My Professional Self: Two books, a person and my bedside table

In this chapter I examine how my life-world, which is composed of my professional and personal selves, is historically constructed, ever-changing, interactive, and dynamic. I explore the ways in which I have understood my roles as facilitator and participant in practitioner enquiry in the context of engagement with professional communities of practice and also consider some of the issues and dilemmas that have arisen. I illuminate and reflexively examine a specific issue in relation to the problematics of being judgemental through a case study of student voice in school improvement in a particularly challenging and troubling context.

Turning to myself, in particular, I propose that at one and the same time, my professional self and my personal self are both distinguishable and indistinguishable. I can describe these selves separately, succinctly, and with reasonable accuracy, but I know each one infuses the other. A self-study of my work as a practitioner-research facilitator and participant demands that I acknowledge how each self influences and informs the other. In making explicit the interaction between my professional and personal selves, it is my desire that I uncover, in some small way, the formation of a teacher educator who, towards the end of an academic career, is continuing to reflect on matters of identity and practice.