ABSTRACT
The title of this book, Self-Study and Inquiry into Practice: Learning to Teach for Equity and Social Justice in the Urban Elementary School, puts equity and social justice as central concerns to be considered constantly as one learns to teach. Teaching effectively in urban school districts requires that these concerns be in the forefront as we consider our practice. To understand whether or not we are addressing these concerns requires particularly rigorous inquiry and self-examination of what we are doing in the classroom. We must understand what teaching with social justice and equity in mind means, and make sense of the multiple possible manifestations of effective practice with social justice in mind. We must continually inquire into our practice to see if what we are doing reflects this stance. Teaching in urban settings is challenging. Urban school districts tend to be
large; the student population is diverse with a multiplicity of strengths and needs; the funding for these districts tends to be lower than that in suburban, affluent communities; urban school districts experience teacher turnover at a much faster pace than other school districts. Issues of social justice, equity, and access recur continually. Many of these issues cannot be ameliorated or controlled by teachers (e.g., lack of health care for children, inadequate housing or homelessness of families, parental unemployment, incarcerated parents, and so forth), but such issues affect how teachers do their job and how children come to school ready to learn. What teachers can do is understand the existence of these circumstances, look for the particular strengths that each child brings with him/her to school, and build on those strengths. A commitment to social justice in education requires a positive outlook toward each child’s possibilities, strengths, and contributions to the classroom community, and figuring out how to help each child use his or her strengths and possibilities to further their education. Inquiry into teaching for equity and social justice is a good question for teacher
educators to investigate as they prepare young teachers for urban classrooms. Selfstudy as a particular method of inquiry is effective in helping us to understand how we meet the needs of our students with regard to the question of equity and social justice. Self-study began as teacher educators investigating their own practice to clarify and improve the education of teachers (Loughran, 2004). It is part of
one’s own one’s students’ learning. Rather than looking at how student teachers perform in the field and extrapolating from these data that teacher education practices are or are not effective, self-study makes possible in-depth inside looks into the actual classroom work of teacher educators. While there are impassioned discussions about whether self-study (and other practitioner research) resembles more traditional forms of research, for our purposes here developing an inquiry disposition in student teachers, self-study is one model of practitioner research which provides a systematic, robust methodology for examining how and what one teaches and what happens in one’s classroom with regard to student learning. Studying one’s own practice necessarily involves contradictions and concerns,
because one is both the researcher and the researched; thus, it is important to include alternative perspectives in conducting the research. The methods of investigation are framed through the question under consideration, and should involve multiple representations of data and interpretations of data. In addition, as collaborators in the context of this research, one’s students are also to be seen as researchers and researched. Thus, self-study requires the inclusion of one’s colleagues and students to identify and understand alternative perspectives on what is being examined. Self-study provides the ethical, theoretical, and methodological bases for using inquiry to enhance, inspire, and continue one’s practice. It supports the development of the teacher as researcher, identifying the ethical challenges of studying what one does, taking into consideration the vulnerability, privacy, and autonomy of one’s students, one’s colleagues, and oneself. Self-study as a method for examining teacher education practices is used
internationally. Since 1994, when the special interest group of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) began, self-study has grown as a method for investigating and understanding the practices of teacher education. The Self-Study in Teaching Education Special Interest Group in AERA holds international meetings every other year, which are attended by scholars from around the globe. Beginning in 1996, each conference has produced at least one program document that includes abbreviated papers of the work being presented at the conference. The conference itself is a place to bring work in progress, to consult with colleagues on how to move forward on one’s investigation and questions. Self-study projects are continually regarded as works in progress, since they represent reflection on teaching and learning of both the instructor and the students. Each new analysis leads to further questions and further changes in learning and instruction. The International Handbook of Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education
Practices (Loughran, Hamilton, LaBoskey, & Russell, 2007) presents the underlying theoretical and methodological supports for such research, drawing on international examples. Thus, within teacher education, self-study is a methodology that crosses numerous global boundaries, and has risen from the ranks, so to speak. The journal Studying Teacher Education: A Journal of Self-Study of
from the Kingdom, Israel, and many other countries. Other journals, such as the New Educator, publish self-studies by classroom teachers (see, for example, Sugarman, 2010). Self-study is an excellent inquiry method for investigating how questions of
equity and diversity are addressed in teacher preparation. The issue of how to prepare teachers to work with students who represent different cultural, linguistic, social class, and ethnic groups from themselves challenges teachers throughout the world. The S-STEP journal and the Castle conference have supported many selfstudy projects that investigate this challenge. Tidwell and Fitzgerald (2006) gathered together self-study investigations that were presented at the 2004 Castle conference into a volume that showcases the diversity of investigations and contexts where questions of social justice and equity are addressed. These studies use a variety of self-study methods and data sources to investigate how social justice and equity were enacted in a variety of contexts, including the teacher education classroom, schools and their classrooms, and academic institutions. These papers were gathered from teacher educators from the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, and Iceland.
