Considering all our relations: A proposed hermeneutic turn in S-STEP

Abstract

For doctoral students engaged in the meta-shift from teaching to teaching about teaching, Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices (S-STEP) can offer a fruitful methodology for framing inquiries into personal teaching practices. However, S-STEP is somewhat limiting with respect to inquiries that attempt to account for the complexity and multiplicity of relationships in the classroom. These relationships may include, but are not limited to, relationships between teacher educator and students, teacher educator and classroom context, teacher educator and policy, and teacher educator and curriculum. Inspired by Indigenous understandings of all our relations, I suggest that the limitations of S-STEP might be addressed through a deeper theoretical engagement with the relationality emergent from ontological hermeneutics thereby improving the ability for doctoral students to consider the livingness at play in teaching about teaching.

Keywords

• S-STEP
• hermeneutics
• teacher education
• livingness