The article considers the contributions of Gee's Discourse theory to the study of multiethnic identity among mixed heritage students. By framing experience within social context, activity, and interaction, I argue that Discourse theory facilitates a conceptualization of ethnic identity as a situated phenomenon emerging at the intersection of the…

This article deals with some long-standing philosophical issues concerning the nature of educational theory, its relevance to educational practice and its role in the professional development of teachers. Instead of treating these questions as "theoretical", however, it approaches them through a reflective autobiographical account of the role that…

Reading and writing autobiography as a pedagogical mode of engaging multicultural education is no longer new. The authors also adopt this strategy in their own respective teachings at two universities where students are predominantly White and (lower) middle-class women. In this article, the authors not only reflect on their own teaching…

"Writing the queer self" involves locating the self within a broad understanding of queer that recognises a spectrum of sex, sexual and gendered subjects. In this article, I discuss how I write the queer self to link the personal to my positional practice as a gay teacher educator. I overview my work with Agape, which is a focus group…

Approximately seven years after completing a photographic essay about the self, 44 adults were surveyed about their lives, current creative activities, and their work values. In accord with prediction, those who devised richer, more multidimensional and creative photo essays--the more individualistic--were engaged in more creative lifestyles as…

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,…

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…

This paper addresses students' affect toward mathematics in relation to the learning environment created by the teacher through the analysis of the mathematical autobiographies of students at four different institutions of higher learning in the Southeast. Most of the students were in teacher education programs. The original intent was to compare…

Although slave narratives have enjoyed critical attention as literature and autobiography, when presenting them to undergraduates, there is some confusion--usually centering on the dissimilarities between the narratives and traditional autobiography. The narratives are not as linear, not as focused on personal development; the narrators are not as…

A representative selection for studying African American autobiography as a literary discipline is "A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South" by Anna Julia Cooper, published in 1892. As a literary form, the book is a series of eight essays: four essays about women and their relation to other groups or their place in the…

The author presented a short history of his Irish heritage and defended his family's ethnic contributions to American culture with the plea that ethnicity should be encouraged as a cultural strength rather than as a threat to American cultural cohesion. (RK)

Author recounted his feelings as he became educated and felt the growing distance between himself, a budding academic, and his nonacademic parents. (RK)

The ways contemporary American journalists view themselves and order their experiences in their autobiographies stem from the reporter-as-celebrity phenomenon. As a result of this phenomenon, many journalists are writing their autobiographies when they are fairly young, and creating larger-than-life personas of themselves, which tends to emphasize…