Learning to think like a teacher educator: making the substantive and syntactic structures of teaching explicit through self‐study

The construction of a pedagogy of teacher education requires a sustained, systematic, and careful inquiry into one’s own practice, predicated on the understanding that teaching is a discipline. This article begins by arguing that it is more appropriate to speak of a basis for knowing, rather than a knowledge base, for thinking about teaching and learning and that self‐study methodology is one way for a new teacher educator to develop his or her basis for knowing about teaching teachers. Excerpts from self‐studies that I have conducted during my first three years as a preservice teacher educator are described and interpreted with a view to examining the substantive and syntactic structures of the discipline of teaching and the influences of my prior experiences as a teacher candidate. The article concludes with a set of personal understandings that I have constructed as a new teacher educator. Self‐study methodology is offered as a way for teachers and teacher educators to make their knowledge about teaching and learning explicit by naming and analyzing both the substantive and syntactic structures of the discipline of teaching.