The Scholars of Studying Teaching Collaborative engaged a dozen faculty members from 12 specializations and 4 colleges at a large public university in a 2-year teaching and research project with the goal of learning about and enacting a self-study of professional practice. Participants were selected from various disciplines to provoke alternative perspectives in whole group and critical friend teams. While we each conducted a self-study, we also designed and enacted a meta-study to assess our professional development within the context of the collaborative. We analyze the potential of engaging in collective self-study and report how the methodological challenges initiated transformational learning that bridged theory and praxis. Learning the self-study methodology was complex, but such concentration multiplied the impact of both personal and professional transformation. The study benefits faculty from a broad range of disciplines, at diverse stages in their academic careers, and working at every level of the academic hierarchy.

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Storytelling is among the most powerful tools in a university professor's pedagogy. Students, too, tell stories—but while the professor's story is usually an example meant to introduce or support an argument based on other forms of evidence, students often deploy their personal stories as arguments, conflating pathos and logos and presenting personal experience as the ultimate evidence. This session examines the complex dynamics of this common classroom situation and explores a variety of ways to use such moments positively to deepen the classroom encounter.

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