Children's autobiographical memory is hypothesized to be a function of their understanding of mind (Perner & Ruffman, 1995; Welch-Ross, 1995). In the context of mother-child reminiscing, children may learn about and display their understanding of mind (Nelson, 1999; Welch-Ross, 1997). We studied links among maternal reminiscing style,…

Adoptive children face some different developmental concerns than their non-adoptive peers. Educators need to understand that certain lessons and assignments can affect adoptive and non-adoptive children very differently. In this article, the author offers several classroom strategies for adopted students. An autobiography assignment, potentially…

This paper introduces autobiographical analysis as a "disruptive strategy" that is deliberately structured to enable preservice teachers to develop new ways of thinking about teaching. Specifically, we: 1) describe how we incorporate a process of critical examination of preservice teachers' biases and assumptions throughout their…

Linda Scott DeRosier's autobiographical accounts of literacy attainment in "Creeker: A Woman's Journey" and "Songs of Life and Grace" reveal that entrance into a secondary discourse community via literacy can bring both pleasure and pain. Analyzing the identity negotiations DeRosier encounters reveals that although she…

Mother-child dyads who experienced a devastating tornado talked about the storm and about two affectively more positive or neutral events at each of two time points: 4 months and 10 months after the storm. The conversations were analyzed to determine whether mothers and/or children's contributions differed as a function of event type and whether…

This article describes one southern partnership's effort to create an urban learning community in which the university, schools, and local NAACP work together to improve teaching and learning. The authors describe how the partners coteach courses, engage in creating and sharing cultural autobiographies, question each other, and confront their own…

The book is Katherine Peter's own account, in her native Gwich'in Athabaskan language, of life in 1936-47 in Arctic Village, Alaska. An introductory section offers background information on the author's life and the origins of this work. The text that follows is in Gwich'in Athabaskan on the left page, and in English on the right page. It tells of…

This book reflects upon the ways in which contingencies of identity and location shape the writing of academic argument and the living of an academic life. Experimenting with a mode of writing called "narrative criticism," the book interweaves the personal and the theoretical, anecdote and text. It is organized around a number of…

Recent research has focused on the use of reflection to examine teaching practices of preservice and inservice teachers. Limited research, however, has been done by university science educators on their own practice. This study involved two university science educators collaboratively participating in such an activity with an inservice teacher. It…

A study investigated the ways male and female fifth-grade writers compose short, open-ended autobiographical narratives. The research focused on whether students composed narratives reproducing society's prescription of reality according to gender roles, or whether they found their own voices, writing as autonomous writers representing their own…

A study examined how students developed as readers from their own point of view. Reader autobiographies and questionnaires were collected from 272 advanced, general, and basic level 12th-grade high school students from a variety of high schools in the state of Georgia. In addition, three students who were characteristic of the three types of…

To understand literature, it is necessary for a reader to make connections between the text of the literary work and the text of the reader's life. Student autobiographical writing before reading can be used to enhance students' ability to make such connections. Autobiographical writing helps students apply relevant life experience that might not…

Composing and telling stories can allow a person to resist and revise those confining stories drafted by others. As an illustration of the powerful role narrative plays in English teachers' research and teaching, a pre-service teacher's autobiographical story narrates her refusal of the oppressive roles she had been assigned. The teacher's story…

For some instructors, the use of students' own experiences has proven to be an extremely useful starting point in the college composition classroom. In a first semester freshman composition course, students wrote autobiographies in which they examined different perspectives of the many communities in which they lived. Students then used the…

Poliomyelitis, a virus that quickly attacks the central nervous system, struck the United States in 1916 with devastating results. Twenty-six states reported some 27,000 cases, claiming 6,000 deaths. The morbidity rate continued to climb during the next four decades until 1955 with the introduction of the Salk vaccine. It proved to be especially…