Practical work is an integral part of the science practicum. Numerous resources, such as the Gatsby Good Practical Science guidebook and the Improving Primary Science Report, prioritise practical work in teaching science, and research into practical work in schools is commonplace. However, research into how science teacher educators use or justify practical work is strikingly sparse.

This qualitative study explores how four science teacher educators (1 primary and 3 secondary phases) from across England reflexively examine and justify their pedagogic use of practical work. Through a collaborative community of practice self-study methodology that utilises autobiographies, journal writing, critical incidents, direct observations and formal meeting recordings as research methods, we provide a detailed examination of the role of practical work within our praxis. We uncover and critique our historical assumptions about and use of practical work, evaluating how our teaching of experimental skills supports or impedes the pedagogic practice of our preservice teachers. In doing so, we examine shifts in our epistemic beliefs, refine our understanding of how science teacher educators use practical work as part of their pedagogic repertoire, and develop a pedagogy of practical work for science teacher education.

In response to the recently published Initial Teacher Education Early Career framework, our research provides a timely examination of how science teacher educators position practical work within curriculum design. By critically turning the lens inwards on ourselves, we reflexively problematise and refine our use of practical work in our teaching, providing an equitable teacher education programme that models the power and limits of practical work.

In this self-study, we borrowed Bateson’s (1994) metaphorical idea of “letting stories speak to one another” (p. 14). Examining our own research projects, we encountered moments that “talk[ed] across” (Stone, 1988, p. 2) narratives. We sought to identify particular insights these moments have afforded us as self-study researchers who conduct our investigations in the narrative inquiry vein in order to improve our work together and to enhance our work with others.

Our research framework includes overviews of self-study research, experience, narrative/story, metaphors, and how ideas travel from one person—and one study—to another. The mobilization of knowledge achieved through narrative experiences/exchanges will be discussed. That is the knowledge that self-study aims to contribute to the teaching profession.

This self-study is conducted via the narrative inquiry method (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). Research tools included: broadening (characterizing the larger context), burrowing (digging deeply into individual stories), and storying and restorying (showing how change occurs). Using serial interpretation (Schwab, 1954/1978), we laid multiple studies alongside each other, seeking “encompassing idea[s]” (Schwab, 1954/1978) that “talk[ed] across” (Stone, 1988, p. 2) two or more studies.

Cross-study themes emerged as what we call “moments” that shifted/shaped our collaborative research and research agenda over the lifetime of our group. These included: contextualized knowledge/narrative authority; divergent thinking and metaphor; fruitful professional dialogue; and the intimacy of collaboration/critical friendship. Implications on engaging in collaborative research and challenges turned opportunities will be discussed.

The effectiveness of collaboration, and in particular collaborative research, is often dependent on how research teams build trust and relationship, land upon a research topic/agenda, and deal with divergence, conflicts, and potential power structures (Beeker et al., 2021). It follows that identifying individual moments as pillars to our collaborative research can support the efforts of teachers/novice researchers to collaborate effectively in their knowledge community (Craig, 2007).

Emerging educators need rich environments in which to process their lived experiences and find their voices as they develop critical consciousness of the world around them and articulate their reasoned stances on pedagogical issues. In this self-study, I examine my facilitation of an upper-level Philosophies of Education seminar, a course that uses texts in critical pedagogy to help education students develop their critical voices as emerging educators while doing significant personal work around the expectations they have internalized as high-achieving students at an elite university. This course comes during a poignant moment for both campus and country: the semester studied is during the 2024 American presidential election and only a few months after our university’s administration called on police to quell a student protest over institutional ties to the Gaza conflict, leading to the arrests of over 100 people and the hospitalization of a professor. How will I navigate student interactions in this discussion-based seminar, especially when contentious issues arise and events outside of our classroom intersect with course content? How might the identities present in the room – a class community with a majority population of students of color, low-income and first-generation students, and queer students – influence the course of our conversations? Further, how does my status as contingent faculty influence the choices I make in navigating a complex semester? To examine these questions, I will draw upon hundreds of pages of journal entries and transcripts from at least ten interviews covering the 6-month period of August 2024-January 2025. While findings are ongoing at the time of writing this abstract, this self-study project has a strong relationship to the conference themes of equitable teaching practices, particularly as regards the formation of emerging educators, as well as the reconciliation of tensions for a new social contract in education.

In this paper, we aimed to inquire how a professor’s writing practices facilitate graduate students’ needs and understanding of academic writing. We examined pedagogical practices used to dismantle graduate students’ narrative of deficit regarding their own academic writing while co-constructing knowledge about our lived experiences with teaching academic writing and our writing journeys. Self-study guided our inquiry and understanding of teaching, shifting identities, and dilemmas in the classroom (Pinnegar et al., 2020b). We positioned our inquiry in Vygotsky’s (1986) social constructivism to inquire how knowledge construction was generated through social processes and interactions among students and between the students and the co-author. Aiming to create equitable practices in academic writing communities, the co-author employed several strategies. These strategies include (1) developing inclusive environments to foster spaces where students feel valued and respected regardless of their background, (2) developing collaborative spaces for students to share ideas and resources, (3) establishing systems of mentorship to provide guidance, support, and encouragement to students, (4) implementing systems for providing constructive feedback for students present their research to peers and faculty, (5) providing access to writing mentor texts so students can examine and relate to similar writing, and (6) encouraging students to submit their writing to academic journals and institutional repositories to highlight their research. This research revealed how students’ needs for support with the academic writing process were addressed through shared experiences of inquiry and co-construction of knowledge. We studied ourselves in the context of a writing workshop to improve our practice, advance our understanding of academic writing and the teaching of academic writing, contribute to conversations about socially constructed learning, and examine how academic institutions can create a more equitable and supportive environment for all students.

Doctoral studies play a major role in preparing for academic work, and in the process certain factors can be crucial for the study to be successful, such as participation in a learning community. The purpose of this study was to respond to challenges and loneliness of PhD students and investigate how a professional learning community (PLC) can counteract scaffolding in their learning. The aim was to map aspects of a PLC of PhD students. The research question was: What characterizes the process of creating a collaborative supervision community for a group of PhD students?

Doctoral students face various challenges in their studies and have reported that their experience is not good if structure or professionalism in supervision is weak. A learning community approach affords interactions of different knowledge and skills, collaboration and influence the development of academic identities.

We two PhD supervisors in education, applied the methodology of self-study of educational practices. Data collection included recordings from PLC meetings, TOCs (Tickets Out of Class) and our critical reflection. Data analysis was ongoing as we responded to our interpretation planning for each meeting.
Responding to the lack of structure of doctoral supervision we organized a learning community in 2021. The PLC meetings occurred once a month on-line. The process in developing the PLC has been an adaptable and creative journey, as we have adjusted and responded to what participants share in TOCS. Benefits of working in the PhD learning community have emerged, with doctoral students of different nationalities and cultures, focusing on different topics, applying versatile research approaches adding complexity and depth to the understandings of issues in education.

The study presents potential ways of increasing quality in doctoral supervision and how collaboration of supervisors and doctoral students can help to create a constructive framework of trust and support.

Teacher educators learn to conduct research via exposure to research methods courses or through collaboration with more experienced researchers. Although novice researchers desire formal structures to learn what is an ambiguous process of scholarly inquiry (Roulston, 2019), learning research methods has been found to be best learned through the act of doing (Cooper et al., 2012). Self-study of teacher education practices, an increasingly used methodology among teacher educators, is one such method learned best by doing (Diacopoulos et al., 2022). However, much of the extant literature on how teacher educators learn self-study methodologies is conducted using self-study research methods (e.g., Butler et al., 2014; Diacopoulos et al., 2022; Foot et al., 2014; Gregory et al., 2017; Samaras et al., 2007).

Whereas previous scholarship into learning self-study was conducted using self-study methods, the authors of this study use case study methods to document to experiences of a group of university faculty learning and enacting self-study methods.

The participants of this study consist of four university faculty in the United Kingdom. They participated in an initial two-day workshop on self-study methods provided by the first author. In the workshop, participants learned about the history of self-study, its theoretical and epistemological foundations, and common methods and forms of data collection, analysis, and trustworthiness found in self-study. They also designed a collaborative self-study project they would enact over the following academic year. Participants were provided with on-going support across the year, completed period journal entries, and participated in interviews about their learning experience across the year.

Findings from this study will highlight the reasons why teacher educators engage in self-study research, the tensions experienced in the learning process, and the process of learning and enacting self-study research as novice self-study researchers.