Consciousness, Self, and Biography: Meeting a Portraiture Participant Years Later

• In Event: Roundtable Session 16
  In Roundtable Session: Teacher Insider/Inside the Teacher: Multiple Perspectives on Teacher Identity

Abstract

In this study, direct attention is given to consciousness and subjective experience of teachers using essentialist portraiture. As a case example, I examine meeting and interviewing many years later a portraiture participant who was part of an earlier study (where I developed biographically-based portraits of teacher growth). A major aspect of portraiture back then as now is to evoke the consciousness and unity in the participant. I argue that we are all in some sense the same person over time, from day-to-day in our interactions, thoughts, feelings, and "I" feelings/thoughts. We are as individuals the same “consciousness-and-‘I’”, where consciousness exists independently as an object of study in its own right.

Author

• David R. Goodwin, Missouri State University