Why Self-Study? An Exploration of Personal, Professional, and Programmatic Influences in the Use of Self-Study Research

How does a teacher educator come to engage in self-study research? In this article, the authors seek to answer this question by investigating the personal, professional, and programmatic influences that drew one teacher educator to self-study. The authors used critical friendship to investigate the first author's introduction to self-study, with data collected through collaborative journaling and regular meetings. Influences for the authors included struggles with outsidership and expectations, teaching from an others perspective, and weathering programmatic shifts. Experiences presenting this study at the 2018 Castle Conference are shared, along with lessons learned from the presentation. Generally speaking, some who attended the presentation saw their initial use of self-study as part of a healing process; others were unsure of their impetus but plan to reconsider their introductions to self-study. Further study of scholars' introductions to and motivations for engaging in self-study research may improve our understandings of this aspect of self-study scholarship.