Keywords

In my 15 years of involvement with self-study methodology, I have noticed a sometimes uncomfortable relationship between the community and its methodology. On the one hand, there were a considerable number of chapters in the first handbook devoted to unpacking the methodological traditions that had developed in the first decade of self-study. Bullough and Pinnegar’s (2001) Guidelines for quality in autobiographical forms of self-study research continues to serve as a touchstone for many, and there are several books devoted to issues of methodology and methods within self-study (e.g., Pinnegar and Hamilton 2009; Lassonde et al. 2009; Tidwell et al. 2009). On the other hand, I have witnessed many discussions at both the biennial International Conference of Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices (“The Castle Conference”) and meetings of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) that have resulted in sometimes uncomfortable disagreements on the nature of methodology and method.

While a certain amount of disagreement is healthy and helpful for any research paradigm, I have noticed that those in disagreement are often those who are more familiar with self-study methodology and those who are new to the field. Those new to self-study, for example, tend to ask questions about why self-study is considered different to, for example, autoethnography or action research and often express frustration at what some consider to be an unclear set of starting points. Those who are more experienced with the field tend to focus on self-study’s hybrid, collaborative nature and the importance of starting to do self-study to figure out what self-study is and what it can be for a particular researcher. It is understandable for those who have worked in this or any other research methodology to expect that newcomers do a certain amount of reading to familiarize themselves with a tradition, but I can also empathize with a newcomer who might be confused by statements such as “self-study is not a ‘recipe’ or ‘procedure,’ rather it is a methodology” (Loughran 2005, p. 6). The name of the methodology, self-study, has been noted as being a confusing starting point as self-study methodology requires some kind of interaction and many researchers use terms such as collaborative self-study and critical friendship routinely in their work.

My intention in this introductory chapter is neither to provide a comprehensive literature review of methods and methodologies in self-study nor to review in detail the chapters that follow. Indeed, I believe that utilizing one or both of these approaches would be counterproductive to a direction that I think might be more useful for those who are both new and experienced in self-study. In this chapter I will focus on the concept of pressures in self-study methodology with a view to focussing on the constraints and opportunities around two major considerations in self-study methodology: critical friendship and collaboration. Both are widely used in the extant literature, both are ill-defined, and both may pose some considerable pause from new and experienced self-study researchers alike.

I begin by invoking a conceptual metaphor, derived from my lifelong practice as a learner and teacher of martial arts for thinking about the idea of pressure in self-study methodology and methods. I then explore some of the existing literature on both critical friendship and collaboration in self-study methodology in order to demonstrate the potential value of this metaphor and to complicate further some of the conversations around methodology in self-study. I will then suggest a different entry point for thinking about self-study methodology: the freedom to be creative in an environment to do self-study, what I refer to as creatogenic and creatopathic environments. Finally, I will use this heuristic to provide a brief analysis of the chapters comprising this section of the handbook, all of which have taken a new approach to considering self-study, methods, and methodologies. Neither this chapter nor any in this section claims to be an exhaustive literature review. Instead, I hope that this and the other chapters in this section provide both a useful jumping-off point for those new to self-study and a helpful tool for reframing existing understandings for those more experienced in self-study methodology.

Pressures in Self-Study Methodology

In Bullock (2014) and Bullock (2016), I explored some of the ways in which a lifelong involvement in teaching and learning martial arts affected how I think about teaching, learning, teacher education, and self-study. In part, I used metaphors crucial to learning martial arts as a catalyst for thinking about some of the unique features of self-study. In so doing, I recognized the effects that my personal history as a learner had on my professional history as a researcher and teacher educator. As I have noted elsewhere, it is difficult for me to separate lessons from martial arts from how I think, as I have engaged with them as a learner for nearly four decades and as a teacher for about half that time. They are, to paraphrase Russell (1997), a part of who I am in how I teach and, necessarily, how I do self-study research. Connecting with, and being open about, my connections between martial arts, learning, teaching, teacher education, and self-study is a part of my moral commitment to self-study research and practice (Pinnegar and Hamilton 2009).

For this section devoted to pressures in conducting self-study research, I will invoke a metaphor from Italian forms of swordplay in an attempt to complicate the English term “pressure.” To do so, I entreat the reader to think about a concept known as stringere, a term that is often casually translated as pressure but more usefully – at least in swordplay – conceptualized as an interplay between constraint and invitation. Within Italian traditions largely developed in the Renaissance (see Capoferro 1610/1999), stringere highlights the placement of one’s sword relative to one’s opponent’s sword. For example, I might position my sword (e.g., a side sword or a rapier) such that the hilt (the part held in one’s hand) is aimed slightly toward my hip and the rest of the sword aiming on a diagonal, away from me and toward my opponent. The point of the sword thus appears in my line of vision at about the level of my nose, angled toward the opponent. Italian swordplay would refer to this stringere as blocking an inside line while leaving an outside line open. A wise opponent would not attempt to attack the inside line, through a presented sword. They would instead attack on the outside line, over the hilt, and toward the outside of my body, where there is very little sword. A wise defender would not remain in the existing guard if attacked on the outside line; they would shift their arm 90° to close the outside line with the strongest part of the sword (the forte). Of course, in closing the outside line, they open the inside line. And so it goes in swordplay: action and reaction, risposte alle domande poste.

If the preceding is difficult to visualize, all one needs to do is realize that any action in swordplay provokes a reaction and that there is a certain logic to the sorts of reactions one might encounter. In fact, many texts are framed as a conversation between attacker and defender or teacher and student. Sometimes, activities for learning swordplay are framed along the lines of questions: “If the attacker asks you a question by moving their sword in a particular way, what is your response?.” An attack on an outside line requires one to close the outside line, which in turn opens up one’s inside line. And the converse is true. It is obviously outside the scope of this chapter to go into the full range of “questions and answers” posed in swordplay, but the idea is that there is neither a perfect guard nor a perfect attack. There are always openings and closings.

Indulging me for a moment longer, I would like to point out that stringere requires a student of swordplay to always be mindful of openings created by closings and, by extension, to employ this knowledge strategically. One possible way of interpreting this concept, which was used extensively during my studies, is that any constraint one places on the motion of one’s opponent’s sword is an invitation for them to move differently. Thus we say that stringere involves both constraint and invitation. A martial artist, skilled with a sword, purposefully constrains, even over-constrains, in order to invite a particular invitation. In other words: I might over-constrain the inside line with an obvious movement because I know that such a movement provokes a response on the outside line, for which I am prepared. Such a strategy is considerably better than choosing a guard position that waits for an unknown response.

In analyzing how the concept of pressure affects the way I think about self-study methodology, I was drawn immediately into thinking about the dynamic nature of how different pressures develop, increase, decrease, and redevelop over the course of any self-study work that I have done. Be it through critical friendship or through some other sort of collaboration, I have never had an experience in self-study that was free of pressure or an experience that was always subject to the same, constant pressure. I am also mindful of the tendency to associate the word pressure with negative experiences – we might speak of feeling pressure at work, pressure to meet a deadline, and pressure to move out of our comfort zone. Thinking about my contributions to this handbook, however, made me realize the extent to which I think about pressure from my lifetime of education in the martial arts. For me, pressures in research methodology and in the martial arts can be modelled in similar ways. I would argue strongly that self-study methodology requires a management of pressures that can be productively understood through the lens of stringere, the language of constraints and invitations. Each time I invoke the concept of stringere in this chapter, I encourage the reader to remember that this concept is a way of modelling the richness of the pressures we experience as self-study researchers.

I now turn to examples of how stringere might apply to both develop and enrich an understanding of two of the key tenants of self-study that are likely to provoke both discussion and disquiet in discussions of both new and experienced self-study researchers. The differences in, and opportunities afforded by, the methodological hallmarks of critical friendship and collaboration call attention to one seemingly obvious critique of self-study: How can it be self-study if you are working with other people? One response is to say that self-study is both self-initiated and self-focused (LaBoskey 2004) or that “self-study must go beyond personal reflections of practice so that the learning about teacher education practices might truly resonate with others” (Loughran 2005, p. 6). Accepting these assertions, however, does not make navigating the vast literature in self-study that uses critical friendship and/or collaboration any simpler – particularly when the precise natures of these concepts are often not made clear. We will now see how stringere sheds light on debates, discussions, and questions contained within the tenants of critical friendship and collaboration in self-study by both considering examples from existing self-study research and from chapters in this section of the handbook.

Critical Friendship

Despite the moniker of self in self-study, the methodology favors some form of collaboration. A considerable amount of self-study research uses the term critical friend, which implies a particular kind of collaboration and an approach to data analysis and interpretation. Problematically, however, it is not always clear what self-study researchers meet by critical friendship and how it intersects with, yet is different from, collaboration. Are collaborators necessarily critical friends? Is it possible to do collaborative self-study without critical friendship? Moreover, is it possible to do self-study without some form of collaboration? The answer to the last of these questions seems to be a resounding “no,” from the literature, although one must broaden the concept of collaboration somewhat. The answer to the first two questions is less clear and speaks to the varying understandings of critical friendship implicit in the literature. For example, Mena and Russell (2017) analyzed 65 papers presented at the 10th Castle Conference (held in 2014) and offered the following challenge to self-study researchers:

A critical friend who already understands the researcher can help to review data, challenge assumptions, and suggest additional perspectives. Thus self-study is a personal analysis of teaching practice by the self but it is not conducted in isolation. About 25% of the papers presented at the 2014 conference appeared to have been carried out individually and without collaboration. We urge self-study researchers to ensure that their self-studies are collaborative and to give at least some explicit attention to the contribution made by the collaborators. (p. 116, emphasis original)

In particular, they cited critical friendship as an important way of explaining why a study might be considered trustworthy, stating that “simply mentioning trustworthiness does not ensure credibility to those who do not attend a study’s presentation” (p. 115). At the same time, however, one might argue that the concept of critical friendship is understood in different ways across different papers, with varying degrees of explication of the nature of said critical friend.

The concept of critical friendship requires one to both be an advocate for the work and to ask difficult questions that might, in some ways, impede the sense of confidence for the teacher educators involved (Schuck and Russell 2005). It adds the pressure to “regularly test the relationship as it proceeds, checking for clues about the level of critical commentary with which each feels comfortable” (p. 120). The constraint of critical friendship ensures that there is a certain kind of trustworthiness to the work by closing down lines of critique around, say solipsism. Critical friendship also offers the constraint of holding one accountable to one’s critical friend, be it through an agreement to meet, to exchange written work, or some combination therein. But it opens up a line in which a self-study researcher is perhaps more vulnerable because the researcher is sharing and interpreting their practice within the context of a relationship, one that might also have other professional and/or personal dimensions and one that may or may not require critical friends to negotiate various sorts of boundary crossings (be they social, conceptual, intersectional, and/or institutional). Similarly engaging in self-study without a critical friend constrains the fear of vulnerability, in some ways, but opens one up to other kinds of questions, such as the ways in which one has attempted to understand their own practice via LaBoskey’s (2004) exemplar-based validation and the degree to which it is possible to identify living contradictions (Whitehead 1993) without the aid of another. Finally, one might apply stringere to understand the different kinds of pressures invoked by other forms of collaborative self-study methodology, in which researchers work together in various ways but explicitly do not identify as critical friends. It is reasonable to ask not only about the differences between critical friendship and collaborative self-study but also the openings and closings of lines of enquiry afforded by each approach.

Schuck and Russell (2005) is one of the most often-cited papers on critical friendship; it is the most cited article in Studying Teacher Education (Kitchen and Berry 2020). In my view, it offers one of the clearest articulations of the nature and complexities associated with critical friendship. The paper reports on the ways in which Schuck and Russell acted as critical friends to each other in two different self-studies: first asynchronously with a focus on Russell’s teaching via email and then in person when Russell was a visitor to Schuck’s university. This article is significant in many ways, one of which is the candor with which the authors outline their uncertainties around critical friendship. Phase 1 focused on Russell’s teaching and revealed that the authors had different conceptualizations of the nature of critical friendship, mediated in particular by differences in academic rank:

Although participating in the project was a valuable learning experience for Sandy [Schuck], she was unsure as to what she was contributing as critical friend to Tom [Russell]. These issues, that were quite significant for Sandy, were distant or invisible for Tom, particularly as he was struggling with unexpected challenges in his teaching. Differences in academic rank seem to carry much more significance in Australia (as in the UK) than in Canada; Tom saw Sandy as an academic colleague whose comments would be welcome. (p. 109)

The result in Phase 1 was a somewhat uneven understanding of the roles of critical friendship and the degree to which one might support a critical friend versus the degree to which one might challenge the practice of a critical friend – particularly if one is concerned about the complexities of status differences between the two. Returning to the metaphor of stringere, we see that each choice made by a critical friend constrains certain lines of enquiry while opening up others. In Phase 1 of their study, Schuck and Russell remind us that academic rank and related power dynamics might act as a constraint within the dyad and, moreover, that the perceptions of each critical friend might differ in an accounting of the constraints and invitations in a given situation. One of the clear insights from their work together is the parallel between learning to teach and learning to be a critical friend: “ascertaining ways of improving practice for oneself is likely to be more effective in enhancing practice than actually being told what to do” (p. 113). Conducted at a distance, Phase 1 of their critical friendship seemed most useful as a catalyst for Russell to write extensively about his perceptions of his teaching, with Schuck navigating how she might respond to his writings with considerable uncertainty.

Phase 2 of Schuck and Russell’s (2005) research was undertaken face-to-face and seemed to feature several moments in which the nature of the critical friendship was negotiated more effectively. Phase 2 also highlighted another type of difficulty in self-study work, namely, the pressures associated with finding ways to both support and challenge the work of a critical friend. Significantly, they were able to speak in person after each of Schuck’s classes, which brought a mixture of enthusiasm and disappointment for Schuck:

Supportive and encouraging comments are more easily received than ones that challenge our thinking and beliefs. We both experienced this in the role of the practitioner, and we both wondered how best to challenge gently as the critical friend. Sandy, while eagerly looking forward to the discussions with Tom after each class, also experienced moments of disappointment when Tom highlighted aspects of her practice that could be improved. While recognizing that a study of the aspects of her teaching that could be improved was a central component of her self-study, accepting these challenges from a critical friend and working on ways to address them was not easy. The temptation to be defensive arose, and it was only through reflection after the conversations that Tom’s message could be received in the open way he intended. (p. 117)

This excerpt highlights some key features of critical friendship to which the authors return at the end of their article. Schuck and Russell (2005, pp. 119–120) offer 11 conclusions about critical friendship that I will not repeat verbatim here, although I encourage the reader to consider their conclusions in any critical friendship they might undertake. The 11 conclusions, in my view, might also be understood within the stringere metaphor. Possible constraints to critical friendship include, but are not limited to, assumptions made about how personal and/or professional friendship might translate into critical friendship, assumptions about focusing the results of the critical friendship on the person whose teaching is being studied, underestimating the time involved to develop a shared understanding of critical friendship, and the affordances of critical friendships based solely on asynchronous sharing of data. Possible invitations to critical friendship include, but are not limited to, assumptions about how personal and/or professional friendship might translate into critical friendship, the possibilities of building ways to study the nature of critical friendship itself (see Fletcher et al. 2016 for a helpful framework of analysis), the affordances of lengthy critical friendships spanning multiple self-study projects, and the importance of clarifying assumptions about teacher education. To see how a constraint might work with an invitation, I invite the reader to think about how a new critical friend might be selected from, say, a group of existing professional colleagues with whom one has never had an extended conversation about the nature of teacher education.

It is not difficult to find references to critical friendship in the broad self-study literature; in many cases it has been used as a way to signal the special nature of the collaboration between many self-study researchers. Some self-study researchers have specifically considered how their conceptualizations of critical friendship have changed as a result of engaging in self-study. In their conceptualization of a third, “meta” critical friend, Fletcher et al. (2016) warned of the dangers of not considering the possible negative outcomes of critical friendship and suggested that a meta-critical friend could help self-study researchers from single-loop to double-loop learning (Argyris 1976) by helping critical friends push through familiar territory toward new conceptions of teacher education. Their comments align well with Bullough and Pinnegar’s (2004) idea that the very notion of framing and reframing problems of practice via critical friendship needs to be unpacked and interpreted as well. Petrarca and Bullock (2014) suggested that an initial commitment to collaborative work required them to negotiate a critical friendship, to engage in the type of thinking they wished to engage with. Olan and Edge (2018) shared a “collaborative conference protocol” (p. 321) to explain how they generated their critical friendship. Their interesting comments help self-study research to, among other things, understand the ways in which critical friendship may require researchers to cross new boundaries, even when there exists a prior personal and/or professional relationship. Olan and Edge concluded that they “experienced critical friendship and added layers to what critical friendship is—layers of re-imaging, re-inventing, negotiation, accepting, and acknowledging that there are events and incidents that are and will inform our lived experiences, even if our voice was silent when that moment occurred” (p. 324).

Nilsson (2013) demonstrated some of the ways in which self-study researchers might work across disciplines by describing the ways in which she acted as a critical friend to six engineering colleagues from her position at a university center for teaching and learning. Nilsson was cognizant that her positioning relative to engineering colleagues might be at odds with some approaches advocated by Schuck and Russell (2005) and took care to find ways to learn from the existing pedagogical expertise of her colleagues, stating that “it became evident that the role of the critical friend shifted from being perceived as an ‘expert on teaching’ to a co-producer of knowledge which, in the end, was as a consequence of building respect and trust” (Nilsson 2013, p. 205). The constraint of being framed as a university-based “expert” on teaching (via her role title), compared to colleagues in another faculty, also opened an invitation for Nilsson to engage in new ways of creating mutual trust across disciplines.

Samaras and Sell (2013) extended the idea of critical friendships to working with graduate students in a teacher research course by using letter writing as a way to support self-study research projects. They argued that critical friends should “provoke new ideas and interpretations, question the researcher’s assumptions, and participate in open, honest, and constructive feedback” while acknowledging that “the structure and pedagogy of critical friend work can be problematic” (p. 97). Samaras and Sell observed that the experiences of graduate students using the critical friendship approach varied: one group’s experience revealed a commitment to shared responsibility for one another’s work and to openly sharing challenges and struggles with self-study research, whereas the other group’s letters remained “a tool for private speech on an intrapersonal level,” and thus “feedback was minimized because they were not accessible to each other” (pp. 104–105). We see here an important example of the reasons one must make knowledge gained from self-study public; even creating an explicit space for critical friendship does not guarantee that the full benefits of critical friendship will accrue. In their analysis, Samaras and Sell suggested that “there is an in-betweenness of support and critique in peer review” and, citing a student-participant, that students “need to push beyond politeness” (p. 105).

In their unique self-study of the role of executive coaching in learning to be a dean of education, Loughran and Brubaker (2015) used critical friendship to understand both what Loughran learned about university administration via engagement with an executive coach and how Brubaker’s role as a “meta” critical friend (c.f. Fletcher et al. 2016) helped to reframe ideas developed between Loughran and his coach. In addition to being a relatively rare insight into the processes of learning to be a university administrator, the study highlights the ways in which Loughran engaged and taught his executive coach about how to be a critical friend, from a self-study perspective, while simultaneously relying on Brubaker to “redirect [Loughran’s] focus to the task at hand and unpack the experiences in non-threatening yet constructive ways” (p. 267). This relationship is also notable for acknowledging the power differential between Loughran and Brubaker; the authors go to significant lengths to explain the ways in which they managed issues of unequal status and the requirements of confidentiality in their work. Importantly for the purposes of this chapter, Loughran and Brubaker argued that the primary outcome of their self-study was an enhanced understanding of the power and potential of critical friendship, what they described as the “essence” of critical friendship:

Purpose is key: constructing purposes to which we are collectively committed and building purposeful partnerships from common goals matters, despite being difficult to achieve. Making both purpose and relationship explicit is central to benefitting from a constructive critical friendship. Nevertheless, the imperative is to offer both: confirming and disconfirming data; on-going and continued challenge and support; and, critique and friendship, in order for the research enterprise to genuinely be of value. Critical friendship must be rigorous, systematic and based on evidence. It must contain a combination of both support and challenge or else it will, more likely than not, simply bolster that which has always been the case. (p. 268)

Their comments echo those made throughout this section; critical friendship is not merely a convenience nor is it a way to seek out confirmatory support. It is, as I have argued, a space of negotiation subject to constraints and invitations, both of which shape and reshape pressures incumbent on those doing self-study work. One hopeful message from Loughran and Brubaker’s (2015) work is the agency embedded in critical friendship and self-study; like partners engaged in swordplay, critical friends must manage the movements of their partner and theirselves, being willing to switch between the figure and the ground. As Loughran and Brubaker suggested, “self-study and critical friendship are two ways of cultivating such assent, ways of doing the difficult inner work of shaping and influencing one’s own participation” (p. 268).

Collaboration

In the first edition of this handbook, Lighthall (2004) analyzed a corpus of self-study work comprising 125 writings in order to develop an understanding of the development of the field and to conceptualize its prominent features. Of all of the features of self-study methodology that he coded, collaboration was the most frequent – more so than even the concept of self-study of practices. In other words, one might make a reasonable argument that self-study is grounded in collaboration – be it between authors, between author(s) and others, within the study itself, or within some other form of professional practice. He identified four general patterns to collaboration: between colleagues in face-to-face environments, between a self-study researcher and their students, across disciplines, and collaboration to overcome geographical distance. A consideration of each of these patterns in terms of stringere: face-to-face collaborations invite particular conversations, whereas geographical distances constrain other types of conversations, for example. Collaborating across disciplines, as Nilsson (2013) and Fletcher and Bullock (2012) did, offers the interesting constraint of first establishing a shared language across disciplines before exploring the openings created by working with those who approach teaching and learning in slightly different ways. It should also be noted that the voices of preservice teachers have been important ways of enhancing trustworthiness in self-study research, albeit these approaches sometimes require a somewhat different sort of collaboration (Loughran 2004).

Lighthall (2004) also highlighted a somewhat unique feature of collaboration in self-study, namely, the ways in which modes of collaborating support and extent of the development of professional relationships: “creating collegial niches for themselves and in the practical work of educating teachers together” (p. 206). He returned to the importance of collaboration at the end of the chapter, stating “the single most prominent feature of the s-step enterprise is collaboration” before entreating “we can build on that strength” (p. 231). In particular, he suggested that self-study researchers continue their work to collaborate across disciplines in the academy and with teachers in schools. It would appear that both directions have been soundly taken up by self-study researchers; one might look, for example, at work by Han et al. (2014), Newberry (2014), or Williams and Ritter (2010) for examples of collaborations across disciplines within education and the broader academy and at work by Capitelli (2015), Kitchen and Bellini (2012), or Brown and Russell (2012) for work collaborative self-study with and by teachers in schools. Papers presented at the Castle Conference seem particularly likely to demonstrate the kinds of collaboration that Lighthall called for (e.g., Kosnik et al. 2006; Forgasz and Loughran 2018; Garbett et al. 2016).

Bodone, Guðjónsdóttir, and Dalmau (2004) commented on both the omnipresence of collaboration in self-study of teaching and teacher education practices research and the variety of forms that said collaboration undertook. Helpfully, they introduced three forms of thinking about collaboration in self-study methodology. Listed in order from the form of collaboration most present to least present:

  1. 1.

    Collaboration as “simply there, a pervasive presence, the background to the action, or a way of working (e.g., team teaching)” (p. 745)

  2. 2.

    Collaboration as a critical part of inquiry in self-study

  3. 3.

    Collaboration with “voices in the literature, their life history and the broader discourse” (p. 745) but not directly with other researchers

Bodone et al. argued that there seems to be no clear definition of collaboration in self-study – much like self-study methodology itself, which also resists definition yet operates within a particular coherence (Loughran 2005). They highlighted what they felt were some of the key features of the dialogue around collaboration in self-study, broadly characterized in four themes:

  1. 1.

    Self-study and collaboration have an “intrinsic” relationship (p. 771).

  2. 2.

    The need for some form of collaboration arises in part due to the “ethical and theoretical” location of self-study within traditions of reflective practice and the social construction of knowledge (p. 771).

  3. 3.

    The nature and form of collaboration within self-study has an effect on the nature of the “self” in self-study, the ways in which knowledge is created and disseminated, the relationship between learning and action, and the ways in which changes in knowledge of teaching teachers overlap with changes in teacher education practices.

  4. 4.

    Collaboration in self-study should not be about “consensus, unity, and sameness,” in particular because “collaborative agency is always at risk from our (and our colleagues) inability to see beyond our shared comfort zones” (p. 771).

Stringere helps us to understand these features of dialogue in collaborative self-study, particularly when one considers the concept of collaborative agency. Taken lightly, collaborative self-study might be thought of as a way to generate simple consensus, to enter an echo chamber where one knows one’s ideas will be valued in particular ways. The relationship between constraint and invitation, however, reminds us that collaborative consensus always closes down particular lines of enquiry and invites critiques from other points of view. Collaborative self-study, grounded in dialogue conceptualized as an interaction between partners, each moving, framing, and reframing their inquiries, is best understood as a dynamic process in which we invite others to extend themselves beyond a comfort zone.

Hug and Möller (2005) used self-study to examine their collaborative practices within early childhood education as early tenure-track teacher educators teaching courses in literacy, language, science, mathematics, and technology for the first time. They began from the premise that “Collaboration is a key aspect of self-study and a central feature of [their] work” (p. 130) and further specified that collaboration was a form of “intellectual connectedness” which in turn contributed to “community as emotional connectedness” and “integrated disciplines as pedagogical connectedness” (p. 131). They acknowledged both personal and professional dimensions of their development in developing new understandings of their identities and their approaches to teaching teachers. Our metaphor of stringere helps us to realize that a collaborative dyad necessarily involves constraints and invitations; the authors themselves comment on the need to constrain certain discussions solely within their collaboration while making other conversations an invitation to the wider discourse:

Through our work during the semester and through the writing of this paper, both of us developed a deeper understanding of what it means to teach in an integrated manner. In teaching and analyzing, we came to realize that it is important to develop a space in which we can highlight our own stories—those that we can shape for public sharing and those that remain private between two teacher educators struggling to make sense of their teaching. In such a space, we could ask questions about what we were doing and begin to see connections between our teaching and the larger social, historical, and political world in which we and our students are situated. The formation of this space had a direct impact on how we created and told our stories. (p. 137)

Importantly, Hug and Möller (2005) used the word struggling to describe their collaboration, a term that in this context reminds us that struggle does not necessarily mean combative. Just like in the martial arts, choosing to engage in study of practice with another requires a constant negotiation of collaboration and the ways in which one might open, close, and reopen lines of enquiry.

Martin and Dismuke (2015) called attention to the relative paucity of self-studies that analyze collaborative approaches to teaching. They focused on both the nature of their collaboration teaching a writing methods course and the ways in which their collaboration changed over time. Crucially, the authors came to their work as teacher educators with considerable experience collaborating with other teachers in their prior roles as elementary school teachers. They argued, in part, that collaborative self-studies between teacher educators teaching the same course tend to adopt a narrow view of practice and encouraged future self-study work that explored the role of collaboration in planning approaches to teaching teachers. Martin and Dismuke believed focusing on planning to be particularly important in the political, often ends-focussed, teacher education environment in which they worked.

Hamilton and Pinnegar (2013) introduced the metaphor of a topography in order to analyze and interpret their understandings of collaboration in self-study methodology, developed over a decades-long series of collaborations dating back to the origins of the methodology itself. They agreed with Bodone et al.’s (2004) assertion that collaboration was essential both to the nature of self-study methodology and to the ways in which self-study research might unfold; they combine these ideas with Clandinin and Connelly’s (1995) idea of a professional landscape as a way to think about collaboration as the metaphorical ground of self-study methodology. The use of the term ground calls attention to topography, Hamilton and Pinnegar (2013) wrote:

We recognize that topography includes the physical, natural, and human-made aspects of the land above the surface. In fact, a topographic map appears as land in relief and describes one place in relation to other places in terms of elevation and position, symbolically telling a local story … We used the symbols of topography to guide us as we attempt to map the research land before us, to deepen our understanding of collaboration as a fundamental characteristic of self-study of practice research. However, we also hold in our memory the knowledge that while land surface might remain mostly static, it can shift in ways similar to the surface of research. (p. 76)

Our metaphor of stringere reminds us that deciding on a particular trajectory both closes down certain avenues while simultaneously opening up possibilities; a skilled practitioner is conscious of both constraints and invitations and plans accordingly. Hamilton and Pinnegar’s topography of collaboration functions in a similar way, in that they acknowledge both the paths taken in their collaboration while acknowledging how the ways in which they think about possibilities change over time (e.g., the shifting surfaces of research). Furthermore, Hamilton and Pinnegar used North American poems that reference geographical concepts as a way of exploring possibilities in their thinking about collaboration, acknowledging that they did not know a priori that poetry would push their thinking in particular directions. This approach allowed them to identify standpoints in their collaborative research, which allows them to take seriously the challenge of thinking about how knowledge in self-study might develop over time. Here again, we see an analogy between the preparedness and improvisation of self-study methodology, martial arts, and the ways in which experienced self-study researchers think about collaboration.

Creating Environments for Self-Study: A Look Ahead

At the beginning of this chapter, I acknowledged that engaging with self-study methodology requires attending to multiple pressures, both internal and external, and that the nature of how one perceives and works with the pressures of self-study methodology has much to do with how familiar one is with the methodology. I introduced the concept of stringere early on, developed from my experiences with martial arts, as a way of operationalizing and analyzing the ways in which self-study methodology opens up certain lines of enquiry as it closes down others. I also emphasized that the stringere changes as one engages with self-study methodology, as pressures change over time. Having explored the pressures exerted on self-study methodology and on self-study researchers by the interrelated touchstones of critical friendship and collaboration, it is time to look ahead to some of the contributions made by chapters in this volume. I wish here, though, to complicate the stringere metaphor introduced earlier. Constraints and invitations may help us consider the reflexive, relational elements of both critical friendships and collaboration, but this metaphor misses a crucial element of both martial arts practice and self-study research: creativity.

One link between the practice of martial arts and the practice of self-study methodology is that it is impossible to memorize and enact a set of steps that will produce meaningful work, in either case. There is a certain improvisation required within the enabling constraints imposed in each, particularly as one collaborates with different partners and forms of partnership, creative and otherwise. To help conceptualize these ideas further, I find it helpful to consider Barron, Montuori, and Barron’s (1997) idea of creatogenic ecologies and creatopathic ecologies. The former support creativity, the latter do not. Barron et al. were quick to point out both that “friendships are an important part of creative human ecologies” and that “almost all creation is a collaboration” (p. 127) before discussing some of the inherent paradoxes of creatogenic ecologies. Writing about how artists and musicians create, Barron et al. argue that creatogenic ecologies have both role models and offer moments of solitude, “for as they internalise the work of others—their mentors, colleagues, friends and enemies—creative persons are also developing their individual view of the world” (p. 128).

Stringere offers a creatogenic ecology because it requires one to understand how constraints and invitations operate in a given situation. As a martial artist or a self-study methodologist, I argue that the strategic deployment of constraints to provoke particular invitations allows for creative work, and it is this kind of creativity that, in part, makes it difficult to clearly define self-study methodology or its components. Here, now, we can begin to see that the pressure of self-study methodology is not something to be avoided; it is to be embraced.

Subsequent chapters in this section offer their own takes on the aforenoted pressures in self-study methodology, alongside many other new ideas. I entreat the reader to spend a moment, however, considering each of the following chapters in terms of the stringere that is tacitly and explicitly articulated and the ways in which the questions raised by the authors contribute to creatogenic rather than creatopathic environments.

Fletcher (Chap. 9, “Self-Study as Hybrid Methodology”) makes a strong case that hybridity is at the core of self-study of teaching and teacher education practices methodology, perhaps as much as ideas about collaborations. Drawing on Bullough and Pinnegar’s (2001) comments about the betweenness of self-study, Fletcher considers the warrants for arguing the inherent hybridity of self-study methodology from empirical research and from definitional, theoretical, and methodological perspectives. He argues, in part, that various definitions of hybridity have been implicit since the outset of the methodology and that, in many ways, self-study might be considered a methodology-pedagogy. A table referring to examples of hybrid relationships in self-study methodology is sure to provoke considerable thought from both novice and experienced self-study researchers. The hybrid nature of self-study means that teacher educators are uniquely positioned to understand epistemic claims made about and by self-study research and that self-study makes a call to ontological considerations. One of the clearest messages from Fletcher’s work is that his status “between two worlds,” having worked hard to establish self-study in physical education and to develop an understanding of self-study via his identity as a physical education teacher educator, has offered both constraints and invitations: constraints in the sense that he recognizes the hybridity of self-study allows one to push further into a new disciplinary community while opening up questions about quality, due to a paucity of potential reviewers. Opening up to reviewers in self-study more generally, however, constrains the ways in which the disciplinary has been foregrounded, because relatively few members of the self-study community have expertise in physical education. We thus return to the same potential questions about quality. The invitation, though, to a creatogenic environment in which to consider ideas about hybridity as a researcher who exists at the boundaries of multiple scholarships seems well worthwhile and to be a powerful lesson for newcomers in particular.

Hamilton, Hutchinson, and Pinnegar (Chap. 10, “Quality, Trustworthiness, and S-STTEP Research”) consider what it means to embody frequently cited concepts such as quality and trustworthiness in practice as self-study researchers. Such concepts, they argue, require particular attention to the ontological commitment of self-study researchers not only to engage in knowledge grounded in lived experiences but also to recognize the particular commitment to rigor in research that such a commitment entails. Helpfully, Hamilton et al. include perspectives from both experienced and novice self-study researchers while reviewing and situating the concepts of quality and trustworthiness within the broader range of qualitative research paradigms. In this way, one might think of the broader qualitative revolution in social science research as a creatogenic environment that created a set of constraints and invitations for the field of self-study to develop among a group of like-minded researchers and teacher educators. They give us an important insight into the constraints imposed on early self-study work, specifically the temptation to draw equivalencies between qualitative and quantitative research (i.e., that concepts such as “data” always mean the same thing in different contexts), a constraint that invited a certain tendency toward “defensiveness” on the part of self-study researchers. Hamilton et al. use their chapter to call attention to a different sort of invitation, that of seeing the value of studying one’s own practice while acknowledging that it can be both “a disruption and disrupting” (Chap. 10, “Quality, Trustworthiness, and S-STTEP Research”) given the ontological commitment one needs to make. Throughout their analysis, Hamilton et al. call attention not only to the position of the self-study researcher in their examination of practice but the ways in which said positionality tends to shift in context with respect to theirselves and the methods employed and as a function of the foundational nature of the collaboration in self-study. This positionality helps self-study researchers to, in their words, “bring provocative, productive yet sometimes hidden perspectives and understanding to research in teacher education” (Hamilton et al., Chap. 10, “Quality, Trustworthiness, and S-STTEP Research”).

Ritter and Quiñones (Chap. 11, “Entry Points for Self-Study”) help us to consider a fundamental challenge in self-study methodology: How does one begin? The commitment to research on teaching and teacher education within self-study is indeed appealing to many researchers, but the ways in which the methodology has developed over time can make questions of where to begin in self-study overwhelming. Ritter and Quiñones offer a welcome practicality to the pragmatics of “Where to begin?” for teacher candidates, education doctoral students, practicing teacher educators, and higher education practitioners from other fields grounded in, among other things, an analysis of the purpose statements in 209 articles published in Studying Teacher Education. They conclude, in part, that published self-study research tends to be focused on practice while being both interpretive and exploratory. Ritter and Quiñones then offer a series of potential purposes and topics for engaging with self-study for each of the aforementioned four groups. They assert that self-study methodology might be particularly of value for different reasons depending on one’s role in education. For teacher candidates, self-study might help one understand the role of one’s own personal history in learning to teach, perhaps particularly in relation to the role of clinical (practicum) teaching experiences within a teacher education program. For doctoral students, many of whom are former classroom teachers, self-study might be a useful way of managing and analyzing the transition from teacher to teacher educator while simultaneously navigating the new demands of working within academic structures – particularly structures that require particular kinds of research outputs. For practicing teacher educators, self-study methodology offers a way to bring together the pedagogical and research-based responsibilities of teacher education, particularly with a view to improving their personal practice. Finally, higher education professors from other fields might find self-study methodology to be a particularly useful form of professional development, particularly when faced with challenges of developing an understanding of their vision of teaching and associated practices. Helpfully, the chapter includes four vignettes to help illustrate the ways in which self-study methodology might function as a creatogenic environment, albeit in different ways for different practitioners. The reader is invited to consider these vignettes in light of their own positions as self-study researchers and educators, particularly with respect to the constraints and invitations experienced by each of the authors.

Tidwell and Jónsdóttir (Chap. 12, “Methods and Tools of Self-Study”) provide a kind of master class in considering the methods one might use in self-study methodology, arguing in part that methods in self-study offer a particular sort of creatogenic environment that is not readily seen in many other qualitative approaches to research. They argue that self-study methodology also required them to report its methods in a unique way, as they were multilayered and not easily disposed to a “clear and concise listing” (this volume). Instead, Tidwell and Jónsdóttir (Chap. 12, “Methods and Tools of Self-Study”) decided to organize their analysis in terms of narrative-/text-based methods and arts-based/creative methods. Each set offers a distinct sort of creatogenic environment, and each method, or set of methods, invites the self-study research to consider various constraints to their work while simultaneously exploring the multilayered nature of self-study. It is worth noting that Tidwell and Jónsdóttir felt that only certain forms of self-study research lent themselves to an analysis of the methods employed; word limits on Castle Conference papers made their analysis of the sometimes unique and novel methods employed somewhat difficult. Narrative- and text-based representations and methods included narrative inquiry, dialogue, journals, interviews, and critical incidents; each was analyzed within the context of multiple self-study publications before considering lenses afforded by multiple sources of narrative- and text-based data and by a theoretical orientation toward an ethic of care. Arts-based and creative data representations and methods were much more difficult to categorize, according to Tidwell and Jónsdóttir. They chose to present self-studies using visuals, poetry, dance, music, and theater and closed with an example of a polyvocal process drawing from multiple arts-based methods. Tidwell and Jónsdóttir argue, in part, that there are “echoes of a polyvocal approach to research” (Chap. 12, “Methods and Tools of Self-Study”) throughout their consideration of arts-based approaches to methods in self-study research before concluding with an appeal to the power of multiple, creative methods in self-study and the concurrent responsibility of self-study researchers to make their approaches, assumptions, and methods of analyses clear.

Pithouse-Morgan and Samaras (Chap. 13, “Methodological Inventiveness in Writing About Self-Study Research”) challenge us to consider what sorts of methodological inventiveness we might employ in our work as self-study researchers. The chapter helps us to, among other things, consider the concept of polyvocal approaches in additional detail, which Pithouse-Morgan and Samaras argue is illustrative of “how continuing dialogue with multiple ways of seeing, knowing, and doing can intensify and broaden professional learning in self-study research” (Chap. 13, “Methodological Inventiveness in Writing About Self-Study Research”). Their chapter also provides insight into the processes of a long-term critical friendship and collaboration – an interesting way of considering both the creatogenic environment of their collaboration and the constraints and invitations they seek to support via their commitment to polyvocal professional learning. Pithouse-Morgan and Samaras provide a helpful reminder of the importance of both dynamism and transdisciplinarity in self-study research. Beginning with the premise that self-study methodology’s focus on collaboration has lent a particular kind of support to methodological inventiveness since its inception, the authors provide us with specific examples of the sorts of possibilities afforded by polyvocal professional learning within long-standing research teams at their institutions in South Africa and in the United States of America, respectively. In an intriguing example of a way to make their practice explicit, Pithouse-Morgan and Samaras include a narrative dialogue from participants in Pithouse-Morgan’s research group, with comments by Samaras, in an effort to “walk the talk of novel and expressive writing practices” (Chap. 13, “Methodological Inventiveness in Writing About Self-Study Research”). Relatedly, the authors include four examples of research conducted by emerging self-study scholars within graduate student groups, all of whom are school teachers in either South Africa or the United States. In so doing, Pithouse-Morgan and Samaras take seriously Lighthall’s (2004) call for increasing the nature and scope of collaboration in self-study methodology and, crucially, frame collaboration as a two-way street between school-based and university-based educators. I encourage readers to think carefully about these exemplars and to, in the words of the authors, consider the ways in which this approach “offers inspiration and permission to other novice self-study researchers who might be intrigued by, but might also feel unsure about, exploring methodological inventiveness” (Chap. 13, “Methodological Inventiveness in Writing About Self-Study Research”).

Cuenca (Chap. 14, “Ethics of Self-Study Research as a Legitimate Methodological Tradition”) begins with a dual acknowledgement of the conceptual foundations provided by Mitchell (2004) on the ethics of self-study research in the first edition of this handbook and of the ways in which the research landscape has changed in recent years. In particular, Cuenca argues that the constraints and invitations posed by ethical dilemmas in self-study research are, if anything, more exposed in this day and age. He is concerned particularly with the interrelated issues of identity (particularly as conceptualized by Gee 2000), relationships, and public vulnerability – considering each in turn within his chapter. Cuenca reminds us that identity and self-study are at least partially tied up in the ways in which one is recognized as a teacher educator and further complicates the issue by stating that institutional power has a considerable effect on the ways in which a certain kind of institutional identity is often pushed on teacher educators. Cuenca provides examples from self-study literature that explored the ways in which self-study researchers have explored issues of practice as they relate to natural and affinity identities, noting “raising issues of ethical anxieties related to natural and institutional identities is noteworthy as an ethical decision itself” (Chap. 14, “Ethics of Self-Study Research as a Legitimate Methodological Tradition”). The issue of relationships and ethics in self-study is both mediated and complicated by the fundamental role played by collaboration in self-study research. Cuenca recognizes the self and the other in this section of the chapter and provides a helpful analysis of the role of critical friends and collaborations in self-study research. He is quick to point out, however, that critical friendship adds additional ethical tensions to self-study research, particularly when there are perceived differences in power dynamics. Cuenca also points to ethical questions within collaborative self-studies more generally, arguing that ethics need to be considered formally regardless of whether or not ethical questions are at the forefront of a particular study, citing the potential for feelings of disillusionment, disappointment, and disenfranchisement if ethical responsibilities are not made clear. Finally, Cuenca provides powerful examples of not only the ways in which engaging in self-study makes one vulnerable but the ways in which public reporting of the results of self-study make one publicly vulnerable. Put another way, the creatogenic environment of self-study methodology offers invitations to particular kinds of discomfort, but the constraints of methodological guideposts can “sustain the ethical practices of both the practitioner and researcher” (Chap. 14, “Ethics of Self-Study Research as a Legitimate Methodological Tradition”).

Finally, Bullock and Bullock (Chap. 48, “Introducing Self-Study in Quebec: The Challenges of Promoting S-STEP in the French Language”) explore the ways in which a cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural, and plurilingual approach to collaborative self-study and critical friendship create a creatogenic environment. Throughout the chapter, they exchange the roles of novice and expert as an experienced scholar in French sociolinguistics (C. Bullock) and an experienced self-study researcher (S. Bullock), who have engaged in collaborative self-study, in part, to understand each other’s perspectives on learning to teach and learning to teach teachers. For added complexity, Bullock and Bullock discuss some of the ways in which their discussions are mediated via different academic languages and their personal language of communication (French). Potential linguistic pressures surrounding words that mean very different things in French and English (e.g., didactics, reflection) are touchstones for both a newcomer to self-study methodology (C. Bullock) and a newcomer to French sociolinguistics (S. Bullock). C. Bullock experiences and makes visible some of the pressures she faces as an experienced researcher, used to reflexive approaches, making the transition to self-study. The chapter explores and analyzes the pressures associated with the distance between the researcher and the researched, the requirements to be publicly vulnerable in a professional environment, and the cultural construction of the self in self-study. Crucially, the authors then move to consider the challenges that French sociolinguistics pose to self-study. This stance relies heavily on both the ways in which they explain concepts to one another from their research traditions and on the understanding that self-study should be exposed to robust outside critique. In this way, the beginning part of the chapter describes the ways in which self-study constrains C. Bullock’s understanding of the methodology, while the second part of the chapter explores the ways in which C. Bullock uses her research tradition to invite critique to self-study methodology. In particular, she asserts that self-study methodology requires a didactic stance, understood through the lens of French approaches to didactics, that comes from within the researcher’s plural conceptions of the self, applied self-consciously. The chapter concludes with a consideration of power and self-study as viewed through the lens of language, particularly salient considering the majority of published self-study literature is in English. In so doing, Bullock and Bullock assert “we have explored perspectives offered by both power and language in an effort to better understand the perplexing politics of self-study methodology” (Chap. 48, “Introducing Self-Study in Quebec: The Challenges of Promoting S-STEP in the French Language”).

Navigating the Pressures of Self-Study Methodology

This chapter has explored the pressures of self-study methodology by invoking a metaphor from martial arts, the Italian swordplay term stringere to understand the constraints in opportunities posed by said pressures on self-study methodology and self-study researchers. In so doing, we have considered and complicated the relationship between critical friendship, collaboration, and self-study, at once questioning the degree to which they are fundamental to the methodology and the ways in which they might offer new opportunities to experienced and novice self-study researchers alike. Engaging in swordplay, or in any martial art, has taught me the value of attending to the constantly shifting figure and ground, to the constraints and invitations that are created and destroyed in a moment as I move with a partner in improvised ways. In considering this chapter, I realized that self-study research methodology is quite similar, particularly as self-study work is grounded in collaboration, demands collective improvisation, and exerts multiple pressures – constraints and invitations – on self-study researchers.

Drawing on martial arts to understand self-study methodology is a new way of thinking, one that I believe introduces useful conceptual metaphors. I hope that this framing chapter encourages the reader to live within some of the complexities introduced in self-study methodology, as self-study allows us to “remap what we know and present ourselves back to ourselves in ways we had not thought of, leading us to discover the things we already knew but had not said” (Hamilton and Pinnegar 2013, p. 86). As someone who has engaged with martial arts longer than self-study methodology, or really any other learning experience, the process of editing this section and reflecting on the many contributions my colleagues have made to my own thinking has indeed led me to discover something I knew tacitly; namely, that part of my attraction to and sustained commitment with self-study methodology is because I have operated in dynamic spaces of constraint and invitation, through martial arts, since I was a small child. I now realize that this is part of what I was getting at in some earlier work exploring the intersections between critical friendship, mindfulness, martial arts, and self-study:

Many people know that judo is literally translated as the way of gentleness. Fewer are aware that it could be translated as the art of giving way … [The founder of judo, Jigaro Kano] argued that “Even if you are stronger than your opponent, it is better to first give way” (Kano, 1937/1994, p. 17) … [we might also] state that once must move in the direction one is being pushed or pulled, at least initially. Balance is more important than strength … Some people might be uncomfortable with the combative elements of Kano’s remarks, or indeed with the use of martial arts as metaphors for thinking about academic work … Here I would add that martial arts are less about reacting to conflicts in the outside world than they are about responsible to challenges in our inner lives. (Bullock 2016, p. 121)

These comments resonate strongly with me now, for different reasons, as my position as researcher, teacher educator, practitioner, and martial artist has shifted in the intervening years and my public vulnerability in revealing pressures I experience as a self-study researcher has invited me to explore a relatively private part of my life, my life as a martial artist, in public ways. I am beginning to realize just how much these experiences have helped me to navigate the complex pressures of self-study methodology and how important it has for me to give way to new experiences, new ideas, shifting pressures, and the ontological demands of a robust, reflexive practice.

Cross-References