As Liz listened to their narrative, she became aware that she had unwittingly made a decision that was in opposition to the decision the students would have made, had they been given the opportunity. As the students narrative unfolded, Liz began to see her actions and her words through their eyes. In this study, the students became mirrors that reflected Liz's behavior and actions back to her. Although her intentions surrounding this particular incident had been good, she began to see her behavior from a different angle. During the first photostory session, Liz was quiet and attentive to what the students were saying. During the second session, Liz apologized to the students. She said: "I think I'm saying this for myself, but it's kind of an apology too. I got thinking about everything we talked about or said yesterday about having a choice and it being your decision... What I'm apologizing for is that I didn't give you a choice at that time."

During the first two photostory sessions, Liz understood that her previous words about the need to share power and privilege were incongruent with her actions. Liz reflected upon our initial discussions and became alarmed at the contradiction between her words and actions: "Those were the words, and those were the mulling over the words. That was the intellectual." She described how painful it was to acknowledge the contradictions that existed between her words and her actions:

It is painful to acknowledge that you are working maybe from an internalized dominant point of privilege and silencing and controlling people through that. I think that likely what I was so upset about on Tuesday. On Monday night, on Tuesday morning. At breakfast it was starting to hit me and I think as the day progressed and then I was sitting in on the workshop for the photostory and I think it hit me at coffee break like profoundly that's what hit me and that that's why I think I felt so angry and teary and hurt and I think I first of all I did take it out on people around me. Not the students but and that was even hard initially not to sort of you know say you know fuck them. That's all part of being dismantled when you offer a position and you deconstruct it and it felt like that.

The photostory served as a trigger event which prompted a sense of discomfort within Liz. This was followed by a period of self-scrutiny. During this period, Liz became acutely aware of the contradiction between her words and actions, and the resulting emotions that flooded through her almost resulted in a resistance where she wanted to say "fuck them."

Liz was struck by the contradiction between her libratory words and her "directive, controlling" actions. As we explored this contradiction, we realized that Liz was caught between discourses which were competing against each other. On the one hand, Liz was a feminist who valued collaboration, democracy, equality, participation; these values surfaced in her words. On the other hand, Liz was a female teacher working within in a hierarchical system that valued control, discipline and authority; these values came through in her actions. During our exploration of the contradiction, I commented that "it's interesting because you're a feminist, and feminists usually work in collaborative, you know participatory [ways], so you've been really influenced by..." Without skipping a beat, Liz finished my sentence with the words "by the dominant discourse at [this institution]." Kosmidou and Usher (1991) agree that the teacher is "positioned within a number of different discursive and material practices... all of which have different meanings involving power relationships for her and all of which shape subjectivity, often in contradictory ways" (p.39).