Describes how, through oral story telling, writing biographies, autobiographies and creating fictional characters, adults with mental illness were gently directed to focus and explore one significant person or period of their own lives, to develop their sense of self and ego strengths, and to connect to important others in their lives. (SR)

Describes a literacy autobiography assignment used as the first writing assignment in a methods course for preservice English/language arts teachers to model some strategies for literacy teaching and to encourage reflective thinking. Discusses the kinds of information and insights the autobiographies can reveal, and notes benefits of the…

Examines the types of literacy support parents gave their children at home with 15 students from a diverse class of 23 third graders during an eight-week integrated unit on writing autobiographies. Finds pattern differences between genders with respect to the nature of support given at home. Suggests that particularly African-American males…

Presents a short dialogue on issues of representing children's literature for a wider audience, regarding "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." Discusses a featured book and offers brief descriptions of 5 picture books and informational texts, and 6 autobiographies, discussing them in tandem with 15 landmark children's books. (SR)

Suggests that autobiography is a fertile context for students to develop a facility for reading and writing and for defining and constructing themselves within an academic setting. Discusses using autobiography in an introduction to academic discourse course for developmental college students. (RS)

Describes what was learned about using oral histories from the narratives that could and could not be collected during a study of primary education in colonial and post-colonial Mozambique. Examines: narrator and interviewer roles; how to negotiate ways of remembering and telling; narrating education as a site of social justice movements; and the…

Presents two standards-based language arts activities for middle school students. The first involves collecting family photographs, writing a descriptive essay based on each one, and publishing the final product using Microsoft Publisher. The second involves creating one-page autobiographies, designing a publishable product, and publishing it…

This paper describes and discusses the effect of service-learning on students' reflective thinking about their own knowledge in multicultural teacher education at a state university in Southern California (USA). Two versions of students' multicultural autobiographies, one at the beginning and the other at the end of the course, were examined to…

The paper suggests a model for linking the realisation and the articulation of both knowledge and accumulation of skills by fourth year students who have majored in visual anthropology. One central component is the integration of student-generated intellectual autobiographies into electronic demonstration portfolios, a formula and strategy that…

The authors examined the contributions of maternal structure and autonomy support to children's collaborative and independent reminiscing. Fifty mother-child dyads discussed past experiences when the children were 40 and 65 months old. Children also discussed past events with an experimenter at each age. Maternal structure and autonomy support…

Recently I gave a presentation on class, success and subjectivity. One response was that I should "Get over it". This comment informs the following discussion exploring some contradictory views about speaking personally in relation to class experience. There is a continual need to review the feminist mantra of the "personal is political". Does…

In the introduction of "Performing Live", Richard Shusterman challenges the reader to decide of the book, "Do its diverse texts manifest an individual style, or at least a reasonably consistent one?" In reflecting on this question, Higgins answers, "Yes." For her, the essays in the book, although written over the course of a decade, do exhibit…

Many of us do not realize the prejudices we learn by living our lives. However, through reflection we can understand who we are, why we are that way, and how we can change. As a teacher I naively believed that I had transcended prejudicial thinking and acting. Yet, through much reflection during my doctoral program, I came to understand myself…

Mentoring new faculty into vocations of teaching falls squarely on the shoulders of those entrusted with setting the course for the next generation of faculty. Often the role of new teacher development is assigned to senior faculty. In this essay the author provides an autobiographical account of experiences both as a mentor and as one who had…

A British historian of the American South examines the forces of contingency and the stimulus of teaching that led him to become a historian of the United States and, in particular, the American South. Belonging to a generation of British historians who aimed to make their work indistinguishable from their American counterparts, he has been forced…