GET TO KNOW US

S-STEP is a special interest group (SIG) of the American Educational Research Association. The purpose of our group is to inform and rethink teaching and teacher education by studying practice-varied educational settings and methodologies.  The S-STEP SIG acts as a community of educators who work in a wide variety of practice settings and who seek to make substantial contributions related to the theory in practice of teacher education, self-study research design/practice, and the professional development of educators through self-study of professional practice. We are always very active at the AERA Annual Meetings. The SIG-sponsored social events and annual business meeting give members opportunities to meet one another and discuss issues of self-study design, publishing, ethics, and best practices. 

If you consider yourself to be a teacher educator or practitioner of another profession and are interested in opportunities to interact with other educators from a range of disciplines, theoretical orientations, and educational practice settings who are working on the problems of education through the study of their own practices, then the S-STEP SIG is for you! 

We encourage you to consider submitting a proposal to the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA).

Also, you might consider submitting a proposal to our biennial conference, the International Conference on the Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices or “The Castle Conference" which is a four-day conference, dating from 1996 and orchestrated by Tom Russell and sponsored by Queen’s University in Canada and the S-STEP SIG. It provides a safe space for creating a learning community of self-study researchers who are willing to ask questions, clarify terms, take risks experimenting with innovative approaches, and examine and reframe their views about teaching and teacher education practices. 

An important publication of the SIG is Studying Teacher Education, an international journal of self-study of teacher education practices published through Taylor and Francis. We encourage you to browse through the journal to explore examples of self-study research. We are a SIG also very active in publishing books on self-study research with leading publishing houses including an ongoing series on self-study research through Springer and Sense Publishers. 

We look forward to our work together and thank you for your interest and scholarship in S-STEP.