Captured
here are some of the early moments in the process of my self-study research. I’ve been a lecturer for 30 years and a
lecturer in Teacher Education for 19 years of those years. Currently, I
teach Physical Education pre service teachers who are training to teach 12-18
year olds, in a university in Ireland. My area of expertise is Dance Education. The realisation that self-study was going to
be something that was useful, productive and would allow me to explore some of
the questions I had started to ask myself, has come gradually over a few years. I have
had a number of what seemed like disconnected thoughts, feelings and senses
about my students’ experiences of taking part in my dance education courses and
of their experiences when they were out in schools practicing their teaching. A driving force behind this inquiry into my
own practice was to understand better the situational (and complex) nature of what
I do and how I do it (Ovens and Fletcher 2014). I had a sense that to kick
start this process I needed to reconnect with myself as a teacher, as a teacher
of dance, of school children and of my Physical Education pre service teachers.
So, I started to explore my
identity as a teacher and dance teacher, how it has been constructed over time,
what has influenced and impacted that identity (or identities).