A Qualitative Study of the Personal and Professional Growth of Teachers Involved in Collaborative Educational Action Research Projects
This is an interview study that develops in-depth qualitative understanding of the long term personal and professional growth of four teachers who have been involved in collaborative educational action research projects in the St. Louis, Missouri metropolitan area. The study develops a more fundamental conceptualization of teacher growth incorporating the details of individual development, where personal and professional growth is understood as comprehensive growth involving the whole person. Four to six in-depth interviews were conducted with each teacher with the aim of the researcher becoming progressively more tuned to the nature of growth in the individual as the interviews progressed and with the aim of developing a co-investigative relationship. The 'method of essence' was advanced in relation to the interview data in order to construct individual portraits of growth. Each portrait is a single deep image of the essence of the story of the individual teacher's long term comprehensive growth rooted in actual life, describing a pervasive and enduring inner constellation of deep-seated values, philosophy, and general way of being as a unity in the person. Analysis across portraits examined the meaning and value of self-recognition to growth of self, of mutuality in the methodology, of fulfillment as an emergent category in the portraits, and argues that each of the portraits presents a different paradigm of growth where each is a unique integrated approach to the understanding of the phenomenon of teacher growth. Application of the methodology and portraiture to the development of teacher research in a concrete setting with experienced teachers is elaborated in terms of their bringing their deeper motivations into play to direct and sustain their work. This study establishes that in-service educational programs must be directly responsive to the individual's central growth story as a whole in order to awaken the core of the person who is the teacher to new directions and possibilities.
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign