This document discusses the use of dialogue in self-study. It begins by explaining how dialogue was used in early self-study meetings between faculty members to provide support and sharing of teaching tips. It then discusses how dialogue was further developed as a methodology for self-study through establishing ground rules, using reflection, metaphors, and identifying "recalibration points" where understanding changes. Key benefits of dialogue identified are that it can lead to changes in teaching practice and help create a community to support such changes.

1. Part II Self-Study
Through Discourse
and Dialogue
Student: Marilyn Cristina Gudiño Villarreal
Integrative Project I
Teacher: Mgs. Miguel Ponce

2. Talking Teaching and Learning: Using Dialogue in Self-Study
• The entry into self-study was accidental being the confluence of three
distinct experiences: (a) a bi-weekly seminar in 1994–95, facilitated by
the university’s teaching enhancement center to help new faculty be
intentional about instructional choices as they began their careers; (b)
regular meetings of the team of faculty members teaching sections of a
foundations development course for beginning preservice teachers, (c)
a partnership between Melissa and Deborah Tidwell, as they prepared
to attend the first international meeting of the Self-Study of Teacher
Education Practices special interest group.
• The purpose of these early meetings was collegial support and sharing
teaching tips and tricks.
• Melissa began the self-study she suggested that we use
Fenstermacher’s (1994) practical argument technique to focus our
group’s inquiry into more effective teaching
• Christine Canning and Melissa organized a 3-day faculty workshop,
this workshop was employed regularly with a program’s student
teachers and used an experiential approach emphasizing the
development of and reflections on a wide variety of skills for working
effectively with others.
• Developing and using dialogue in self-study is the primary focus of this
chapter
Beginnings: Catching
Currents, Merging
Streams
• Dialogue goes beyond carrying on a conversation or even
having an academic discussion. More people than just a
dyad can, and usually do, participate in self-study
dialogues.
• The participants most often are face-to-face, but
sometimes a participant can be present in a published text.
• Dialogue is a method through which we examine our
practice in our self-study work for the purpose of improving
our teaching, dialogue takes us to a point at which we
recalibrate our understanding of a topic or of our practice.
• As method is the way we carry out collaborative self-study
with attention to content and to process; that is, we
critically analyze our self-study process itself, and we do so
through dialogue.
• focus upon our insights-in-the-moment as they arise
spontaneously in the actual dialogue process. What we are
identifying as dialogue can take place internally as we write
reflections, as well as in actual meetings
Dialogue as Self-Study
Methodology

3. Talking Teaching and Learning: Using Dialogue in Self-Study
Starting the Dialogue Process
• This work has been centered on own reflections
regarding a particular aspect of teaching. it was
the dialogue process itself that changed our
thinking about practice
• Sometimes, they simply came to a dialogue
meeting with the reading completed, while in other
cases they wrote and exchanged reflections in
advance and focused the dialogue upon these
reflections
• Other members of the group prepared for the
meeting by reading her descriptive reflection and
generating authentic, open-ended questions
about various aspects of the metaphor and its
relationship to her teaching.
• A set of ground rules to facilitate the dialogue
process: 1) ask only questions about which one is
genuinely curious; 2) draw conclusions only about
one’s own practices and metaphor, and 3)
maintain absolute confidentiality about what
others share.
Ground Rules: Essentials for a Robust,
Productive Dialogue
• The intention has always been that a group would
develop a shared set of ground rules using our
initial list as a starting point.
• A group’s adaptation or resistance to the use of
ground rules has resulted in what we consider to
be a less than ideal process for creating dialogue
that can be used for genuine self study.
• In the absence of explicit and collaboratively
created ground rules a group’s dialogue can
easily take on other, less productive
conversational forms, such as the way some
professors “take advantage of others to make
their point via academic discourse”

4. Talking Teaching and Learning: Using Dialogue in Self-Study
• A recalibration point is a place within the dialogue at which an understanding is
captured in the dialogue as it emerges, is a more gradual recognition of an idea that
has recalibrated our thinking about practice, the recalibration occurs solely within an
individual
• When they wanderfahr they let the process move them forward rather than pushing
toward a specific goal, this moment gives them permission to allow joy and laughter
to become part of their work.
• Because of this recalibration point we were able to argue with a reviewer who found
collaborative self-study, or selves-study, to be a contradiction that had to be edited
one way or the other.
Recalibration
Points
• Melissa was attempting to undo the learning patterns that many students had developed over 12 or
more years. This analogy, which arose through dialogue, helped her think more clearly about how
deeply ingrained both fears and learning patterns could be for many students. This analogy also helped
reduce her sense of incompetence when students did not undergo the transformations.
• Katheryn realized that this was an experience that she wanted to create for students if at all possible.
She had developed classes around students working together. This approach is not about cooperative
learning, but about students in groups working on intellectually challenging tasks.
• Linda One recalibration point that continues to send waves through my teaching is the
• paradoxical tension of making room for both silence and speech increasing use of active listening as a
strategy they use to guide young children’s behavior, and increasingly effective use of productive
questions as pedagogical technique
Effects of
Recalibration
Points on Teacher
Education
Practices

5. Talking Teaching and Learning: Using Dialogue in Self-Study
Using Metaphor
to Recalibrate
Our Process
• Metaphor has served as a powerful engine for understanding and for change, metaphors help us to
surface what we know deeply
• Growing wild yeast is a longer, less certain, and definitely less familiar process now than using dried
or compressed yeasts with their nearly foolproof rising capabilities.
• Using dialogue effectively for self-study is a longer and less certain process than other research
methods, yet one that is suitable for the depth needed in self-study.
Cautionary
Tales
• There are cases when one or more of the characteristics we have identified were missing and the
dialogue process slowed or stopped altogether.
• For a meeting to be productive it is also crucial that members invest the necessary time in preparing,
such as reading the text for the week or writing the reflective piece to share.
• Persistence is a characteristic of successful dialogue-based self- study, members need to trust in the
long-term value of the work, suspending judgment about what might not seem to be particularly
productive at any one time.

6. Looking Back and Looking Forward
• Dialogue method is an effective tool in self-study
because it can lead to positive changes in practice
and because it is a process that can be used by
others to create a community where such changes
may become more likely
• Instead of capturing and analyzing the dialogue as
an artifact, for us the data and the analysis reside in
the dialogue as a process. While this leads to a
method that is productive, it is neither easily
established nor maintained.
• Recalibration can occur at the individual or group
level and it is these moments of crystallized
understanding that have a significant positive
impact on our practice and push us to describe and
share the process through which we create
recalibration points
• a set of characteristics are identified time,
persistence, commitment, willingness to be
vulnerable, and flow.
• Disadvantages, they have discovered losses and
developed a new awareness of how our own values
may sometimes undermine the work we most enjoy
Talking Teaching and Learning: Using Dialogue in Self-Study

7. “Name It and Claim It”: The Methodology of Self-Study as
Social Justice Teacher EducationNamingtheContext
Teaching is a moral act
founded on an ethic of
care.
• Teaching is an act of
inquiry and reflection.
• Learning is a
constructivist/development
al process.
• The acquisition of subject
matter and content
knowledge is essential.
• Teaching is a collegial act
and requires collaboration.
• Teaching is essentially a
political act.
Namingthe
Questions
Social justice education is
dynamic and never fully
accomplished, my
colleagues and I embrace
the notion that ongoing
investigation and self-
study are a necessary
aspect of this agenda.
Searches seemed to
suggest that we should
give more attention to how
we were dealing with
issues of race and racism
in our curriculum
Namingthe
Methodology
The overall methodology I
employed in this research
is self-study because it is
“a methodology for
studying professional
practice settings.
First, it was, from the
outset, self-initiated and
focused
Second, it was
improvement aimed.
Third, it was interactive at
several stages of the
process and with several
relevant constituencies.
Fourth, it included multiple,
mainly qualitative
methods.
Fifth, defining validity as a
validation process based
in trustworthiness,

8. Naming the
Results
First, Teacher looked for an
acknowledgment of the
existence of racial issues in
their classrooms.
Second, Teacher look for
particular transformations in
their thinking and/or practice
with regard to race/racism in
social justice education
In this study those were
(a) recognizing the
importance of hearing
their students’ voices
concerning the issues
of race/racism; (b)
understanding the need
to include an explicit
equity curriculum; and
(c) embracing an
inquiry orientation
toward their practice
“Name It and Claim It”: The Methodology of Self-Study as
Social Justice Teacher Education

9. Student Teacher Outcomes Overall
These student teachers not
only took that critical first step,
they also made, to varying
degrees, important
transformations in their thinking
and/or practice in ways
consistent with current
definitions of teaching for social
justice.
Hearing Students’ Voices
Often this was noted as a key
factor in helping them to make
the transformations that they
did.
To noting the importance of this
information to their teaching
and personal development,
they recognized the curricular
value for students.
Explicit Equity Curriculum
In addition to helping their students
become powerful knowers of the
traditional curriculum, as would be
essential in any definition of social
justice teacher education, they
wanted to engage in more explicit
teaching of “inequity, power, and
activism.
Seeing this assignment as only a
beginning, they wholeheartedly
embraced the inquiry orientation so
central to our notion of social
justice education.
“Name It and Claim It”: The Methodology of Self-Study as
Social Justice Teacher Education

10. • They recognized the merits of
engaging in investigations like
this case on self, admitted that
even with regard to the issue
they had been investigating,
they had much more to learn,
and committed to continuing the
process in the future,
• They understand the need to
take an inquiry orientation to
their practice, in some cases,
with more clarity than they had
prior to this project.
Inquiry as
Stance
• Four qualities seemed to be most beneficial to this
group.
• First was its personal focus the need for them to
examine themselves and their developing teacher
identities.
• Second, they found particular value such as the
interchanges they had with their students about their
experiences with race and racism
• Third it was the package the inclusion of multiple ways
to both gather and make sense of their data that made
widespread benefit more possible.
• Fourth, they found value in the opportunity to ask and
investigate their own questions, they felt they had not
only gained insights into the particular
• issues they were investigating, they had acquired a
system that could guide their future deliberations and
decision making
Role of
Self-Study
• 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
validation process based in
trustworthiness
• We are to realize the power of
self-study to “promote
substantive changes in teacher
education and support
democratic, transformative
efforts to provide a quality
education for all students
Name It and
Claim It
“Name It and Claim It”: The Methodology of Self-Study as
Social Justice Teacher Education

11. THANKS FOR YOUR
ATTENTION