Working in Partnership to Enhance Self Study within Teacher Education
Pam Lomax, Moyra Evans & Zoe Parker, Kingston University, UK.

( Paper presented at AERA, New York, 1996)

This is the use of memory;
For liberation ...... not less of love but expanding
Of love beyond desire, and so liberation
From the future as well as the past
(T.S.Eliot, Little Gidding.)

The context of this self study of teacher educators is the delivery of a blocked variant of the second year of an MA (Education) programme which consists of supporting teachers who write a dissertation based on an action research project (Lomax,1994b). In September 1995 a group of 13 teachers, all with an interest in teaching children with special educational needs, enrolled. The programme made provision for the tutors to meet the group on eight occasions through the year and to support the students individually at a distance. The purpose of the research was to improve our collaborative practice in order to help our students better. As teacher educators, we had different backgrounds and experience and we imported into the research context relations that were undoubtedly influenced by a dialectic of power that belongs to the formal arrangement of our roles within the University. Pam is the senior academic and most experienced in relation to providing inservice education for teachers; she also developed the MA programme and is the course director. Moyra is an associate tutor at the University, but an experienced school teacher and a senior manager in her school responsible for staff development. Recently, she was awarded her doctorate for supporting teachers' school based research. Zoe is in her first year as a full time lecturer in the University, relatively new to teaching, but with considerable experience as a `learner', particularly in relation to the MA programme, having shadowed tutors in both years before becoming a second year tutor herself. Pam was/is Director of Study for the Ph.D research of Moyra/Zoe. At the time of presenting this collective self study we are two thirds through the programme. Table 1. shows the timing of the meetings and the data we have generated so far for the self study. In what follows we present a formative evaluation of our actions as we have sought to develop our practice.

HOW TO READ THIS PAPER

The paper is divided into six parts:

* A preface which sets out our idea of self study . It also suggests criteria that the reader might like to use to judge the effectiveness of this mode of reporting self study.
* An introduction which presents reflective material drawn from Session One. The intention of this section is to share some of the values and strategies that underpin our work tutoring this programme and set our expectations for the students in the context of a concrete meeting.
* Two students' writing: a story to express their concerns presented during Session Two and a deconstruction of the story written subsequently. The purpose of this section is to let the reader hear the students' own voices, through their work, in order to share some of their values and strategies as they set about their action research.
* An introduction to memory work.
* Building on collective self reflection: Moyra's story and reflections; Zoe's reflections; Pam's poem and reflections.
* Conclusions


PRIVATE Table 1. An overview of how the data for self study fits the programme as a whole.DateStudents' dataTutors' dataJuly (preceding enrolment)Attend Conference
(one day)September:
Session One.One day meeting. Taped briefing session1 and closing session2.Reflections on the day written by PL3, ZP4, and ME5.October:
Session Two.Two day meeting. Teachers Stories6 presented at the session. Tapes of briefing session7 and closing session8. Teachers deconstructions of their stories9.January:
Session ThreeOne day meeting. Interim reports presented by teachers10.Pam's poem11.
Moyra's story12.February:
Session Four.Two day meeting.
Tapes13.
Memory work session. Tapes14.
Pam's reflections15.
Moyra's reflections16.
Zoe's reflections17.MayTwo day meetingJuneOne day meetingJulyAttend Conference

THE PREFACE

What is self study? As action researchers we put our own practice at the centre of our enquiries; not because we focus narrowly on our selves without regard to wider institutional and political issues, but because we try to examine our motives and assumptions critically and work towards clarifying our educational values and making them the centre of our own educational practices (Whitehead,1993; Lomax,1994c). This self study, as a part of our action research, is to do with accounting for ourselves as teacher educators within the specific educational context we identify in this paper. For us, this is a human scale activity based on democratic values. However, although we have emphasised the specificity of our concerns and limited the account accordingly, the broader institutional and political concerns of our society can be seen as clear imperatives within our study They are presented to us as we try to unmask our relations with each other and our relations with our students; they peep through the layers of our self study to jolt us into re-thinking comfortably held positions and to force upon us new understandings which catapult us into action as teacher educators (Pinnegar & Russell,1995; Russell& Korthagan,1995; Lomax & Selley,1996). This relation between looking inwards and outwards, between the intra and inter subjective dialectics of our practice as teacher educators, brings the human scale activity of our practice into line with the macro workings of a democratic society (Evans,1996a).

Another way of looking at these dialectics is in relation to theory and practice. This is very important to our position as teacher educators who must accredit other teachers' work at masters level within a university context. Although we value teachers' actions to improve their practice as essential to the human scale activities we support as teacher educators, we are responsible for helping teachers to describe and explain what they do at a depth of theorising that supports the award.

The political backlash against supporting our human scale endeavours has been visible both institutionally and within the wider research community, particularly in terms of the more entrenched arguments against recognising teacher research in the academy (Hammersley,1993). One response we have made has been to redefine the standards and criteria for award linked courses so that they can accommodate action research (Lomax 1994a). We now include practical, methodological, ethical, aesthetic and spiritual criteria as well as those to do with rigour and logic (Lomax, Whitehead & Evans,1996).

An awareness of these different dimensions of judgement has been important to our own learning as teacher educators because clarifying the criteria has led us to see that there are other (and better) ways of representing action research than through the more usual research accounts (Lomax & Parker,1995; Evans,1996b; Evans,1996c; Lomax & Parker,1996). However, we are well aware that irrespective of the sort of criteria we choose as most appropriate, we also need to apply clear standards. We hope you will help us to use the standards of judgement referenced in the following questions as we describe and explain our research.

1. Are our educational intentions exposed, interrogated and subjected to critique so that we have confidence that they are right?
2. Have we striven to put these intentions into practice?
3. Has the link between our reflections and our action been established and steps taken to turn reflection into personal and public knowledge?
4. Have we monitored our action and taken steps to get a comprehensive description that is informed by others as well as ourselves?
5. Have we involved others in our enquiry with full respect for them as autonomous persons who should not be treated as objects?
6. Have we made the research process transparent enough for our descriptions and explanations to be challenged?
7. Are our explanations convincing and authenticated and are the outcomes of our enquiry professionally valid?

THE INTRODUCTION

Session 1 was organised around six events over 6.5 hours: enrolment of the students; induction; tutor presentation of good books on action research; visit to the library; action research planning; plenary identifying how participants felt about the day. In this part of our analysis we draw upon two audio tapes 1,2 of the opening and closing parts of session 1 and our reflections on the day 3,4,5 that we each wrote subsequently.

What preparation had we done? On the basis of feedback from the previous year, we had updated and revised the Dissertation guide, trying to make it less prescriptive so that students treated it as a guideline rather than a requirement. We had photocopied a paper and some briefing sheets including the action research planner. We were each prepared to talk about three books, that the students would be encouraged to read3.

There had been administrative changes which meant that we could only have one room and therefore had to spend the day in one big group, all of us together4.

Z In the past we have run the blocked variant in two groups, originally one each for Moyra and Pam, with me playing a supporting role, learning on the job and stepping in for Pamís group when she was overseas. I believe that the way the groups we teach are composed is important .... as one of the things we would like the students to learn to do is to collaborate in (small) support groups4.

The teachers arrived late, having driven across London. Enrolment formalities took ages. Eventually we were ready to start3.

P I wanted to get the students thinking about what they wanted to do, and thinking about how they would support their eventual claims with evidence. I wanted this to be low key... I wanted to get them started without feeling obliged to `give the right answer' or to do it in a way they had already learned. I wanted them to start to examine their own concerns without being over constrained by their preconceptions of academic work3.

We sat in a circle and began the session by introducing ourselves as people4.

P I began. I tried to explain that I was a teacher like them and my concern was to improve the quality of education from the standpoint of my work with teachers. I said that I wanted teachers' research to be treated with the same respect as other research and that this was my political agenda. I think that my values which underpin this intention are to do with believing that most human beings are able to achieve almost anything if they have (a) the motivation and (b) guidance on what it is they have to do. I believed this when I taught children in school, mainly children who had already been labelled and sorted as low achievers. I still believe this as I work with teachers who are often treated as if they are second class academics. Is this to do with a belief in democracy?3.

Moyra and Zoe explained who they were, followed by the students. Although Pam had asked people to talk about themselves, they mostly talked about the research they were planning to do4.

N tells us about how he wants to improve the self esteem of the disabled children in his school. He wants it to be a whole school effort. He says environmental access is good, curriculum access is good but social interaction is not happening `go into the playground, go into the dinner hall'. These children have `no friends' consequently their self esteem is low1 A19-71.

Why are you concerned? Pam says, but he does not answer this question.

Z Pam didn't notice N is disabled himself. Later I felt very embarrassed taking him around the site because it is totally unfriendly .... why do we accept the lack of provision on our site?4

V talks about her values being denied by the framework she is forced to work within.

V ....we have been privatised almost .... brought in to work with statemented children and because you're brought in you've got to do what you're told to do which works totally against anything I have ever wanted to do, used to do or believed in... What I would ideally like is to get out of this awful trap .... realising that there are a lot of constraints there.... pushing back the boundaries ..... getting back to the roots.... 1 A163-197.

S My interest is in the achievement of black children in schools, particularly afro caribbean children and children of mixed parentage .... I would like to build up strategies to help these children in schools1 A311-324.

Pam, Moyra and Zoe reflect back to the students a number of teaching points that had emerged as a result of what the students had said1

P I was pleased that you took responsibility for your work by using the`I'. .... but it is important to distinguish between the `I' of values and responsibility and the`I' that asserts a fact and needs supporting evidence. It is also important that you have a little `I' - to transform your own practice, rather than a big `I' - to transform the world.

Z I am obsessed with diary keeping and the importance of sharing some of the diary, but being free to keep some of it private. I am also impressed with the strength and clarity of your values, and the obvious significance of your choice to work in SEN - some action researchers take a long time to unearth their values.

M I would encourage you to use story as a way of working out what your values really are and what your `I' is saying to you. The sharing of that story with other people enables you to have different and fresh insights. You will start at the beginning with a very different `I' from what comes out at the end of it 1.

In her reflections, Moyra wrote:

I encouraged the group to write their concerns into a story, as the act of writing helps to order one's thoughts and the act of offering it to others for discussion enables the author to have a different perspective on the issue. Other people can often see inconsistencies and contradictions which we live with and don't question5.

In the plenary the students said how they felt about the day:

S Alternating between feeling I can't possibly do this and feeling quite excited.

F Clearer about it. I'm feeling quite OK really. I feel very tired. I feel quite excited. I'm so busy I will need to find time to stop and reflect

V I am feeling tired. Not really sure about how I am going to fit it all in. I think feeling a bit shell shocked.

N Firstly I feel scared and I need to focus down, read a bit more and then I can find out exactly what I want to do, what is achievable - and the motivation will die down very quickly unless I start.

Moyra summarised:
I have been listening and the same things have been articulated - fear of the new, the unknown, the huge, and excitement, something new and different. It is necessary to balance these emotions by building good learning relations with each other, working together 2.

STUDENTS' WRITING

Sessions two and three were held off site, with tutors travelling to North London to provide the two day programme and the one day programme. We would like to focus on how the students responded to the task we had set them - to write an account/story about their research concern. In the second session the students read their stories and we discussed them. In this way we were able to help them make their reflections more critical (Tripp,1993). Subsequently (and in the light of the discussions) they began to deconstruct them. We present two stories and their deconstructions.



Circle Time6

Have I escaped Aunt Njideka's question this morning? Would she accept this for an answer? I was too pre-occupied with the way it worked. I felt it worked like magic! I did not sleep off but I did not quite listen to the end.......... Poor Chike! I felt so sorry for him when he arrived.

'Yesterday he scratched me' 'And me too' 'He kicked and punched me' 'There is no room here!' 'We are squashed!' Chike must have been used to hearing this and not the story he came for. Were Obi and Ada really squashed or had Chike squashed out the last drop of patience in them?

Above were the thoughts that pondered in my mind as I waited for Aunt Njideka to come in with the dreaded question - dreaded, only on days I had not listened, or slept off in the moonlight. It was very important that one listens to the moral of the moonlight story as it was in it that one learns about right and wrong, rewards and punishments from the Chi.

It was not the moral of Odoziaku's story of last night that appealed most to me. It was her suggestion that we all got up and sat in a circle in order to accommodate Chike, and the fact that it worked like magic. Two nights ago, Chike had to leave because Okpalanna had said he did not want any trouble. It was not a matter of giving Chike another chance. He had a headache and was not prepared for Chike that night. Last week, when Adamma tried to extend her patience, it did not work. Chike spoilt it all and had to be sent home. Papa Chike must have punished him at home for it. Could either have helped it? Chike's chances had been exhausted. In fact he was already living on borrowed chance.



B's Deconstruction9

In my story Chike had nowhere to turn to and being sent home did not seem to solve the problem. If anything, the latter exacerbated the problem. Okpalanna telling Chike that he did not have the disposition for him on a particular day meant that, much as all the others could join in the moonlight story every night, Chike joining would largely depend on the mood of the person telling the story. Where then, is equal opportunities for Chike, the eight year old whose behaviour is not his making? If Chike is possessed by Ajo-mmuo, then such a label for convenience gives the labeller the licence to justify wanting to exclude Chike, under the cloak of 'cannot be helped'.

How many times have we, as practising teachers, shown what is implicit in us, in terms of our experiences, attitudes, values and perceptions of certain children? It appears that the easy way out of 'wanting to tackle a problem by avoiding it' is a common and acceptable practice both for Okpalanna and many of us, present day teachers. If Chike is not present at the moonlight story or sent home, then the storyteller's work will be easier. There will be no interruptions or headaches for the story-teller nor aggravations/provocations in the form of being scratched, kicked, punched and squashed for Obi and Ada.

The turning point in my career as a Behaviour Support teacher was one day when I saw myself as living on 'borrowed chance' as Adamma tried to give Chike. Borrowed in the sense that I clung firmly to the last ray of hope i.e. the one positive statement that has come out as a result of my putting Chike in the context of the school and asking specifically how he survived every, say, ten minutes of the school day. 'Choosing time was not too bad today, although he was only able to concentrate for fifteen minutes on the shared music time with another child' was the reply I received. My thoughts went back to that morning when I was planning the reply to give to Aunt Njideka and how I felt that I was holding on to something that appeared very important to me for Chike's sake - Odoziaku's magic circle! The circle works against the philosophy of exclusion, but I envisage it will be hard work to implement. In my story, Adamma 'tried to extend her patience, it did not work, Chike spoilt it all and had to be sent home'.

This is my vision for my action research. I have chosen my story as I thought I was not living up my values at work with the experiences of the Chikes at school. How can I improve my practices at work? I wanted to try out a new way of doing things for my own benefit and that of other teachers as well as Chike and the children in his class. The story will help me to reflect on my experiences at work for the 'storied quality of experiences is both unconsciously restoried in life and consciously storied, retold and relived through processes of reflection' (Connelly & Clandinin,1990.).

B is attempting to represent her concerns in an extremely imaginative and creative way. She is trying to use stories of remembered events in her childhood in Nigeria to explain her own empathy with the children she supports today; and also how she has got to her own value position and how this has influenced the strategies she is implementing in the schools. She has begun to experiment with ways of representing different levels of writing, which is very exciting. One of our criteria for judging the quality of action research is whether the account locates current explanations of practice within an autobiography of learning. B does this15.



Getting Back to Your Roots6

I suppose we are all predetermined in some way. However much we claim to be free, our parents limit us; or do we limit ourselves when we fail to challenge the narrow parameters placed around us?

Joe decided to go on a trip to his mother's homeland. She had been a nurse and had met Joe's father in England. They married, although his father was not too keen on the people from his wife's homeland. Joe's mother had not denied her roots, but she had pruned them: Friends and family visited infrequently and she travelled "home" only twice during her married life. She rarely talked of the happy times spent on the farm in her childhood.

Joe had visited his mother's land once, when he was three years of age. He was now fifty. He knew he had cousins, aunts and uncles over there. Funny that he knew his relatives in England and the U.S.A. but not those from her land. This would be a visit in which to find out about a part of himself. He would discover more about his mother, about that part that she rarely spoke of (although he remembered a change in her face when she did reminisce). Joe's mother was now dead and he felt a need to make the journey.

Joe travelled widely and met his cousins, uncles, aunts and nephews. He was surprised by the friendliness of the people; their humour and willingness to help; their interest in him. No-one understood why it had taken so long for him to come. They'd written, telephoned and sent turkeys at Christmas. His father had been strict. Life centred on work and he had never really been sure what his father believed in or thought. Father organised everything and you did what you were asked. Why hadn't his mother challenged things? Why hadn't he?



V's Deconstruction9

Joe's story is a sad story, full of missed opportunities. Joe felt that he was "not his own person", limited by his life as a child. Power had been centralised on his father in childhood and perhaps even now. "Father organised everything and you did what you were asked."

Joe's story mirrored many of my own concerns. I, too, felt the "centralisation of power" described by Ed Marcum in the introduction to "Towards 2000." I felt it in my job. In education, changes had happened so dramatically, without co-operation or consultation. I felt disempowered, drowning under paperwork, concerned with time management, contracts, entitlements, tribunals and stress.

Joe's trip to his mother's homeland was almost a spiritual journey. He set off to find out about himself; his inner self. It was a pilgrimage that reflected the journey which I also had to take, if I

could only sort out the necessary requirements. Joe must have blamed his father for an emphasis on work and control; I blamed external forces, but neither of us had challenged or manoeuvred within our situations. Now Joe was making a move at fifty years of age. Perhaps it was too late?

My reflections upon Joe's story were all negative. I noted sadness, but when I shared his story with a group of fellow action researchers, they pointed to the positive, which quite surprised me. They noted that Joe was moving forwards and found, in his mother's land, a great warmth and love. Perhaps these had existed in his childhood, in those formative years. His mother was a nurse, a caring profession. She cared for and loved her family.

Reflecting upon this feedback, I realised that I had placed my "depression" upon Joe. I had looked for casual links that, perhaps, did not exist. I saw Joe limited by factors that he could not control; others saw him making a positive move forward. Moyra Evans (1996) notes in her article on the use of story in action research that, "story helps to verbalise insights into practice." It had done that for me and it directly challenged my professional practice. Perhaps Joe hadn't seen the total picture; I certainly hadn't. External constraints were not the only limits and I, like Joe, was a part of the problem.

Reflecting further on Joe's story, I realised my need to find my roots; my values which ought to "guide" my work, but they were values which were "pruned". Years ago, they had been based upon an "optimistic democratic view of all pupils" and "equality of opportunity" so well described by Arthur Rowe in Education for Democracy (1972:23).

Joe had visited his mother's land when he was three years of age, too young, perhaps, to understand. I had known my roots, could verbalise them and yet, I had "pruned" them back. I had to help them be made manifest again. Walker (1981:163) notes that "the value of story is in its licence to go beyond what, as an evaluator/researcher, you can be fairly sure of knowing." I had to go beyond what I thought I knew. Interpretations of others challenged me to reflect again. The comments of the group moved my understanding further.

I had to begin with my roots or values. When Joe had moved forward, he met warmth and love. Lomax (1995) emphasises "the need to make ones values explicit", "to live ones values." Like Joe's mother, I reminisced when reading "Education for Democracy" (1972) but I met kindred spirits when I left the past and began to read "Towards 2000" and to discuss my concerns with fellow action researchers and colleagues. I was a part of my own concern, locked into the past. Joe hadn't challenged the "parameters placed around us," but they were placed there when he was a child and I suppose they appeared quite daunting then.

Both the teachers in their stories and their deconstructions highlight their values and the forces that drive their motivation to improve their practices. These stories draw upon their authors' autobiographies of learning to explain their current concerns and to suggest strategies that they can use to develop their practices to solve current problems. Both are beginning to develop strategies for dealing with their concerns that their subsequent action research plans will clarify and develop further.


MEMORY WORK

Memory work is particularly apt for self study as it is only possible if the object and subject of the research are the same, where the object of the research becomes the researcher. Memory work is a method for a collective investigation of experience, where each person can draw upon her own experience in order to help another understand her's better. It is a method that rejects the assumption that early experience is a prison of the self in favour of the view that anything a person remembers constitutes a trace in his or her construction of the self (Schratz & Walker 1995:41).

The seminal work on memory work can be found in a paper by Haug (1987) about Female Sexuality and by Crawford (1992) about Emotion and Gender. More recently Schratz (1994) and Schratz & Schratz-Hadwich (1995) have written about memory work as collective self reflection within action research. Haug and Crawford conceived memory work as active and interventionist leading to the social reconstruction of meaning rather than to merely personal enlightenment, suggesting that it can contribute to new knowledge.

The method of memory work often includes the use of story. Individuals write stories about some aspect of their lives and present these to a group to discuss. By drawing upon the others' experiences of similar events the author can clarify her own active part in the events she has described and place it in a broader social and political setting. As a result of the discussions, the author rewrites the story, not necessarily to change her fundamental beliefs about what is expressed, but perhaps to give a different emphasis on some aspect that has emerged through the discussion. Often the stories are written in the third person, with the author being represented by a fictional character thus enabling her to stand back from her own experience. The stories focus on the historical "I" that has created the meaning so that it can become the subject of an interrogation by the group. It is not just the words of the story, but the gaps and spaces in the account, the things written between the lines, that are explored.

It is worth noting the tensions that can arise in memory work, that are certainly visible in the reflections we present later: these are tensions between memory as the key to adequate explanation and memory as the vehicle for undermining it; between memory work as a research method and memory work as an outlet for nostalgia.

BUILDING ON COLLECTIVE SELF REFLECTION

In this section we present two pieces of writing that were written intentionally in order to focus a collective self reflection session. The first is Moyra's story12, in which she presents her remembered feelings about her first meeting with the students in a fictionalised account. The second, Pam's poem11, was intended to express her feeings and her values about working with teachers.

Both of these accounts, and the written reflections about session one 3,4,5 were used as a focus for the memory work session held two days before we met the students for session four. The discussion took place over a whole day and continued later in the week, on the evening of the first day of session four. All the discussion was taped. Subsequently we listened to the tapes and wrote our further reflections, integrating into these transcriptions from the tapes and other data. The order in which we present this material is: Moyra's story, Moyra's reflections; Zoe's reflections; Pam's poem; Pam's reflections.



Moyra's story: Meanings12

She was sitting on the steps at the station. A dejected heap, her pale face staring defiantly from the drabness of her clothes and hair. I picked my way round her, pretending not to notice. She reminded me of my childhood picking my way through the dirty London streets to school; I was alright when I was there, but the journey worried me, then, as now. I remembered that I had skirted around people quickly, got past, walked quicker to avoid them.

A different environment. Would I understand them; how would their beliefs and values differ from mine? Could I guess by looking at them? How did their lives touch mine? They taught in inner London; they'd stuck it longer than I had, way back in 1967. One year, and then mighty relieved to escape to the leafy lanes of Surrey. So it was pretentious that I could advise them. They must struggle with problems I had no idea how to resolve.

But my job wasn't to advise. It was to open out our thinking, to explore meanings, to give them support and confidence to take themselves forward. They started talking, introducing themselves. They didn't mention insurmountable problems. They spoke warmly of the children, of building their self esteem, of the frustrations of never having enough time, of managing the unmanageable, but they liked each other and extended their warmth to us. We were happy. We could work with these teachers.

They told us about the books they had read. We challenged them to criticise what they'd read rather than accepting it as gospel. They defended themselves. They felt like I often felt. Someone's saying I'm wrong. But I need to stand my ground. Keep arguing. Keep saying it's not like that. You've got it wrong. Stop, stop. It's all wrong. Oh God, I wish I hadn't started this.

Let me read you my story instead of all this arguing! No longer defensive. People, real joy, real dramas, real fears, real sadness. Stories about not being wanted, a broken marriage, disastrous lessons, bindweed everywhere, an overturned childhood, demands which couldn't be met, tears, frustrations. And flowers, children, colour, determination, patience, quietness, solitude, peace. Sharing their lives; how do they feel? Is this a burden undone? A precious package, gently unwrapped. A part of themselves, freely given to everyone. This is what their life is like. This is where their lives touch mine.



Moyra's Reflections16

P Your story....focuses very much on you and your fear of the unknown, and that's quite useful. I think it quite useful because it shows us as being vulnerable as teachers, and the teachers' stories are about their fear of the unknown.

M What about your vulnerable stories?

P Well I haven't got one. l'm not as vulnerable as you are.

M Why is that?

P I don't know

M Well let's explore it

P I think it's because I'm quite removed from it

M Aren't you vulnerable at all?

P Yes, but I don't consider my work part of my basic me. I don't consider it that way. I'm incredibly vulnerable about some things, but doing a job of work as best I can, I don't have myself in it in that way.

M Well, why should I be so vulnerable then?

P Because maybe you're keener on relationships than I am

M I'm not necessarily, I just don't think that's true you see. I just don't think that's true.

Pam said my story was useful because it exposed our vulnerabilities as teachers, and, by implication, that expressed empathy with the teachers with whom we were working. My immediate thought was that my story exposed my own vulnerability. I was not seeing this as a particularly good feature of my practice. After all why should I feel vulnerable? Hadn't I been teaching for long enough to feel confident in what I was doing? I would need to unpack my fears I had not made them explicit in my story; perhaps they were fears of the unknown or were they fears of people? Might they hold views of teaching which I might find difficult to connect with? If so, how would we build the relationships necessary between teacher and learner?

Relational, connected ways of knowing could be problematic, How does one get connected? What conditions need to prevail before it can happen? I would need to know this so that I can build the framework which will allow the connection to be made securely. I asked Pam why she didn't feel the same apprehension and she replied 'maybe you're keener on relationships than I am'. My response was `I'm not necessarily, I just don't think that's true you see. I just don't think that's true? In replying thus I was not meaning to deny the importance of relationships to me, but that, as I see it, they are important to her too.

My story showed one way of responding that it's disappointingly easy for all of us to fall into:

They told us about the books they had read. We challenged them to criticise what they'd read rather than accepting it as gospel. They defended themselves. They felt like I often felt. Someone's saying I'm wrong. But I need to stand my ground. Keep arguing. Keep saying it's not like that 12.

Is that what I was doing when I responded to Pam when I said `I just don't think that's true you see. I just don't think that's true'? Was I denying my principles of relationality because they made me more vulnerable than I wanted to be?

M Just explore vulnerability. Why don't you think its a bad thing? What do you mean by that?

P If you can afford to be vulnerable, you can also be strong, I think. If you can afford to let other people see the weakness or the tenderness about things you value strongly, then I think you're being strong. You're more or less saying I'm showing you this because I'm so strong myself that whatever you do I'll only change if you really persuade me and not because you bully me or do anything else...

I like this idea but I need to develop my courage if it is to be an idea to which I can wholly subscribe. I am reminded of my thoughts a year ago and think I have gently nudged myself forward, reframing the situation. Last year I said: What comes across to me is the absolute discomfort of self study, and the real worry that in exposing one's vulnerabilities one could be exploited by others. On the other hand once vulnerability has lost its secrecy it is starting to be faced and cover up operations are no longer necessary.


Zoe's Reflections17

P What we are talking about, surely, is our motives as teachers .... our effectiveness in doing what we are trying to do. I think we are also working together to see how we can help people better. So there's a collaborative element where we are talking about things and moving forward, because we are working as a team.

Z Part of this is to do with a discussion that we had earlier to do with how we see things differently and why ... what the reasons might be. To do with our experience .... how we've been differently socialised or whatever. And we did speculate about whether we've got different styles. We are doing a special sort of self study that's collective where we not only have an idea about ourselves but we ask others to help us with it.

As a collaborative team of self-reflectors do we draw upon our similarities or do we understand our differences? How do we collaborate effectively when we are different individuals? Everyone has been through a particular set of experiences as a learner which have shaped their understanding of what it means to learn. People have also found different teachers helpful or unhelpful to their learning. I suddenly realised, after this conversation, that I could share my autobiography of learning with my students and ask them to share theirs. This would be a marvellous way of starting to work with people, which I feel would be an improvement to my practice.

I have been developing the notion of the autobiography of my learning as a central means both of inquiring into my practice and of analysing and reporting on the tentative conclusions which emerge as I enquire. I believe that as learners we come to a learning situation with many useful (and impeding) experiences on which to draw. The story that I tell is the representation to others of a learning self which I have carefully constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed over time. This is an edited version of my life, focusing only on those issues which I identify as important at the time I tell the tale. Like action research, and self-study, the autobiography of my learning is dynamic and changing, always reaching provisional and tentative conclusions. At the moment I am at a particular point in my autobiography of my learning; tomorrow I shall be at a different point; yesterday I was somewhere different again. I do not necessarily move forwards all the time, it certainly does not feel as though I do much of the time. There are, however certain special moments which I have seen as turning points which change my understanding of what happens next and my telling/writing of what went before. These turning points can be represented visually, as in the work I have done with snake charts (Lomax and Parker, 1995). Or they can be written about, as I am doing now.

A turning point in my learning happened during the collective memory work because it felt to me as if we had reached a new way of working together, a way which integrated our friendship with our joint enquiry into professional issues. This went together in my mind with the moment where Pam endorsed an idea I had about working together. This idea was that we all bring different styles to our teaching and we could learn from our differences. I think this is important in the context of this particular study, because much of the course we are involved in with this particular group of students centres around their trying to work collaboratively with colleagues in school and peers at college.

P What you've just said I think makes a really important central point doesn't it? That the difference of people in a group is as important as their similarity? ... power relations are key because we do, as teachers, take over the minds of our students and they think our thoughts and that's certainly not what I want to do. How do you get away from that? and help them over hurdles when we know how they should do it? How do you allow them to be free thinking and still help them? It's a terrible dilemma.

Z I think that's one of the things that we might find a clue to.. through understanding that we've got different ways of doing things but they are OK in their different ways. And through understanding that our students might have a different way of doing things and it might get them to a better place than we'd imagined them getting by the route we'd suggested?

P Well I think I am succeeding with my teachers, I am delighted today because the three of them are doing completely different things. I said to P today, look, if you haven't got much about action research, why don't you just forget it and get on with what you are doing. And I thought, well, that's an amazing thing for me to say really. I was quite surprised about myself, but then I was also quite surprised that the other two, V and B, are just leaping forward in their own directions. Somehow I haven't held them back...

Z Yes, and they haven't been moulded and processed.

P No, they haven't been moulded. They are doing things that are so outrageously marvellous - a bit like Moyra and her stories - and me becoming an addict for stories..... forget about action research why don't you just write a story?



Pam's Poem: Standing for Itself11

So beautiful.
The sun sharpening the prismatic glory
Of its hard, brittle surfaces, rusted with a patina like antique bronze.
And despite the prickly pride,
And the beginnings of decomposition on the surface
Which had formed a colourful, rainbow-like iridescence,
Standing for itself.

Its brilliance may have been dulled.
Left uncomprehending.
Blind.
Shattered.

Perhaps mistaken for something inferior
And thrown back from where it had pushed so hesitantly, into the sunlight.
Or worse.
Maliciously defaced
By unscrupulous others
Who would not want its self evident worth to detract from their own superiority.

Look carefully
Beneath the surface of our prejudice and power.
So beautiful.
And standing for itself without any help.




Pam's Reflections15

I wanted to start Session Four (Thursday) by showing the students that we empathised with their work and valued their commitment to their action. I thought that explaining that Moyra, Zoe and myself were doing a self study, and inviting them into some of our process, might do this. I also wanted to explain how much I had learned from them about their special area of expertise. I shared an experience in which I had remarked to some colleagues upon the offensiveness of a poster advertising lager, which depicted an unattractive woman in thick lensed glasses alongside a handsome young man with a smile on his face carrying a can of lager. The slogan said: Her Dad owns the Brewery! My colleagues took my remark to be about gender when I was really thinking about the offence caused to people wearing glasses. I do not think I would have related this poster to disability before working with the group and I thank P and N particularly for my raised awareness of this issue. Maybe my poem celebrates my joy in being able to learn from N and P and the others. For me it represented my faith, hope, optimism and belief in human beings as capable of constructing the worlds they choose to live in.

On Thursday evening, in discussion about the day, Zoe reported that N was surprised at our lack of awareness about disability. This seemed to suggest a criticism of me. Is the prospect of such criticism a reason why people do not expose their `vulnerability'? Are they afraid that exposing their failures might result in them being criticised for their ignorance rather than being applauded for sharing their learning? I include the transcript of the conversation that I had with Zoe and Moyra that evening.

M The first main point was the one that you brought up Pam, about learning from the students

P Right

M ....which related back to my story .... me feeling worried that these people might be different.

P Yes

M But there is a possible problem ... with coming up with this as an issue ....in that .... the fact that we are revealing our sudden learning might surprise other people. It might surprise other people that we haven't become aware of this before.

P Well .... that's got nothing to do with it has it?

Z No .... It has a bit.... because N had a strong reaction to what you said this morning. He thought about it all morning ... then he said it to me (.......)

P What did he say?

Z He said he was shocked that you hadn't thought about disability .... in that way ... and he was just shocked at the revelation really and surprised.

P That's all right, isn't it? Maybe that will allow him to question his assumptions about how people think about things?.... yes? .... because we always assume that people know everything and think everything .... and they don't .... because sometimes it's never occurred to them, has it?

Z No ... but it's quite painful for him that it doesn't occur to people .... that's what a huge part of his life is about.....

P But that's unfortunate for him...

Z Yes

P .... but it's true.

On Friday I was prompted by the previous night's discussion with Moyra and Zoe to explain to the students a bit more about our self study. I outlined the sort of data we had to work with: the course programme; the tape recordings of the first meeting; our written reflections on the first meeting; the student's work; the story that Moyra had written and the poem I had written in order to explain our feelings about working with special needs teachers; the taped discussions from Tuesday and Tuesday evening; the taped discussion from Thursday evening. In retrospect I could have indicated the weight of this data or the length of the tapes involved, just to show how much data could be generated in a short study. I also tried to share our uncertainties and lack of clarity; the fact that we were finding it difficult to identify our main focus; the way we went around in circles; the idea that we had ethical dilemmas to face in identifying the students' role in our work; our own vulnerability in looking at our own practice. In this way I hoped that the teachers would see themselves as part of our ongoing enquiry.

CONCLUSIONS

We believe we are providing a programme of in-service education which is empowering teachers to reconstruct their professional lives in line with educational values at a time when these values are being eroded. We were delighted at how much work the teachers have done and at the very high quality of the self reflection that they shared. We feel the commitment and authenticity of their work and our attention is wholly taken up with their achievements and dilemmas. We are very interested that they move forward in different ways and are each at different stages in relation to different aspects of the action research. This pleases us as we see no reason why everyone should do the same thing.

That the programme can transform the professional lives of its participants is visible in both the teachers' stories and ours. This is why we stress the importance of the autobiography of our learning to the understanding of its process. It is a story we tell and retell about what we have learnt, when, where and how, and therefore what are the meanings we have made from the experiences of our life? This matters as a way of constructing ourselves which helps us to have some sense of coherence and integrity through drawing together different threads. It draws on real lived experiences and helps us to make sense of past, present and future experiences. It shows how we construe our world and our work in it and it also helps us to escape from being the victim of our own biography. This also matters because when we tell the story to others, they can choose to empathise with our story or to identify the differences between our experiences.

We would draw upon the work of Belenky et al (1986) and their advocacy of connectedness to explain the importance we attach to relatedness in creating groups of people who nurture each other's thoughts to maturity in our learning community.

`Connected knowers develop procedures for gaining access to other people's knowledge. At the heart of these procedures is the capacity for empathy. Since knowledge comes from experience, the only way they can hope to understand another person's ideas is to try to share the experience that has led the person to form the idea. (Belenky et al, 1986:113).

We can relate 'the connected teacher' to our roles as teacher educators. In offering opportunities to teachers to share their experiences and feelings in stories we think we have created an environment where they feel comfortable and can learn. Our recent experience shows that we can enter into a `connected class' with teachers, in which we work collaboratively to support each other's development. Hollingsworth (1994c:77) talks about coming to `what I know through relationship'. Much of this relational way of knowing we have come to as a result of the conversational nature of our experiences - through the trust built within the learning communities we help create.

We would argue that our work has been successful in getting acceptance for a form of teacher in-service education that is more relevant and empowering than the more traditional forms. We believe we have come to understand more clearly than previously the importance of relevance, emancipation, democracy and collaboration to our lives as teacher educators. We are enabling teachers to create their own theory based on an investigation of their own practice. This is what we mean by relevance. We believe that educated people are active learners who can make decisions about the means and ends of their learning with confidence and humility. We have helped individuals develop confidence in their own knowledge. This is what we mean by emancipation. We believe that we should not use position and power to control others or to deny them the opportunity to be heard. We have helped teachers give voice to their own professional concerns and we have supported them in finding solutions to these dilemmas. This is what we mean by democracy. We believe that we need to work together to bring about change for the better and we need to offer this opportunity to everyone concerned. We have collaborated as tutors from higher education with practitioners in other places and encouraged them to actively seek to collaborate with their students and colleagues in this same spirit. This is the collaboration we endorse as a human scale activity based on democratic values.

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