How Can School and University Teachers Reconstruct Educational Knowledge?

This paper argues that school and university teachers could become part of a unified profession of educators through the creative and critical contributions of a new discipline of educational inquiry to the professional knowledge base for teaching. The first section consists of graduate-level dissertations and theses of teacher researchers who have created their own professional development models and educational theories and shown how they can contribute to the reconstruction of educational knowledge and theory. The next section consists of an analysis of the author's educative influence with several professional educators in the educative process of their self-generation in their life within education. The paper concludes that educational researchers can create educational knowledge in their self-studies of their own practice, and they can make useful contributions to educational theory through their work in the traditional disciplines of philosophy, psychology, sociology, history, economics, politics, and management of education. (Contains 23 references.) (SM)