The Problem of “Just Tell Us”: Insights from Playing with Poetic Inquiry and Dialogical Self Theory

Contemporary approaches to pre-service teacher education and inservice
teachers’ professional development increasingly reflect the
general paradigm swing in education, advocating for dialogic coconstruction
of understandings of teaching and learning rather than
monologic telling of how to be a teacher or how to improve teaching
practice. However, teacher–learners sometimes have difficulty
adapting to the different stance required of them to participate
effectively in this change of approach. Successfully facilitating the
development of learners to take an active, inquiry stance requires
engaging in the process of development of oneself: being open to
new approaches, being prepared to be uncomfortable and being
willing to extend one’s comfort zone as a teacher educator. In this
self-study project, I use iterations of poetry writing and reflection to
document my introduction to Dialogical Self Theory (DST) and the
development that these explorations provoke. By exploring different
perspectives of why learners sometimes ask teachers to “Just tell us,”
I have become more thoughtful about the nature of dialogue and
how this might be supported in engaging with learners. I argue that
using DST as an analytical tool has not only provided meaningful
personal insights that have affected my own professional practice as
a new teacher educator, but also shown potential for facilitating the
development of teachers at all stages of their professional becoming.