Educators and Libraries: Educational Biographies and Critical Duoethnography Methodologies

• In Event: Explorations in Biographical and Documentary Methodologies

Abstract

Duoethnography projects have the potential to elevate interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary knowledge about education. They also have the power to contribute to social justice projects. This critical duoethnography project was designed to investigate the impact libraries have on educators’ stories about themselves and their students within the context of a democracy. A number of elicitation devices were used in the context of duoethnography including photographs, archival documents, fiction and nonfiction books about library experiences, storytelling prompts, and interview questions. Results included rich multimodal vignettes representing a variety of ways libraries impacted the educational biographies of educators and taken together offer researchers new ways to think about critical duoethnography projects as educational biography.

Author

• Thalia Mulvihill, Ball State University