The researcher inside me: A quest for meaningful research in a shifting academic landscape

Abstract

We are three university-based teacher educators who, in this contribution, reflect on our development as researchers. From 2000 onward, our participation in the world of research has become more intensive. As a result, our images of research and our thoughts about the importance of research to teacher education have changed. Collaboration and self-study proved to be essential during our journey, as these enabled us to better understand our own incentives for doing and using research in the context of teacher education. Together the three of us formed a small self-study group that supported our journey as it enabled us to collaboratively reflect on our transition from teacher educator to a new identity of teacher educator/researcher. This transition took place in a changing academic landscape, where educational research became an important and new task of teacher educators and where teacher education was reorganized and repositioned within the university. The journey described in this chapter started in 2007, when one of us (Ari de Heer) participated in the first Dutch trajectory for self-study research aimed at teacher educators (Lunenberg et al. 2010). His participation in this trajectory further improved our understanding of self-study research and helped us to become more familiar with the international self-study community.