A pedagogy of autobiography?

1. A pedagogy of autobiography? Bridget A.Egan

2. A pedagogy of autobiography?

3. The production of new knowledge cannot be split from the experience and / or the standpoint of researchers (Steedman 2000)

4. Some definitions • Reflection: thinking about past or current events/actions to inform future practice • Reflexivity: thinking about one’s own cultural-historical and onto-epistemological values, ethical stances, and positioning to clarify approaches to researching • Diffraction: thinking through a particular lens or apparatus to illuminate the research field

5. A pedagogy of autobiography? An understanding of one’s biography can help in the process of establishing meaningful relationships with others. A better understanding of oneself means a better understanding of others (Kebede, 2009:168).

6. A pedagogy of autobiography? ‘Sociological imagination’ : …a quality of mind that cannot be adopted by simply teaching students its discursive assumptions. Rather, it is a disposition, in competition with other forms of sensibility, which can be acquired only when it is practiced (Kebede 2009 p151)

7. …the educational autobiography exercise also goes beyond the personal, as intense personal recollections move quickly into considerations of curriculum, and ultimately, of educational politics (Rousmaniere 2000 p96).

8. The module: Reflecting on and Evaluating Practice60 credits @level 8 2 written components: • a piece of autobiographical writing which focuses on the personal and professional drivers that lead to the formulation of a specific area within which research questions will emerge • an analysis of the current context for the research, including consideration of local, national (and where relevant international) policy, and its influence on specific local practice related to the research area

9. Our approach to (professional) auto/biography …not in itself about a straightforward ‘telling of the self’ (Steedman 2000 36), but a meaning making practice that spans the public and the private (Stanley 1995), and for our purposes attempts to account for professional, pedagogical and research decisions taken by the writer in the formulation of a research question (and later a methodology). Auto/biographical practices comprise both text and action

10. Pedagogical approaches • Readings about biography/auto/biography: What sort of autobiography is yours? • Exercises in autobiographical writing: Recalling a critical incident in professional life • Sharing personal experience of auto/biographical writing Tutors do it too! • Sharing auto/biographical work in progress Feedback from others in the process

11. What the students do • An account of a life in……. • Professionalism and achievement • Personal experiences of education (pleasurable or painful) • Critical incidents • What is in my background that accounts for my interests

12. A pedagogy of autobiography?

13. A simple and ingenious model for exploring the ‘identities’ we develop in life, is through the idea of our personal ‘hill tops’, which I was introduced to in 2005 […] In this metaphor the trainer described how all the experiences we have throughout our life form a ‘mound’ on which we stand and observe the world. This mound defines our values, attitudes and beliefs, and therefore the way we approach day-to-day life. In this way our identities also are bound up with the constituent ingredients of our personal ‘hill’. […] I offer the person on the hill-top […] as the ‘authentic ’ me – reflecting on a journey that is currently being embraced by the EdD. […] This autobiography thus explores these ideas. DR

14. A pedagogy of autobiography?

15. A pedagogy of autobiography? I have come to understand that to delve into the ‘who’ that I am needs doing if I am to be able to be a worthy instrument of research in the future as elements from my past will always affect my present (Kebede, 2009; Bullough and Pinnegar, 2001). I embrace the idea that a more personalised approach to writing can be just as ‘academic’ as a depersonalised one (Bold, 2012) and that in considering the writing of my autobiography, I am developing an ‘increased reflexivity of self’ (Hunt, 2010:232). MW

16. A pedagogy of autobiography? Freadman (2001) proposes a theory of reflective autobiography entailing a critical distance between the assumptions of the autobiographer and the attitudes and assumptions prevalent in his or her cultural-ideological milieu. However, post-modernist constructivists will argue that the `self ` or subject is largely constructed by ideological forces – hence there is no reflective critical distance between the self and the ideological world. Thus I could not detach myself from my new teaching context, social space, culture or ideological […] all autobiographers, no matter how they might feel or wish to be, write from a position of cultural embeddedness in the sense that they participate in and cannot help but reproduce elements of their cultural environment in their narratives. DN

17. A pedagogy of autobiography? Denzin (1989) defines biographical method ‘as the studied use and collection of life documents or documents of life which describe turning point moments in individuals lives’ and […] he also acknowledges questions about some of the assumptions underpinning biographical method and whether a life can be accurately represented in text when a life is ‘a social text, a fictional, narrative production’ (Denzin 1989). Similarly for me, undertaking an autobiographical account of personal and professional development raises questions about the separation of the personal and the professional in a life and about how much the autobiographical process might usefully reveal about that life. In addressing those questions I also hope to clarify my position as a researcher and establish whether I might use a biographical approach for elements of my own research. MB

18. Baggini (2002) describes philosophical autobiography and suggests that ‘philosophical autobiography can be seen as any autobiography that reveals some interplay between life and thought’ (p.295). It ‘enables us to understand better how personal judgment and prejudice work alongside rational argument’ (p.295). I am quite impressed with this idea of an autobiography to be philosophical and I tried to present my thoughts, judgments and biases while writing about my autobiography. SS

19. A pedagogy of autobiography? In writing this autobiographical account, I was concerned that my writing may be seen as nothing more than an idle and self-indulgent analysis on the journey I took before arriving at my current destination […]. In writing about my life, I have chosen to reflect on certain points which have influenced me to follow teaching – it is only in recent years that I have recognised I was destined to be a teacher, and that I rebelled against this for the first 30 years of my working life. Writing about this at this late point in my working life has given me the opportunity to consider my career in more detail. In writing about reflection, Dewey sees this as a specialist form of thinking. His definition of reflection is that it is: Active, persistent and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and further conclusions to which it leads…it includes a conscious and voluntary effort to establish belief upon a firm basis of evidence and rationality (Dewey, 1933). JP

20. A pedagogy of autobiography? Whilst I will be deliberately selective about the stories I tell here, as I’m certain all autobiographers are, I intend to weave together experiences of my past, and find the synthesis between the personal and professional versions of myself. And so, a reflective structure of life events and situated identities has emerged. Baggini (2002) positions autobiography as “the interplay of life and ideas” (p5) : I am beginning to see mine. EM

21. A pedagogy of autobiography? Questions: How do we better convince students of the value of this type of reflexive/ diffractive thinking? How is this work best assessed?

22. A pedagogy of autobiography? • And finally: • There is no autobiography. There is only Art and lies • (Winterson 1994)

23. A pedagogy of autobiography? Hunt, C. (2010) Therapeutic Effects of Writing Fictional Autobiography. Life Writing, 7 (3) pp231-244. Kebede, A. (2009)’Practicing Sociological Imagination through Writing Sociological Autobiography’ SAGE Biographical Research151-171 London: SAGE Reprinted from Alem K ebede2009 Practicing Sociological Imagination through Writing Sociological Autobiography Teaching Sociology 37(4) 353–368 Rousmaniere, K. (2000): From Memory to Curriculum, Teaching Education, 11(1), pp87-98 Schon, D. (1987) Educating the Reflective Practitioner San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Stanley, L. (1995)The Auto/biographical I: The Theory and Practice of Feminist Auto/biography, Manchester University Press. Steedman, C. (2000) ‘Enforced narratives: stories of another self’, in T. Coslett, C. Lury & P. Summerfield, (eds.) Feminism and Autobiography. Texts, Theories, Methods, London: Routledgepp25-39. Tripp, D. (2011) Critical Incidents in Teaching (Classic Edition): Developing Professional Judgement, London, Routledge. Winterson, J. (1994) Art and Lies London: Cape