In 1934, Marion Milner, writing under the pseudonym Joanna Field, published "A Life of One's Own," reflecting on her seven-year undertaking of keeping a diary aimed at answering the question, what makes me happy? The diary itself is not the text of the work. Rather, "A Life of One's Own" forms a research text that anticipates…

Over the last four years of my K-12 visual arts teaching career, I faithfully kept visual journals, filling them with stories of my experiences in the classroom. What initially began as an experiment as I searched for a tool to help me navigate new challenges within a public school system, eventually led me to realize that my visual journals were…

This is a report from the field, where an immigrant mother journaled about her Yemeni American daughters (ages 7 and 13, born and raised in the U.S.) visiting museums for the first time. Her diary documented how mother-child and sibling interactions in museum education contributed to building cognitive and affective skills required for academic…

Teaching English literacy in First Nations Australian communities is bound up with the policy aim of improving the social and economic outcomes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the desire to acknowledge, recognise and respect their unique cultural identities, languages and knowledges. But for English literacy teachers working…

This narrative inquiry describes how Arts-Based Research (ABR) allows for reflective visual journaling as a way to create unexpected understandings of one's self, students, and practice. Informal sketching is seen as an exploration of how drawing can generate and communicate unique insights. Using (ABR) allowed the author to experience the…

Teaching middle school mathematics, I have found that classroom dynamics have a profound impact on the quality of mathematical discussion. Wanting to improve classroom discussion in order to better facilitate both small-group and student-driven learning, I started the school year by randomly grouping students every week for their small groups. I…

One of the methods used to enhance students' ability not only to identify different cultures but also to describe their own cultures with proper analytical vocabulary is to teach students how to play the role of an outsider of their culture and de-familiarize their everyday practice so that they can distinguish cultural patterns and…

Communication teacher scholars have traditionally focused attention on the power of language in written or spoken narratives as situated in particular contexts. Increasingly, however, scholars are espousing a vision-based epistemology that recognizes the relationship between seeing and knowing, and in doing so foreground the political relationship…

This article makes use of autoethnography in which I, as researcher, explore my own awareness of Asperger's syndrome and how this, in turn, has helped me deal with many day to day situations I have encountered. The work illustrates how actively engaging with one's own life story narratives can help the Asperger's learner come to terms with his or…

Although Japanese Americans' concept of "gaman" has been stereotypically associated with silent passivity, several practiced this principle as a form of resistance in personal writings about the U.S. government's incarceration of them during World War II. This article focuses on the relationship between gaman, an inherited cultural…

I interrogate my personal diaries documenting my life in New York, Beijing, Tokyo, and Sydney over a 20-year period. Taking bearings from Bakhtinian thoughts, I explore the emergence of my post-diasporic identity as a second generation Korean American through watching South Korean dramas. By conversing with journals kept over a 20-year period, I…

Describes clinical uses of the Life Story Book, a technique to help foster children connect their life experiences. The technique can reeducate children toward a more positive self-image. (Author/DB)

First- and second-born adolescent siblings from 21 families completed a daily diary on each of 7 days. The frequency and content of siblings' conversations are described and the relationship between the content of siblings' discussion and their perceived academic, athletic, and peer competency is explored. Siblings most often talked about…

The personal student journal is a little-used technique that holds special promise for instructors working in diverse educational settings. Journals can be used as an instructional tool for students, as a means for nurturing self-directed learning, and as a bridge to personal growth. (PP)

Describes a program whereby foster parents, social workers, and parents are trained to help foster children increase understanding of their lives and decrease confusion about their identities. Integral to the program is the child's collecting information into a Life Story Book. (Author/DB)