientation of self into our experiences, our practice, or our memories, we are positioned to uncover new or deeper understandings about our work. Such inquiries provide insight into how teacher educators develop understanding of how we can create coherence among the disparate roles and responsibilities that make up practice. Significant in relation to this fragment is the fact that we experience our lives today more than 20 years into our profession similarly. Not every day, but often enough the competing demands of the role of teacher educator researcher professor disrupt the coherence of the narrative we are currently living, as we experience these times we usually engage in wondering. We explore what the incoherence reveals and we engage in reimagining what is important, who we are, and who we might be as teacher educators. The next fragment captures the immediacy of trying to live lives as we focus to bring action and time together: I feel like I can’t get my life together on one plane (geometrically speaking). It seems to have shattered like a glass and I can’t get the pieces picked up and reformed in some way. I think this is partly true because I filled up my calendar the year ended and I haven’t taken time to get a new one and so I always have the uncomfortable feeling that I have missed an important meeting … it is these details that upend me. (1-11-93)

This passage speaks to the difficulty of bringing our practices and experiences as teacher educators into a coherent whole. In this text the

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planner is a prop that in a physical concrete way had enabled getting the varied aspects of life on the same plane. Simple events, such as failing to get a new planner, can interrupt the smooth flow of our lives and reveal all that we are juggling and negotiating. Everyday experiences and alterations enable the intimate scholar to re-see and rethink, as well as uncover tacit, embodied, and practical knowledge. As we have argued in our explanation about designing inquiries based in intimate scholarship, when planning studies we need to be aware of these interruptions because these occurrences make visible our embodied knowing. Probing into these disruptions and collecting evidence about them allows us to more fully explore what we know and develop research accounts of that knowing. Intimate scholarship is orientated to ontology what is. An important part of our knowing is embedded within the understandings we have of time within our practice. Further, the disruption of our sense of time and timing provides evidence of what we tacitly know within and across our practice. All of us expressed issues with negotiating time in our second year (and similar struggles with time still occupy us). This is captured best by this earlier text fragment: Profuse apologies. No matter how late I stay up each night, there are not enough hours in a day to complete everything. Of course, that is no excuse. I often pray for more time, but it never comes. (10-28-90, L)

Just as Bereiter and Scardamalia (1993) claim that experts sit at the edge of their knowledge ready to adjust that knowledge, experienced people are able to live their experience backwards. They anticipate what is coming and a central part of that expectation is that what is coming will be unique and potentially disruptive. They sit at the edge of their expertise so that they can adjust, respond, and develop deeper expertise in the midst of their experiences. Thus, they seek to identify, recognize, and respond quickly to the unique, the things that seem similar to what has gone before but is actually different. They position themselves in the space of becoming. In our work focused on our particular experiences and practices in our second year as well as today, we recognize that projects end and beginnings have sprung up in the midst. As we live life, in the moment we do not know what is or is going to be a beginning, middle, or end. What feels like beginning to us is often more of the same to our colleagues, or it may be an ending that we don’t know is happening. As experienced teacher educators within the contexts and terrain of teacher education, we are no more cognizant of what will become of importance, what signals something is ending. In our second year we felt we were consigned as newcomers to living our

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life in middles that may feel like beginnings or endings. We recognize now that we are still living our lives in middles, but because of our past experiences we can make better guesses about what is significant. In discussing data collection in inquiry, we presented the need to identify data sources and collection techniques and strategies that will create and evidentiary trail that allows them to unearth beginnings and identify endings so they can develop deeper understandings of their experiences. Such evidence also allows them to reconsider, reframe, and reconfigure beginnings, middles, and ends in ways that allow intimate scholars to explore their knowing more intensely. A narrative fragment around the issue of restructuring in teacher education provides opportunity to develop interesting insight: We have been asked by our Dean to reconsider and reinvent the ways we do teacher education. We have been meeting regularly for a year but it doesn’t seem to me that we have moved. (8-21-93)

As teacher educators across our careers, we have been engaged in restructuring our teacher education programs continually. The first time as we listened to the complex and cogent discussion and argument we expected change to happen but while we are meeting, discussing, planning the narratives we live and we saw others lived seemed actually more of the same. Such insight enabled us to see the stability of practice and the need to be strategic and purposeful if we wanted the theory we were developing to live in our practice. Knowing the narrative frames of the culture which allow for a perception of stability on the uncertain ground of lived experience, people are able to resolve the conflicts about what matters and what does not. We argued in analysis of the fragment above that because we were newcomers when we took stands, made decisions about how to spend our time or whether to speak or be silent, we were constantly being surprised either pleasantly or unpleasantly by our colleagues, by our students, and by our families. Explorations conducted from the perspective of intimate scholarship enable us to explore the mechanisms of context and institutional constraint that enable an image of sameness, even though then and now we are still surprised sometimes startled by others responses to our actions. These moments of surprise and wonder, open space where intimate scholars can reveal knowledge that lies under experience and action in teacher education. Mansur and Friling (2013) were surprised by student response to a well-designed activity in their teacher education program. In taking up a more systematic study of the events, they were able to uncover the tension

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between holding on and letting go in creating better learning spaces within teacher education in their Israeli context. We make an assertion here about the ability of experienced people to resolve conflicts about what matters and what does not. We also argue that it may appear that as a result of experience we are better able to sort out what matters and what to attend to, but we also realize we are not as secure in that knowing as we thought we would be. We continue to struggle to bring our commitments together in coherence and the disruptions in coherence contribute to our sense of becoming. Attention to what disturbs and interrupts our knowing is made more visible to us and more available for exploration. As we reconsider this segment against our current experience and perspective, we also realize we may, as experienced people, be able to live our experience backwards to make reasonable predictions about what is vital and what is less so. However, we sometimes still have difficulty negotiating so that we can live our lives on a single plane. We see fairly clearly now that what we thought was a temporary status probably is not. Disruptions in time and our struggle to meet competing demands is an interesting place for considering what is and how the vagaries of time impact our actions and practices as teacher educators. A dimension of interpretation within narrative inquiry (Clandinin, 2013) is time. The researcher in analyzing data is encouraged to move the trajectory of an experience forward and backward in time. In this process, the researcher can uncover how things came to be the way they are as well as how it might currently be different if the past were altered. With experience we become more comfortable with living our life in the middle within a context whose shape we may more clearly understand. But it is when we are brought up short and find ourselves in spaces of unpredictability, that opportunity to explore context and process become more available. These are aspects of teacher education that are almost completely hidden in more typical research methodologies. Since usually this sense of disruption is intuitive and based in our tacit knowing. We are aware that we are confident to act even though we have a clear understanding that things will probably seldom meet closure at least in a way that we can talk about it in this time sphere. The previous series of narrative fragments and our exploration of them provide concrete evidence of the fluid and expanding features of lived time that we discuss in our analysis of identity formation, designing inquiries and attending to this fluidity in constructing inquiries. It also captures the turbulence of being in the midst and trying to build coherence. We recognize how the discourse of teacher education across all of our experience in

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teacher education is always about the failure of teacher education and the need to do things differently. Ironically, the studies of intimate scholarship suggest that teacher education is consistently involved in experimentation. Intimate scholars are uniquely positions to explore the mechanisms underlying our sense that stability and change exist simultaneously. Understanding the mechanisms of innovation and tradition as they exist in concert with each other, enables intimate scholars in seeing how creating frames backward is one way to develop an understanding of tradition. As teacher educators, our careers have been a long narrative of living through waves of teacher education reform. In the midst of these reform efforts; however, traditions live on. We express our early difficulty with tradition. In our letters to each other, we often discuss the problematics of secrecy. Kermode (1980) argues that narrative is the product of intertwined processes of presenting the narrative and its progressive interpretation. The presentation of the narrative laying out the plot, setting the events in an order which indicates how they are connected and inter connected moves toward clarity but the progressive interpretation also leads toward distortions or secrecy and the distortions cover secrets. As inquired into our experience and considered the “others” around us, especially those with experience, we recognized then and we see in our own lives now no matter how uncertain they sometimes feel that we have and they had two kinds of narratives which made lives, on the surface at least, easier. We have identified first the individual frames of narrative we developed allowing us to create order and in many senses to allow us now to live our lives backwards. As beginners in a new context, attempting to negotiate unfamiliar plot lines and positioning, we struggled to find narrative frames which would enable us to do the same. An additional frame is the narrative code of tradition how things are done here at this time and in these circumstances. This represents the cultural code. We talk of not knowing this code. When we make suggestions, we bump up against this code unknowingly but because we appear linguistically competent (we can talk the talk) this bumping may appear intentional to our colleagues. Even if they understand, that we really do not know the tradition, in the lived interactions with them they sometimes blamed and we felt at fault or sometimes simply bewildered. One of us expressed it this way: Figuring out the School of Education was much more difficult. As a matter of fact, I still have not figured it out. I still don’t understand the history and the myth. Tradition is an oft-used word here. Tradition, tradition, tradition. Sometimes I will mention issues and you can see wounds appear…there are secret, sad issues among all departments.

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Whenever you bump up against the issues you get a lecture from someone or another… but they never tell you anything beforehand. There are no warnings. There is only tradition. (11.9-90, L)

Tradition becomes problematic when one does not know the traditions. Within faculties, the traditions themselves often mask deep wounds of past experiences shared by colleagues and not by those who are beginning us. In some way, it seemed that when, because we were new, we caused a revisiting of experience behind the traditions we in that moment were blamed for the original event. As teacher educators gain experience within a context, we are less likely to say things or act in ways that force old unresolved but buried conflicts into the limelight through our bungling within the system. The community is frustrated to be confronted by past events and attaches their bad experiences with those earlier events to us rather than to the earlier situations where they were constructed. What was ended long ago becomes mixed into the newly constructed narrative of shared experience and the unpleasantness associated with the event may become associated not so much with the earlier event but with the new revisiting of it. Again, as past experiences are drawn forward into contact, with current experience, reinterpretation and instantiation are enabled. We struggled as beginners to narrate our lives in the midst of these past, culturally shared narratives called traditions caused difficulty because we were unknowing of two parts of the hidden code. The two codes obscured for us were linguistic competence on the one hand and understanding of how to live the experience, on the other. We struggled to find colleagues who could help us make sense and chart a path through. The value of the process of dialogue which engages us in collaborating with others to develop understandings the basis of knowing in intimate scholarship is evident as a research tool which has practical application since it informs us in knowing and in doing teacher education. Engaging in dialogue could enable us in charting a path through. Taking up examination of these hidden codes and traditions opens new avenues for developing new knowledge of teacher education practices. Examining traditions using inquiry through intimate scholarship can contribute to the knowledge base for teacher education. Across our careers and in our investigations into teacher education, we attempt to live and understand the process of employment imposing a sequencing, and explanatory order on this raw data of experience. This focus on employment is evident not just in retelling experience but also in the struggle to create a plot of the complex intertwining of our experience which will enable us to live the story of our lives without being in a

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constant state of surprise. We have come to recognize that like Clandinin (1995), we across our career have attempted to disrupt the sacred story of teacher education that is enshrined in the traditions of teacher education we inherited. We, like Clandinin, have not settled comfortably within the traditions of teacher education and examination of our resistance has the potential to contribute understanding about how to alter teacher education. Our experience in becoming teacher educators leads to patterns and practices we enact which grow out of both experience and our understanding of it. We argue here that exploring these from our own perspective and the adjustment of our practices in accordance provide new insight into teacher education and the lives and practices of teacher educators.

DISRUPTING OUR TURN Before we take our last turn toward conclusion, we want to acknowledge again the work of Deleuze. We think that each step through this text along the pathways we have described opens and challenges and seeks the differences beyond the ordinary. where you ask not about interpretation but about what an idea or action does to help us gain insight about ideas and in this case about teaching and teacher education. Colebrook (2002) sums up part of Deleuze’s work that we have taken to heart: You don’t interpret…by using philosophy; you allow the experience…to transform and renovate….Thinking is not translation: what does this film [or book or idea] mean? it is transformation: what does this film [or book or idea] do? And this question of the power or force of a theory…or a text means that we need to look at all events of life not as things to be interpreted but as creations that need to be selected and assessed according to their power to act and intervene in life…. (p. xliv)

She points to his work (1989) and draws on a quote that captures our experiences as teacher educators and the ways we hear people talk about teacher education …theory too is something which is made…, [not]… pre-existent, ready-made in a prefabricated sky… theory is itself a practice… It is a practice of concepts, and it must be judged in the light of the other practices with which it interferes … It is at the level of the interference of many practices that things happen, beings, images, concepts, all the kinds of events. (Deleuze 1989, p. 280)

As Deleuze did throughout his life, here he is again challenging us to bring new lines of thinking to the ways we build our understandings assemblages and consider what our ideas do to propel us forward in

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life and for us, propel our thinking forward regarding teaching and teacher education.

IDENTITY, INTIMATE SCHOLARSHIP, INQUIRY, AND CONTRIBUTIONS TO RESEARCH Living as teacher educators takes place in the midst of life surrounded by our partners, our children, our friends, our colleagues, our students, and more. We tell stories to understand our experience or to soothe our troubles or to position ourselves within our world…. This chapter examines … the tensions between knowledge and living as teachers, teacher educators, and teacher educator researchers. Here, we make a deliberate connection among teacher teacher educators (TEds) teacher educator researchers (TEdRs) because for us the tensions and connections are ever-present and the position and power of those roles are never static. (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2011, p. 47)

As the quote makes clear, relationships are fundamental to our work as teacher educators. Teacher educators who take up inquiries into their identity formation as teacher educators from the perspective of intimate scholarship base their work in a relational ontology (see Slife, 2004 and our chapters in the intimate scholarship section). Teacher educator/researchers live in a tension between their relationships based obligations to two arenas of practice (1) their local action as teachers and teacher educators within an institutional program and context to prepare quality teachers and (2) their commitment to contributing to the larger research conversations as teacher educators. Both of these commitments enable teacher educators to meet their obligations to the unseen children and youth the students of those they educate (Hamilton, Pinnegar, & Guilfoyle, 1997). This book has made explicit our understandings of and thinking about the concepts and practices that enable teacher educator researchers to meet these obligations. Based in our understanding that teacher educators are always in a process of becoming, we have explored the dynamics of teacher educators’ identity formation articulating the processes involved and the knowledge that could be uncovered so that teacher educator researchers can make unique contributions to research on teaching and teacher education. In order to make such contributions, we assert intimate scholarship holds the greatest promise. To support teacher educators in taking up this orientation to research we review the characteristics of intimate scholarship. Inquiry from the orientation of intimate scholarship enables teacher educators to meet their dual commitments stated earlier.

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Uncovering the embodied, tacit knowledge that teacher educator researchers hold requires that they examine within their contexts particular phenomenon, experiences, and practices that are central in their process of identity formation. Undertaking inquiry from the perspective of intimate scholarship focused on the intractable and particular that disrupt and confirm our knowing and being as a teacher educator places unique demands on scholarship. Studies positioned in this way and taken up from this orientation must attend to communicating their rigor, credibility and trustworthiness in every part of the research account and in their design of the inquiry (as we articulated in the section on inquiry). Teacher educators are always in a state of becoming. They experience disequilibrium and stasis, attachment and separation, conflict and cooperation and any action, response or reflection shift their thinking of teaching, teacher education, and themselves as teacher educators. Thus, it is that the experiences they have, the problems they reflect on and respond to, the interactions they have with students, their engagement with public schools (as individuals or as institutions), the experiences in their private lives, their interactions with other teacher educators, the things they learn, the curriculum they develop and implement, and the practices they attempt shape them as teacher educators. The shifts in their becoming teacher educators and their ongoing reflection into that process guide them to new ideas, new inquiries, and new practices. The process involved in becoming teacher educators, taking up the name of teacher educator, and reflection on these things provides both focus and fodder to guide their inquiry. What we argue (and believe) is that teacher educators are always becoming teacher educators and are engaged wholeheartedly in this endeavor. Therefore, as they act in openness, take responsibility for their practice and use research tools and practices to reflect on their work, the disruptions, transformations, negotiations, and even smooth places and experiences in their practice are potential arenas for inquiry.

TURNING TO PEDAGOGY AND PRACTICE So much of what teacher educators is tacit, embodied, and practical knowledge. As teacher educators explore what we know in systematic ways as it is revealed in our thinking and action Careful explorations of where we chose to look and what we choose to concentrate on when we observe

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student or practicing teachers, how experiences in life or reading and studying lead us to see our practice or teacher education differently, what we choose to say to our students in our e-mails and interactions, what we assign students to do and the ways we guide and evaluate them and how we interact in designing and planning programs hold the promise of revealing to ourselves our embodied practical knowledge. Such studies can make a contribution to research on teacher education. Inquiring into tacit knowledge shapes and transforms what we know and as we study what we know we become more intentional in our practice, make new connections and develop deeper understandings. Intimate scholars make a commitment to communicate the things they come to understand in and about their practice or experience to the research conversation informing teaching and teacher education. They also commit to enacting in their practice the understandings they develop. In this way, they engage in a continuous process of change, adjustment, modification, participation, and improvement both in their own life and practice as well as in teacher education more broadly. As we are becoming teacher educators our response to our obligation to teach a new generation of teachers who will provide just, sensitive, learning spaces and places in their practice is usually a pedagogic one. The response is to create better institutional, programmatic, and classroom teaching experiences for those participating in teacher education. Pedagogy, as Smith (2012) explained, is not just about teaching: Pedagogy needs to be explored through the thinking and practice of those educators who look to accompany learners; care for and about them; and bring learning into life. Teaching is just one aspect of their practice. (http://infed.org/mobi/what-is-pedagogy/. Retrieved on October 22, 2014)

We become teachers and teacher educators within the pedagogy and context of teacher education. We recognize that in their practice and learning as teacher candidates or practicing teachers those we work with are also in the process of becoming. For theory and practice to inform each other as teachers are becoming teachers, teacher educators must design, interlace, negotiate, take advantage of and develop experiences and opportunities for inquiry and reflection that will facilitate positive development for teachers within teacher education. In other words, teacher educators are deeply concerned with devising practices and programs that respond to research and engage preservice and in-service teachers in activities, relationships, thinking, and doing that bring to life their learning in becoming teachers.

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As they develop pedagogy, teacher educators position themselves to inquire into the practices and processes they engage in and develop. Identity formation orients teacher educators to particular aspects of their experience, practice and life as teacher educators and pedagogy or concerns with it are the context in which the inquiry emerges and is conducted. Therefore, just as relationships and their ebb and flow are basic to research on experience, thinking, and practice of teacher educators within intimate scholarship, so is the development and enactment of pedagogy. As we respond to our learning in becoming teacher educators through inquiries directed by intimate scholarship many of our responses will be pedagogic ones. Inquiring into the pedagogic actions we take (individually or institutionally) can make important contributions. Inquiries directed by intimate scholarship enable teacher educator researchers to uncover and explore the understandings we develop of our experience, thinking and practice often through studying our thinking, reflection on, and design of pedagogy.

THE PROMISE OF INTIMATE SCHOLARSHIP IN THE INTERNATIONAL ARENA International research and ideas can inform us but they are not generalizable in the traditional modernist way. We recognize that while the language across teacher education programs is often similar supervisor, mentor, field experience, course work, reflection, portfolio, student teaching. The context constrains and shapes the knowing represented by that terms within particular space where meaning making grew. We can understand more deeply and see more clearly the potential for what being a teacher educator means when we see the subtle nuances and drastic differences that emerge in the roles, responsibilities, and obligations that teacher educators hold across cultural, country, community, and institutional boundaries. Embracing and engaging with intimate scholarship instead we thoughtfully consider what such studies reveal as they get played out in the particulars of place, time and context. As we have argued, inquiries into the practices, experiences, thinking and memory of teacher educators in cultural contexts, policy arenas and educational politics beyond our own national boundaries, enables us to get beyond the grip our own contexts often hold in restricting our thinking. Inquiries undertaken from the space of personal knowing within a context, allow other teacher educators to imagine how

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things might be otherwise. It enables them to adjust, reconsider the limits the constraints of our space might impose. Intimate Scholarship informs across national boundaries by allowing us to see, up close and personal the experiences and practices of those in other contexts reveals new possibilities for understanding and developing pedagogies of teacher education that meet the demands of our particular place and time.

DISCUSSION OF INTERNATIONAL CONNECTIONS When we think of the education of children nationally and/or globally there seems to an almost universal desire to provide education for all. Yet, war, poverty, life experiences and more affect how we might think about “universal” and “all.” For us, it seems that conversations around views of teaching and teacher education appear static and unfocused. We also see that many studies act as if global equals universal where teaching, teachers, and teacher education have the same definitions around the world. In this text we hope to weave the works of international scholars into our discussions as we value that work and have been influenced by many scholars beyond our national boundaries. Although our text looks at issues of identity and inquiry, not on international teacher education, per se, we have worked hard to include an international array of sources that have shaped our thinking. Currently there are texts (Craig & Orland-Barak, 2014, 2015, 2016; Darling-Hammond & Lieberman, 2012, for example) that offer insights into international research and pedagogy in teaching and teacher education. What we are aware of but do not often see is the attention to differences that recognize distinctions from one country to the next (the works of Craig & OrlandBarak offer exceptions). In an earlier work (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2013c), we explored what might be learned about the terrain of teaching and teacher education and its related research as we looked across prominent international publications. We described the educational research landscape, marking similarities, differences, absences and presence in the international research conversation. We thought what we could learn about teaching and teacher education from a global perspective might allow us to reconsider how attention to contextual issues from which the research emerged might open our understandings of ways to improve the experiences of children and youth in school through the education of their teachers. We think that many times the meaning of concepts and research findings presented as universal for teaching and teacher education actually vary from country to country. The central purpose of teacher education may 337

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focus on the preparation of students for the profession of teaching. Yet, context of shared understanding may matter in the interpretation of such findings. What is true in Brazil about teacher education may not be true in The Netherlands, may not be true in the United States and so on. To explore the terrain of teaching and teacher education, we must explore it with a 21st century sensibility and in consideration we will construct the knowledge base for the teachers and teacher educators on the terrain. In our excursions into this literature, we visited UNESCO, OECD, and other published reports (e.g., OECD, 2004, 2005, 2010a, 2010b; UNESCO, 2004, 2005, 2008, 2010) along with journal articles and book chapters that focused on comparative studies of teaching and teacher education (e.g., Alexander, 2000; Bray & Qin, 2001; Chistolini, 2010; Czerniawski, 2009; Ingersoll, 2007; McDonald, 2007). We were interested to see that across the globe; there has been considerable work written about who prepares teachers and how teachers are prepared. There have been studies that focus generally on teachers (Stanat & Christensen, 2006; Stoel & Thant, 2002; Wang, Coleman, Coley, & Phelps, 2003; Dengerink, Lunenberg, & Kools, 2015; Lefoka, Slabbert, & Clarke, 2014; Martinez, 2008, for example) and studies that focus more specifically on content areas (Akiba, LeTendre, & Scribner, 2007; Niess 2005; Stigler & Hiebert, 1999; Van Es & Sherin 2008; Vratulis & Dobson, 2008). From the various reports we found general information that allowed us an opportunity to contrast and generalize similarities/distinctions among countries (see Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2013c, for more detail) including information on classrooms, safety, income, and life experiences. We wondered and wonder still about the usefulness of assuming that similarities or differences represent an understanding of contexts of schooling and education in our world. We wonder how constrained and blended by our own contexts of action and interaction and how capable we are of understanding the experience of tech educators in other countries. Although within the past few years more works have been published on teacher educators (Ben-Peretz, Kleeman, Reichenberg, & Shimoni, 2013; Davey, 2013; Ho¨kka¨, Etela¨pelto, & Rasku-Puttonen, 2012; Murray, 2014, to name a few), we continue to find an approach to the work that either privileges American authors or assumes that there is or can be a universal approach to teacher education. Gingras and Moshab-Natanson (2010) note this imbalance when more international authors are cited by authors from outside North America and identify authors who are/are not dependent upon European or North American sources. When we consider this, we wonder about the research base that guides the preparation of teachers

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and teacher educators. We wonder: if we prepare teacher educators to prepare teachers based mostly on works found within a single country, are we providing the best preparation for the profession they will enter? Importantly, from our perspective teacher educators can be described differently across a variety of contexts. We recognize that the use of categories allows readers to look across the differences in attempts to understand our world. As we do, similarities emerge, among content areas, political positioning, and some characteristics of the teachers and/or teacher educators. In turn, we consider the ease with which we could universalize understandings and overlook differences. For example, in elementary programs where we have a stronger sense of the developmental process for children and what adults need to do in relation to those children, it seems easy to generalize. As those students progress in their schooling and develop into adolescents, comparisons can be more difficult. We recognize that context matters, fundamentally. Building on our assertion about valuing the work of scholars beyond our borders, Anderson-Levitt (2014a) addresses absent authors and content from journals based in the United States. She points to the judgment of a manuscript’s “significance” as part of the problem when that significance is considered from the context of one country. Anderson-Levitt also points out that we can: easily miss the significance of research conducted in other parts of the world for two reasons—because we are unfamiliar with the social and historical context that makes the problems studied important, and because we do not participate in the linguistically and nationally bounded conversations that define the author’s questions as interesting. (p. 8)

Acknowledging the social importance and intellectual contribution of non-North American authors would open our understandings the relevant, critical issues in teaching and teacher education. In another work, AndersonLevitt (2014b) continues to promote attention to international research and offers suggestions that will, potentially, bring more international work into American journals. In her role as editor of several journals, she finds that national, “differences in what counts as ‘important’ research mean that reviewers are more likely to question the value of a study on a topic or location that they do not see as central to their own part of the world.” Additionally, using the work of Lillis and Curry (2010) for support she warns against labeling an “international perspective” as one that means, “issues as they are defined locally within the USA” (p. 349).

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GLOBALIZATION All that happens affect us within our world. More than 20 years ago, Robertson (1992) defined globalization as, “the compression of the world and the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole” (p. 8). Looking at the world he saw permeable boundaries between societies … subject to ‘interference and constraint’ from outside … . international affairs [that] are themselves increasingly complicated and oriented to the outside by a variety of factors, including greater consciousness of other societies, allegiances to groups within other societies, economic penetration and the ‘internationals’ of national economies. (p. 5)

Robertson contended that a, “global ‘whole’ … means that we need to see where individual and constructions of the individual, as well as humankind, fit” (p. 6). In his view, globalization, “recognizes the pressures on societies, civilizations, and representatives of traditions, including both ‘hidden’ and ‘invented’ traditions, to sift the global-cultural scene for ideas and symbols considered to be relevant to their own identities” (p. 46). For him, globalization emerges when we expand our view of cultures to embrace ideas and symbols, affirm rather than deny the complexity and diversity found in our world. More recently, Boli and Lechner (2009) echo this sentiment when they point to the potential impossibility of providing a “conceptual analysis of the term globalization” (p. 321) because the breadth of definitions and interpretations. Scholte (2005) notes that no pure globality exists and globalization, “substantially rather than wholly transcends territorial space” (p. 77).

THEORIES The ways that scholars consider globalization vary. As summarized by Spring (2008), Anderson-Levitt (2003a, 2003b) and others, there are (at least) four theoretical possibilities. For the purpose of our discussion, we attend to World Culture and the Local Variability approaches. Scholars who support the World Culture approach suggest that cultures are merging into a single global culture. These scholars believe that countries look to this world culture when planning schooling and other institutions (Spring, 2008). Furthermore, they argue that not only has the model of modern mass education spread from a common source, but that over

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time schools around the world become more similar (Anderson-Levitt, 2008). While the World Culture approach is a grand sociological theory about modern nation-states… [its] theorists argue that a single global model of schooling has spread around the world as part of the diffusion of a more general cultural model of the modern nation-state … . (Anderson-Levitt, 2003a, p. 2)

Some authors who explore the TIMSS research (Stigler, Gonzales, Kawanaka, Knoll, & Serrano, 1999; Stigler, Gallimore, & Hiebert, 2000) use the findings to support this theoretical approach (Baker & LeTendre, 2005, for example). Although these theorists acknowledge the social construction of culture as a foundation, they also recognize convergence. Consequently, they propose a process similar to that expressed by Robertson concerning globalization where individuals embrace ideas and symbols from other cultures that will work in their own cultures around the world and take up similar ideas and symbols particularly around public institutions. World Culture theorists suggest that convergence occurs as a global culture emerges. Scholars who take up the Local Variability approach emphasize cultural variation and encourage the lending of or learning from educational ideas within a global context. These scholars reject the views of World-Cultural theorists the view that national elites select the best model of schooling from a world culture of education and incorporate it into the local culture resulting in increased similarity among cultures. Furthermore, they question the ideas that models of schooling are simply imposed on local cultures (Anderson-Levitt, 2003a, 2008; Spring, 2008, 2015). Local Variability theorists assert that local people may borrow from multiple global models without a turn toward a universal culture. In fact, Local Variability theorists stress the existence of different knowledges and different ways of seeing and knowing the world (Spring, 2008, 2015). Local Variability theorists recognize a multiplicity of knowledges and express concern about suppression of some ideas by others, but they do not necessarily agree that more powerful actors impose culture without support (AndersonLevitt, 2002). Turning toward a view that includes both World Culture and Local Variability theorists, we see possibilities for citations and context would little value in a converging world. Anderson-Levitt (2008) points out that World Culture theorists, “claim that nations freely adopt common ideas not because the ideas are truly better, but simply because leaders perceive them as modern and better. [This approach] emphasizes the social

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construction of reality rather than material cultures [and] downplays power relations” (p. 350). When defining globalization, Boli and Thomas (1999a, 1999b) suggest that, “the universalistic (transnational, global) level of cultural and organizational formation that operates as a constitutive and directive environment for states …” and find people to be, “creative innovators who are the one and only source of change, adaptation, and restricting in response to situational contingencies” (Boli & Thomas, 1999a, p. 4). Moreover, Boli and Thomas (1999a, 1999b); Lechner and Boli (2012). argue that that “the world has been conceptualized as a unitary social system, increasingly integrated by networks of exchange, competition, and cooperation, such that actors have found it ‘natural’ to view the whole world as their arena of action and discourse” (p. 14). They do find that culture lies at the heart of world development … cultural conceptions do more than orient action; they also constitute actors. People draw on worldwide cultural principles that define actors as individuals having inherent needs, emotions and capacities and they act in accordance with such principles. Worldwide constructs provide social identities, roles, and subjective selves by which individuals rationally organize to pursue their interests. (1999b, p. 17)

However, they find that, “culture is global because it is held to be applicable everywhere in the world. World-Cultural models are presumed to be universally valid usually by functional-imperative reasoning (p. 18) … with humans everywhere seen as having similar needs and desires” (p. 35). Their later works (Lechner & Boli, 2012, for example) refines these assertions and develops them. Akiba, LeTendre, and Scribner (2007), for example, state that, “globally, the United States appears to be one of many countries instituting higher standards and certification for teachers (see Steiner-Khamsi, 2004)” (p. 371) and in their research they find that, “teachers around the world can readily recognize (and critique) course curriculum concepts and instructional strategies across a wide range of nations (Stigler & Hiebert, 1999)” (p. 372). World Culture theorists look at the TIMSS data along with data on improvement of student learning, and feel they have identified a global cultural dynamics (OECD, 2004, 2005; UNESCO, 2006). Echoing Wang, Coleman, Coley, and Phelps (2003), they assert that similar structure and content of undergraduate teacher education programs exist across countries, including courses in subject content and pedagogy and field experience. Taking this idea one step further, Spring (2008, 2015) and Baker and LeTendre (2005) suggest that a standardized world curriculum with related measures for assessment may occur in the near future. These

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researchers present strong and cogent arguments that convergence is happening throughout the world with most countries looking toward the West as a model and they offer a convincing argument. As Anderson-Levitt (2002) notes, researchers should not be deceived by a common vocabulary for curriculum and pedagogy, since terms have different definitions in different places and involve seeing people and places in the midst of their lives. Local Variability theorists, “emphasize national variation, not to mention variation from district to district and from classroom to classroom. From their point of view, the nearly 200 national school systems in the world today represent some 200 different and diverging cultures of schooling” (Anderson-Levitt, 2003a, p. 1). Anderson-Levitt and colleagues (2003b) challenge World Culture theorists, showing for example, that inside the local terrain of teaching and teacher education terms and processes differ and similar terms do not always translate to similar practices. With this approach, policy is much less homogenous than World Culture theory might imply with teachers and other local individuals sometimes resisting, always transforming the official models they are given. Nonetheless, Anderson-Levitt (2003a) reminds us that, by looking globally, we might see something we might miss when we focus on the local. In fact, ideas about education do cross cultures and a global view does indicate models of dominance and power that affect educators in local situations. Anderson-Levitt (2008) purports that countries seem to have a potentially converging curriculum do engage in similar sounding dialogues about how curriculum should be reformed. Indeed, she indicates that international educators tend to agree/disagree about the same issues. While reforms around the world claim allegiance to the certain theoreists, interpretation of their ideas can vary dramatically. In other words, while theories of John Dewey and Lev Vygotsky may be used as the foundation for curricular design actual practices will often be dissimilar. What happens in the classrooms vary widely (Alexander, 2000). Wide resouce disparities lead to classroom and school disparities. Additionally, even when patterns exist across countries such as found in TIMSS national patterns, those patterns occur within local cultures and create varied impact. For example, Stigler and Hiebert (1999) suggest that looking, “across cultures is one of the best ways to see beyond the blinkers and sharpen our view of ourselves” (p. x) and they note that these differences, which appear so [small] within our culture, are [overwhelmed] by the gap in general methods of teaching that exist across cultures. We are not talking about

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a gap in teachers’ competence but about a gap in teaching methods. These cross-cultural differences in methods are instructive because they allow us to see ourselves in new ways. (p. x)

Stigler and Hiebert (1999) note the limits to teaching mathematics in the United States with a focus on teaching procedural skills, learned through repeated practice. In contrast, Japanese instruction of mathematics includes conceptual understanding developed through problem-solving and discussion. In fact, summarized their findings like this: I believe I can summarize the many differences among the teaching styles …In Japanese lessons, there is … mathematics on one hand and the student on the other. The students engaged with the mathematics and the teacher mediates the relationship between the two. In Germany, there is the mathematics as well, the teachers owns the mathematics and parcels it out to student as he [/she] sees fit, giving facts and explanations at just the right time. In U.S. lessons, there are the students and there is the teacher. I have trouble finding the mathematics; I just see interactions between students and teachers. (Stigler & Hiebert, 1999, p. 25)

Agreeing with their colleague, Stigler and Hiebert observe that culture influences everything, stating that Family dinner is a cultural activity. Cultural activities are represented in cultural scripts, generalized knowledge about an event that resides in the heads of participants. These scripts guide behavior and also tell participants what to expect. With a culture, these scripts are widely shared, and therefore they are hard to see. (Stigler & Hiebert, 1999, p.85)

We can see that as a cultural activity, teaching rests on tacit beliefs and has international variation. The research literature that informs teacher education appears to be dominated by ideas from American researchers and therefore the language and concepts and ideas about teaching and teacher education that are taken up by other countries and cultures and appear in the discourse of teacher education within those other countries and cultures. However, meanings vary and shift and become part of the discourse about teacher education within that culture. Clearly, other international communities produce relevant and interesting research that is potentially applicable to the educational context within the United States. However, American researchers do not routinely take up the concepts and ideas that emerge from such research, and therefore, it does not become part of the discourse on teaching and teacher education within the United States. Indeed, accountability and reform movements so visible currently in teaching and teacher education within the United States context may be informed by

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research from other countries (e.g., Day, 2010), but the way in which those ideas are taken up will be specific to the United States context. This becomes even more evident when there are language differences. Language translation in addition to cultural understandings and contextual differences can impact how research from other countries enter the discourse in the United States and how ideas from the United States enter and influence the international teacher education research community. When we consider both Local Variability and World Culture theories, we recognize that individually each perspective overlooks crucial points (Anderson-Levitt, 2003a). Further we note the existence of promising research around the world that informs researchers internationally. They seem intriguing results about teaching and teacher education from Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, and England, along with notable findings in works from China, Israel, New Zealand, Scandinavia, and Spain. Along with Anderson-Levitt we are disappointed that findings from American research reach other countries, but reciprocity seems absent. We recognize possible universal aspects of education and little recognition that shared language and understandings may not exist. We see questions about rigorous research if we state a country or researcher by name (like, Switzerland or Clandinin) as a way to establish context for work in teaching and teacher education in the 21st century. Scholars must understand potential universals and particulars to understand how ideas inform work within their own country along with the works and worlds of others. Within this text, we have attended to issues of globalization along with issues of tensions and difference across topics and ideas. In our work we decided to insure, to the best of our ability, that we looked across the international realm of research. We also agreed that rather than draw attention to the home of each citation we would attempt to attend to the World Culture-Local Variability approach to best convey ideas.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS Mary Lynn Hamilton, Professor in Curriculum & Teaching, University of Kansas, combines research interests in teachers’ professional knowledge, issues of social justice, and the self-study of teaching and teacher education practices. She is a co-editor of International Handbook of Teacher Education (2016), a co-editor of The International Handbook of Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices (2004), a co-author of SelfStudy of Practice as a Genre of Qualitative Research: Theory, Methodology, and Practice (2009), and the former co-editor of Teaching and Teacher Education, an international journal. Stefinee Pinnegar is a Teacher Educator in the McKay School of Education at Brigham Young University, Provo Utah. Her research interests focus on teachers’ thinking along with ways to reveal that thinking through SSTTEP and narrative methodologies. She co-authored Self-Study of Practice as a Genre of Qualitative Research: Theory, Methodology, and Practice (2009). Furthermore, she is the editor of the popular series Advances in Research on Teaching published by Emerald Press.

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