Self-Study and Education Policy: Toward Understanding the Presence of Absences

Self-studies of policy are the nexus between what was transmitted concerning desirable practice; how that transmission was understood, accepted, rejected, or modified; the actions and reactions that preceded, accompanied, or followed; and any change that occurred either to those affected by the policy or any modification, revision, or abandonment of the policy itself. In this chapter, we examined the direct and indirect effects of policy at the national, state, and local levels, based on peer-reviewed articles from 1999 to 2017. We found that the studies documented the way in which policy directly or indirectly affected teaching, but not how self-study researchers affected policy. We also found that policy effects often (and sometimes negatively) engaged teacher educators’ emotions. We call for greater attention by self-study researchers to examining the links between teacher education and teacher education policy, particularly the ways in which teacher educators can participate in creating or modifying education policies.