This paper describes a self-study research collaborative involving college faculty members. It began when members of a dissertation writing group decided to continue working together, focusing on self-study as a way of teaching and learning. In 1999, the group experimented with using teaching portfolios in their graduate education classes to engage students in self-study. While this process was fraught with tension and anxiety, students constructed creative teaching portfolios over one semester that allowed them to examine dissonances in their teaching practice. The project involved using teaching portfolios to scaffold self-study, then re-analyzing the issue of self-study and its impact on teacher development over time. The participants learned that small shifts of awareness, made visible through the self-study process, changed their sense of self as teachers, and those shifts had significant but subtle impacts on how they taught. Participants had shifting awareness of: what it means to own creativity, their own anxiety, process-centered learning, owning one's self in the classroom, and how collaboration empowers personal voice. The participants conclude that self-study is a methodology for invigorating and improving teaching practice; an emergent process that supports creative exploration and expression. (SM)