This paper explores standards and criteria that can be used to judge the validity of qualitative data as evidence of educational improvement. The paper reports on a self study of the educative relationship between two teacher educators: Pam, from a university school of education, and Moyra, director of an inservice education program at a large comprehensive school. Pam is also Moyra's supervisor and the work Moyra facilitates within her school is the substance of her Ph.D. thesis. The study concerns action research, a form of self reflective enquiry for practitioners to improve their practices and the context in which they work; an adapted version of memory work is used in this research. The paper describes the educational values that underpin this partnership of school and university, and demonstrates how the two teacher educators try to live these values in their own practice. It provides an explanation of their motives and actions as teacher educators in relation to these values through an analysis of specific data and presents this explanation in the form of two stories. Results of the study indicate that the use of memory work in the methodology and story as a way of representing the outcomes of educational research are substantial additions to the methodology of self study within action research. It is intended that the paper will enable its readers to draw conclusions about the significance of a co-researcher self study action research approach to the emergence of a distinctively educational research that makes a contribution to the development of a new form of educational theory. (Contains 44 references.) (ND)