Taking Notes: Anchor Chart -What Makes a Quality Self-Study?

Elements of a Self-Study of Quality

1. Sense of Connection The researcher's eperience should be recognizable to the reader. It should promote a sense of connectedness.
2. Engagement The narrative needs to invite the reader into the researcher's experience. The reader is privy to the insight and reinterpretation of significant moments in the experience.
3. Honest and Straightforward The researcher examines their experience with a sense of conscience.
4. Purpose The researcher examines an issue related to their experience as an educator.
5. Analysis The researcher extends beyond their 'voice' to analyze what lies at the core of their story.
6. Obligation The researcher examines an issue that advances the learning not only for the self, but for the reader as well.
7. Significance The narrative aesthetically highlights a learning issue.
8. Context The researcher pays attention to character, scene, situation and action - the framework of the narrative - so that the reader may draw conclusions from an established context.
9. Perspective The powerful narrative can be told from the perspective of the tragic, ironic and comedic hero. These approaches promote realism in all its complexity. Avoid writing from the perspective of the romantic hero.

Bullough, Robert and Pinnegar, Stefinee (2001). Guidelines for Quality in Autobiographical Forms of Self-Study Research. Educational Researcher, 30 (2), 13-21.