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and limitations in the classroom and it was an excellent learning experience for them. I then explained that, for me, it was also a very good learning experience because I could watch myself and focus on areas that needed improvement in my teaching. I emphasised that my improvement would make me a more effective teacher educator which, in turn, would benefit them as my students.
Asking my family for old photographs and engaging them in discussions about my childhood posed a few ethical dilemmas for me. Initially, when I explained to my family about writing my thesis, they were excited and went out of their way to send me old photographs. My family do not live in the same town as me; half my family live in Gauteng, another province in South Africa, and the other half live in the Eastern Cape, also another province in South Africa. So eager were my family in supporting me, they actually sent me the photographs with a courier. However, at a family gathering during the course of my data generation process, members of my family asked me what I was going to write about them. One family member said, “I hope you are not going to say bad things about us, because then I will be upset.”
I did not answer that person but said that when my thesis was almost complete, they would all be welcome to read it because I wrote about my personal history, knowing that my family were potential readers. That seemed to have placed some of them at ease because I had sensed discomfort when the question was asked. I told them it is a self-study and it is all about my learning. I explained that I included my childhood stories to see whether my childhood experiences could have influenced the person I have become. Furthermore, like Ellis (2007), I was keeping the memory of people alive by writing about them. I reassured my family that, in writing about them in my thesis, I would keep their memories alive and maybe, years from now, the younger children in the family would read my thesis and learn more about the family.
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was the requirement for all knowledge produced, then people would spend millions of years and still not complete the process of claiming objectivity in all knowledge. When a researcher makes a claim, she is basing her claim on what she regards as the truth.
Whitehead (1989) justified his construction of Living Educational Theory on Polyani’s belief that researchers’ claims to knowledge are based on their own experiences and their own professional development in their own context. This satisfies the need that their work is original and that they understand the outside world from their “own point of view” (p. 46) and their own experiences.
Whitehead laid claim to his work being valid because he carried out his research in an organised methodical manner, his claims to the knowledge he produced are justified—he accommodated tenets of the traditional disciplines of education, all assumptions and claims that he made are justified and, finally, he adopted a “critical and enquiring approach to an educational problem” (1989, p. 46).
Feldman (2003) advised that, when undertaking self-study of teacher education practice, we have a
“moral obligation” (p. 27) to not only ensure that our work has value and is of an acceptable standard but to also to ensure that our work has validity. Feldman claimed that the reason for this is that our work in self-study has practical consequences because we want it to have an impact on schools, teachers, and students. Hence, it is imperative for self-study researchers to confirm that their work is “well-grounded” (p. 28) and enables us to answer our research questions. Feldman explained, further, that when undertaking self-study of teacher education practices, the focus should not only be on improving our practice but on transforming ourselves. Feldman suggested that one way of achieving validity is by giving detailed explanations of how we generated our data, the research methods that were used, and how change took place.
As explained previously, to answer my research questions, I generated data using various methods.
Eisner (1991) claimed that creating artistic representations of our self-study work and making it public contributed to the validation of its existence in the world, while Feldman (2003) suggested validity can be achieved by providing in-depth details on how representations of data were constructed (Chapter Two). The data were being analysed throughout the representation process because I analysed them in their original form, and then I analysed them again when I was planning how to set that data on the collage portrait. A third analysis occurred when I was crafting my thesis using a creative nonfiction style. To add to the trustworthiness of my study, I represented the data on collage portraits, which made my data come alive.
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Furthermore, Northfield and Loughran (1997) stated that self-study researchers should provide evidence of how they have changed as a result of the research. Feldman (2003) explained we can do this by making our explorations clear, and subject our work to self-critique and scrutiny by others.
For example, as shown in Chapter Nine, to lend more to the validity and believability of my work, I shared one of my metaphor drawings with conference attendees for critique and support (Samaras, 2011). I received constructive feedback from the conference attendees who were not in my professional area of expertise, teacher education. Evidence of my ongoing transformation was presented as clearly as I could when I crafted my thesis using a creative nonfiction style. I also involved my critical friends in dialogue and discussions about my learning. The insight I got from this intensive critical analytical process (Richardson, 2000) contributed to me re-envisioning myself and, consequently, my teaching practice.
Pinnegar and Hamilton (2009b) cautioned that there are three key requirements that must be satisfied to warrant a study being part of the self-study of practice research category. Firstly, the “claim for trustworthiness” (p. 203) must be based on self-study as a phenomenon that exists in the world rather than being regarded as a theory of knowledge with regard to its methods, the scope, and the beliefs and opinions of those engaged in self-study research. In this study, I was positioned as a teacher educator exploring my pedagogy in order to get a better understanding of what I role modelled for my students in accounting pedagogy. I had envisaged that, with this study, not only would I be able to develop as a more productive role model for my students but I would be able to make an informed contribution to the scholarly discourse on teacher education.
Bullough and Pinnegar (2001) alerted me to the fact that researchers in other fields of research were highly critical of the probability of personal bias in this type of research. Hence, it was recommended that my research process be well documented to address the issue of potential bias. I therefore became mindful that, despite the alluring nature of self-study research, it was necessary for me to regularly monitor what I was doing, how I was doing it, and why I was doing it. Not only did this process assist me in minimising personal bias, it contributed to a better understanding of self-study of practice research. This gave my learning from my self-study research process credibility so that others in the self-study research environment could learn from my learning (Samaras & Freese, 2006).
As a self-study researcher, I understood that I performed two roles in this study: as the researcher and as the researched, which was a natural occurrence with self-study of practice (Samaras, 2011).
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Pinnegar and Hamilton (2009b) explained this as a double-sided perspective. During my research process, I got into my practice and looked at it from inside out and, at times, I looked at it from the outside in. In this way, I gained a holistic view of my educational practice, which was a meaningful way of examining my practice. I considered many angles that would render my research valid and trustworthy so that it would be trusted by the teacher education community and self-study research circle.