The purpose of this paper is to describe the ongoing self-study of a community of

physical education teacher educators (PETE) striving to enhance their research

capacity and program effectiveness. The underpinnings of the project reside

within professional development/professional learning and self-study. Engaging

in self-study projects ‘allows teacher educators to focus on their own practice

and students’ learning while meeting the research expectations of life as an

academic’ [Tannehill, D. (2014). My journey to become a teacher educator.

Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, 19. doi: 10.1080/17408989.2014.898745].

While often beginning with individuals looking at their own work, self-study

does not need to confine itself to individuals and can involve collaboration

among varying numbers across a variety of participants [Loughran, J. J., &

Russell, T. (Eds.). (2002). Improving teacher education practices through selfstudy.

London: Routledge Farmer]. This paper reflects one PETE program’s

attempts to examine the early findings of our programmatic self-study research

into the development of a PETE learning community. It describes our initial

findings reported through three themes reflecting our self-study work and

experiences: dialogue, memory, and becoming, which link directly to Ovens and

Fletcher’s [Ovens, A., & Fletcher, T. (Eds.). (2014). Self-study in teacher

education: Exploring the interplay of practice and scholarship. London: Springer]

self-study characteristics of community, stance, and desire. While still a work-inprogress,

this project has allowed our group to address tensions, dilemmas, and

practices of interest, providing for the acquisition of knowledge to move forward

both programmatically and individually. Our intent in sharing this work is to

provide a platform for discussion as to the potential programmatic use of selfstudy

to enhance PETE programs and the research capacities of PETE.