Preparing Educational Leaders Using Life Writing and Biography

• In Event: Life Stories and Trajectories: Hope, Possibility, and Change

Abstract

Life writing, a collection of writing practices including biography, educational biography, autobiography, autoethnography, oral history, life history, collective biography, prosopography, social fictions, etc. has been an understudied area in the field of educational leadership. Reexamining the history of the commingling of leadership concepts with life writing conventions opens up new pathways for understanding how life writing can powerfully propel leadership development. The conceptual history of life writing is traced by using the mapping tools offered by Foucault’s (1972) The Archeology of Knowledge and the Discourses on Language, specifically ‘the field of memory’, ‘the field of presence’, and ‘the field of concomitance.” Creating an intellectual archaeology of life writing opens spaces for reimagining theoretical and practical possibilities for preparing educational leaders.

Author

• Thalia Mulvihill, Ball State University