Enigmatic Autobiographies in Teacher Education: A Multiyear Study of Teacher Narratives

• In Event: Poster Session 2
  In Poster Session: Enigmatic Autobiographies in Teacher Education: A Multiyear Study of Teacher Narratives

Abstract

In this paper presentation, we discuss an ongoing qualitative study of the autobiographical processes of teacher candidates in a graduate-level course on human development and social difference. The study focuses on two autobiographical narratives written by students in the course, one dealing with an experience of learning and the other with the complexity of social identity, and on the autobiographical curriculum we, as instructors in the course, provided the students as ground for self-exploration. Analyzing autobiographies written in the course, we interpret narrative conflicts, digressions, and impasses that point to thought or affect that cannot readily be translated into narrative form and therefore that illuminate the inevitable limits of self-narration and self-knowledge in teacher education.

Authors

• Philip Evan Bernhardt, Metropolitan State University of Denver

• Marjorie Clark, The George Washington University