|
Mapping a
Terrain: Identifying and Exploring Self-Study A Reader's Key to an incomplete work:
From far, from eve and morning
Accordingly, this paper offers an in-depth examination of the underpinnings of self-study, an exploration of what it means to study the self and the methodology involved in that study, and how the understandings gained through self-study influence our practices, beliefs, and theories, as well as reach out to the world beyond our selves. The issue of how this work extends the body of knowledge on teacher development will also be discussed. While the authors of the other papers in the symposium use their self-studies as a basis for their writing, I set my own self-study of my teaching as a case study for the conceptual framework I present. Additionally, this paper probes the relationship between practical inquiry and formal research knowledge. Geography and landscape have often been used as a metaphor for examining knowledge and practice. For example, Clandinin & Connelly (1995) describe the professional knowledge landscape with its sacred, secret, and cover story territories. Here narrative flowers the terrain with stories and re-told stories. Earlier, Connelly & Clandinin (1985) used the physical landscape of teachers as a metaphor for ways teachers locate themselves within their experience. They particularly looked at division between space and the inhabitants. Further, they looked at points of origin and departure. Schon (1987) discussed the swampy lowlands of practice and the hard high ground of theory. Others, like Carter (1993) encourage mapping the story methodology and urge that educators see value in the work. King & Kitchener (1994) outline the boundaries and borders of reflective judgment. Langness & Frank (1981) encourage locating self within the scheme of things. Lopez (1988) finds landscape both outside and inside the self, while Britzman (1991) considers practice and the practical to be "unmapped territory" into which one must journey. Richert (1995) identifies inquiry as a territory to be explored as one considers practice. With such a solid foundation upon which to build my metaphor, I will set about mapping the world of self-study. Mapping In this paper, I will act as a cultural cartographer (McLaren, 1986) attempting to plot the self-study terrain within the land of educational research. A cartographer surveys the land and locates mountains, rivers, and roads on a map. Similarly, I will map aspects of the terrain, gather perceptions, and, as first step, bring the maps together to form an atlas that will enhance the vision of self-study of teacher education reform. The self-study of teacher education practices and personal processes have roles in teacher education reform and charting them is a way to understand them. As a cultural cartographer I will explore beyond the physical domain into the less visible world of culture and experience to plot the terrain of self-study. Cartography explained When planning a map, a drawn or printed representation of something, a cartographer considers the map's purpose and its likely users. It is designed to help communicate information effectively. Maps are made through observation and measurement to locate boundaries of place, detail distances, chart angles, and delineate elevations. Often thematic maps are created to illustrate one particular feature. The topographic map, for example, shows surface features of the land. Sometimes there are map legends that list and explain the symbols and words used to describe the map. Map scales show the relationship between distances on the map and the corresponding distances on the surface. Grids are networks of lines on maps that help find and describe locations. Sometimes there are raised relief maps that have elevated surfaces to represent hills and mountains. When illustrating maps, the cartographer draws information on clear plastic pieces that are eventually stacked over each other to depict the features being studied. The goal for this paper is to use principles of cartography to begin to produce an atlas of maps that when laid one over the other will represent the world teacher education and teacher educators. Further, if the maps were combined, the ensuing Venn-diagram-like map system would reveal the nexus between self-study, methodology, culture, practical inquiry, and teacher education reform. The Self-Study Terrain To best plot self-study, elements of experience certain maps will need to be developed. Surface Features First, a topographic map plots the range of self-study. This map locates the types of work within the field. Additionally, a demographic map represents the teacher educators involved in self study, a product map details representations of our work, and a chronological map records the chronology of our work. The demographic map briefly describes the teacher educators. The product map depicts the work accumulated. The chronological map offers an historical view of self-study. These maps offer an understanding of the people and events involved. Deep Structure To explore the deep structure of this geographic space, a methodology map will be drawn of many of the known works, including work within and without school. To survey this territory, I have reviewed appropriate literature as they pertain to school. A word about reform Teacher education is a rich, organic land. Unfortunately, there are many interpretations of it - sometimes more realistic or impressionistic or romantic - but the ways in which the learning-to-teach process is represented often vary. Furthermore, with such varied perspectives, it is difficult to know what actually occurs within Schools and Colleges of Education. Zeichner and Gore ( ), for example, assert that we do not know what occurs there. Often in reform, efforts toward change transpire without thorough knowledge and understanding of what needs to be done. And, in fact, these efforts may address irrelevant or unimportant issues. In this paper, I intend to reveal a representation of what is and what happens in self-study and its relation to teacher education reform. It will not necessarily focus on effectiveness or outcomes, but rather on what happens in self-study using the language of teacher educators and others to generate a more complete picture of the affects of self-study within teacher education. Could elements of self study interact in crucial ways to generate teacher education reform? II. Literature Review: An artifact map Prior to mapmaking, the existing roads and anomalies will be reviewed and presented in an artifact map. This review summarizes and provides an artifact map for some of the most significant work already done in self study. These areas are self-study, methodology, culture, and issues of practical and formal inquiry. A. Definitions of Self-Study Considerable research has been done on the process of teacher development, but most of it has centered on beginning classroom teachers and has been conducted by researchers outside the classroom. The research on the development of teacher educators has been much more limited, and, until recently, that too has been investigated by researchers, not teacher educators. Consequently, most of our knowledge about developing as teachers and teaching teachers has not been grounded in practice or personal experience. The emergence of self-study and teacher research has shifted this trend. Recently, in teacher education, studies have attempted to capture the process of teaching in academia from the "inside" -- from the students' and the teacher educators' perspectives. Some of these attempts have developed from Schon's (1983) notions about reflection on practice, while others (Guilfoyle, 1994; Hamilton, 1994; Pinnegar, 1994; Placier, 1994; Russell, 1994; for example) seem to center on the power of personal theorizing in the development of knowledge about teaching and learning. What is self study? For me, self-study is the study of my self, my actions, my ideas, as well as the "not self". It is autobiographical, historical, cultural, and political. It draws on my life, but it is more than that. Self study also involves a thoughtful look at texts I have read, experiences I have experienced, people I have known, and ideas I have considered. Self has been defined in many ways. Some anthropological studies reveal that beliefs are a division of things self/non-self (Wallace, 1970, for example). From a more psychological view, Bohm ( ) suggests that the self is the quintessence of everything. Rather than a static form, beings are always revealing themselves. Philosophically, Heidegger suggests that to locate self, we must return to a more primeval place, a place "before influence"; Foucault addresses the imagined self; Gadamer encourages a constructive way of understanding self; and Derrida calls for deconstruction of that which we call self to analyze the invisible. Self can also have many aspects as a situational self (Bullough, Knowles, & Crow, 1991). B. Definitions of Methodology The most often heard critique of self-study has focused on methodology. According to critics we do not have one. From the critic's perspective, those engaged in self-study and action research just common sensically look at a problem and reason it out. There is no set methodology, no format for study. While there are those researchers that do not follow a traditional research paradigm, methodologies do exist and are followed. Following natural research strategies many involved with action research ask questions, think about solutions, and proceed through trial-and-error until we determine a suitable answer. These are strategies we all use everyday. They do not really need to be formalized - they are a part of the life process. There are also more formal methodologies in action research that involve asking questions and seeking the answers. Again, this methodology does not follow the traditional concerns of seeking the most representative sample or designing the perfect question. Instead, this methodology focuses on finding the answer to questions here-and-now. Use of strategies like journals, observations, or life histories do involve more time and extend the work considerably. As I prepare to do a self-study I intimately distance my self from my self as if I were a text. I pretend, if you will, that I am a text to be reviewed for its present and absent ideas. As with text, I bring to my reading of self, all the other texts understandings I have developed over time. No two readings are the same. It is as if I am undertaking a hermeneutic study of self. What am I reading? What ideas informed the text? Who informed the text? Why are these ideas and people important to the text? In what ways do these ideas and people miss the point? as I read my "self-text", I am looking for the events that influenced my thinking. Why do I have these perspectives? How was I influenced by my ethnicity, gender, and social status? Certainly not everyone engaged in self-study follows my example - some do not employ such deep-mining strategies. The common element is the reflective, critical examination of the self's involvement in aspects of the study. According to Britzman our voices brings meaning from our stories, our lives, and use of our voices helps us participate within our communities. Self-study, a tool for developing voice also uses field records, journals, unstructured interview, lived stories, letter writing, and auto/biographical writing as strategies. And these are not the only strategies. I have not specifically discussed the work of Clandinin, Connelly, and others who use narrative to reveal their work. For the teacher educator involved in self-study, there are no quick answers. Instead, the information develops over time. What may not appear obvious initially may emerge by the end of the project. There is also an over-concern about reliability and validity, but I take up that issue in section D. Distinction: From my point-of-view self-study may or may not fit into the category of action research. While both self-study and action research focus on issues of value and moral perspective, self-study may not always focus specifically on practice. I am always doing self-study, but I am not sure I am always doing action research. For example, in a continuing self-study in which I am engaged, I am examining my social construction of race. I am looking at my teaching, but the study involves more than that - my life experience, my family relationships and my personal history. This, then, goes beyond the definition of action research. C. Definitions of Culture or What is the culture of self study? "The culture of teaching needs to expect and promote in a deep and relentless way the vital place of learning in all teaching (Richert, 1995, p. 6)." Most recently, cognitive anthropologists have discussed (Quinn and Holland, 1987) a view of culture that includes socially constituted understandings of the world. This view suggests what people must know in order to act as they do, and how they interpret their experience encompasses both personal beliefs and those beliefs about customs, oral traditions and artifacts held by other members (Quinn and Holland, 1987). Furthermore, extending the view of beliefs into knowledge, researchers have endeavored to clarify teachersÕ mental processes used to understand and process information (Clark and Peterson, 1986). For instance, Clandinin and Connelly (1987) and Elbaz (1981) consider teacher knowledge personal and social; Richardson (1989) and Tobin (1990), consider teachers beliefs to be socially constructed; and Richardson (1990), Russell (1987), and Zeichner (1989) label teachers' knowledge as reflective. Nisbett and Ross (1980) suggest that aspects of knowledge has a schematic, cognitive structure and other aspects of this knowledge is represented by beliefs or theories, which are "reasonably explicit `propositions' about the characteristics of objects or object classes" (p. 28). They further propose that a "rich store of general knowledge of objects, people, events and their characteristic relationships" affects "people's understanding of the rapid flow of continuing social events" (p. 28). This is culture. Cultural Knowledge Cultural knowledge has sometimes been examined combining work on mental scripts (Schank and Abelson, 1977) as they reflect our impressions of our world with analysis of language and its meanings (Holland, 1985). Scripts, gleaned from daily routine, are standardized sequences of events that fill in our understanding of frequently recurring experiences (Schank, 1975). They are learned and help people act appropriately (Schank, 1988). Cultural knowledge has also been studied by looking at cultural patterns in oneÕs life history (Langness, 1965; Mandelbaum, 1973; Agar, 1973), and has been characterized in terms of "events" (Agar, 1973). Some theorists have been concerned with the relationship between language and culture that tend to share a cognitive paradigm, in which culture is perceived as a set of "complexly rational mental phenomena" (Dougherty, 1985, p.3). Others such as Keesing (1973), Crick (1976), Hutchins (1980), and D'Andrade (1984), seem to concur that these "mental phenomena" are a hierarchy of rules for the construction of propositions, which may be very far-reaching and are likely to be a part of their implicit understandings which may be explicitly represented in their language and actions. Beliefs are important aspects of the hierarchy. The acquisition of a culture involves coming to terms with one's cultural models which represent "culturally shared knowledge [that] is organized into prototypical event sequences enacted in simplified worlds" (Quinn and Holland, 1987, p.24). This is a way to examine the influence of cultural knowledge of peoples experience and their interpretations of it. A cultural model, a taken-for-granted model of the world that is shared by members of society. In other words, a cultural model is the expected, the unspoken, the taken-for-granted aspects of the world. It is "shared implicit knowledge" (Holland and Skinner, 1987, p. 79). It involves the process of identifying the fundamental versus surface elements of the complex of beliefs and knowledge (Holland and Skinner, 1987). Geertz (1973) defines culture as "historically transmitted patterns embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which [people] communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life (p. 89)." Others suggest that as a construction culture filters the world through which symbols and ideas flow to provide certain rules (D'Andrade 1985) and learned meanings (D'Andrade, 1990). Moreover, Eisenhart (1990) views culture as the "collective interpretations of social and material experiences that are more or less shared by members of a group...(p. 22)." Evidently, culture provides a screen through which we view our lives, and interpret our surrounding world. Advice, correction, verbal, and non-verbal interaction with others (Quinn and Holland, 1987) implicitly furnishes the knowledge that supports that screen, best conceived of as a complex of ideas used according to peoples' needs. D. Discussions of the Practical and the Formal We live in a chaotic universe. Our attempts to project "one right answer" for ways of doing things, is our effort to control the situation. What is the relevance of propositional, law-like statements discussed by those researchers who are looking at practical inquiry as a less-than methodology? Will we find TRUTH outside? Is it important to pursue THE TRUTH? Perhaps that is why the world is so disordered - we are looking for a non-existent thing? Many of the critics use the terms formal and practical knowledge to make distinctions between the work of real educational researchers and the work of researchers involved in practical inquiry. While technically I do not mind the distinctions, I rankle at the implied discount of the term "practical". Practical knowledge/research has been viewed as work that contributes to formal research, but does not stand alone. According to Fenstermacher (1994), for example, practical knowledge is not epistemologically plausible because teachers or teacher educators doing practical inquiry do not have evidence for what they know. Other researchers (Wong, 1995 for example) supports this notion. Instead, they have beliefs about what they think they see. He also calls for the need for propositional knowledge, pointing out that knowing and believing are not the same. He asserts that for practical inquiry to attain the level of validity that formal knowledge has, teachers must show that they know something and that they consciously recognize that . Previously, when people thought of educational research, they thought of formal research. This suggested information that could contribute to the general educational knowledge base. However, this research does not provide teachers with the kinds of immediate answers they need for their problems. According to Richardson (1994), "we know little about how to work with teachers (p. 9)." However, she does point out that formal research has its contributions to make. For example, formal research has helped us learn about the ways that teachers generate knowledge used in classrooms. Now, for many of us in the S-STEP SIG, we think of practical inquiry. Often not undertaken to contribute beyond a particular classroom, practical inquiry helps teachers and teacher educators explore their situations, experiences, and stories. And do we have evidence for our work? Yes - usually. As Richardson (1994) points out, some of us in self-study do not use formal research methodology, but most do. Consequently, they can go to their notes or other documentation and demonstrate how they know what they know. Many times, teachers engage in practical inquiry because they experience a problem or have a concern within the classroom, one that causes a moral dilemma. This can also be called a "living contradiction" (Whitehead, 1993). When experiencing that "living contradiction", questions arise about practice and belief. These inferences are only now being well-studied and it would help to know how teachers and teacher educators carefully think through these processes. I always ask myself - what is my evidence......as a result of many grand talks with Jack Whitehead. This conscious examination for evidence helps develop personal theories about education, teaching, and practice. House, Mathison, & McTaggart (1989) suggest that teachers' knowledge is tacit instead of propositional in form. They suggest that we "must invent new ways of helping practitioners improve their causal inferences if we want to improve practice." In support of practical inquiry Wilson (1995) believes that the self is an integral part of research. Carter (1993) suggests that teachers and teacher educators need to attend to what "it means to learn to teach, rather than simply to what is learned in which settings." This would help develop an understanding of practical inquiry. Of course, there is an existent literature on self-study. For example, Connelly & Clandinin (1985) find that knowing is experiential rather than conceptual and they use narrative to reveal teachers knowing. In addition, they find that knowing " multifaceted, embodied, biographical, historical experience. Further she states that ÒteachersÕ knowledge is not highly abstract and propositions....[and is] experiential, procedural, situational, and particularistic." Is that true? Teachers are producers and generators of knowledge, do teachers view themselves in that way? Lomax & Parker (1996) find that teacher knowledge is dialectical. They find that teachers have a knowledge and produce knowledge. So, why do the critics persist? A body of knowledge, like a body of land.... (An aspect of the metaphor to be developed in the future.) Undiscovered Delights Within our SIG, there are few people of color and little discussion of race and class issues. I suggest that these are important delights for us to explore, as well as important languages and perspectives from which to learn. THE OVERLOOKED POLITICAL NATURE OF SELF-STUDY Concomitant with the support of personal theorizing is the recognition that knowing and understanding the self is an essential aspect to generating change and developing new knowledge. Unfortunately, potentially political labeling has developed - formal research and practical inquiry, for example - that undermines their shift in understanding the research process. Certainly there are practical, experientially-based aspects to the research done by teachers/teacher educators/teacher researchers, but that research is not necessarily without formal research methodology as suggested by some (Richardson, 1994, for example), nor without a desire to offer generalizable rules, if generalizable rules are appropriate within this new understanding of the research process. In fact, the formal research/practical inquiry dichotomy offers a binary description of a world that is, instead, far more dynamic and complex. Cochran-Smith & Lytle ask who constructs the knowledge base? They find that the technical model of profession encourages teachers to use others' knowledge and others strategies. For me this is a very political issue. Importantly, though, I believe that when we discuss the formal research/practical inquiry continuum, the political nature of the relationship is not addressed. In fact, I have found few articles that deal with that aspect of the issue. Here, as Cochran-Smith & Lytle suggest, we must ask ourselves - who owns the knowledge? Whose knowledge is of most worth? And who stands to lose if we value private theory more than public theory? Instead, who stands to lose if we empower teachers at all levels to account for themselves in ways that support rather than hinder inquiry? MAPS Chronological Map
Since 1991, there has been a growing burgeoning interest in self-study. As an important part of the expanded population interested in self study, this map provides a chronological look to review our history.
1991 - aware only of our paper 1992 - aware only of our paper...but after presentation Beth Ann suggested we get together to discuss starting a SIG 1993 We organized this year....had appropriate 75-100 people in the room. 1994 33 papers, plus performance, and a town meeting 1995 40 papers plus a town meeting 1996 - 46 papers plus speaker Demographic Map Product Map. Deep Structure Time ran out. The above paper was presente References: Agar, 1973 Agar, 1973 Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarule (1986) Bohm. Britzman (1991) Bullough, Knowles, & Crow (1991) Carter (1993) Clandinin & Connelly (1995) Clandinin and Connelly (1987) Clark and Peterson, 1986 Cochran-Smyth & Lytle Connelly & Clandinin (1985) Connelly & Clandinin 1990 Crick (1976), D'Andrade (1984) D'Andrade 1985 D'Andrade, 1990 Derrida (Dougherty, 1985, p.3). Eisenhart (1990 Elbaz (1981) Fenstermacher 1994 Foucault Gadamer Geertz (1973) Guilfoyle, 1994; Hamilton, 1994; Heidegger Holland, 1985 Holland and Skinner, 1987 House, E. Mathison, S. & McTaggart, R. 1989. Hutchins (1980), Keesing (1973), King & Kitchener (1994) Langness, 1965 Langness & Frank (1981) Lomax & Parker 1996 Lopez (1988) Mandelbaum, 1973; McLaren, 1986 Nisbett and Ross (1980) Pinnegar, 1994; Placier, 1994; Quinn and Holland, 1987 Richardson (1989) Richardson (1990), Richardson, 1994 Richert (1995) Russell (1987), Russell, 1994 Schank, 1975) Schank, 1988 Schank and Abelson, 1977 Schon (1983) Schon 1987 Schon 199 Tobin (1990), Wallace, 1970 Whitehead Wilson, 1995 E. David Wong 1995 Zeichner (1989) Zeichner and Gore
|
©2001 Mary Lynn Hamilton. All rights reserved. Website content questions? Mary Lynn Hamilton. Website design questions? Janel Hinrichsen