This paper draws from the ARC Discovery project called "Moving Ideas: Mobile Policies, Researchers and Connections in the Social Sciences and Humanities--Australia in the Global Context" (2006-2009). This project explored the ways that ideas travel and how knowledge transforms through travel. One aspect of the study was the critical…

Psychologists have often observed an underlying pattern or theme in the accounts that individuals give of their lives. To test a humanistic-existential approach to human development, 48 women were interviewed with the Loss and Transcendence (L/T) Life History Form. The L/T Life Theme is expressed in two ways: the expanded version includes the…

This paper discusses the educational and social philosophy of Mary Wollstonecraft, an English writer of the 18th century. Her works included "Vindication of the Rights of Man," and her best know work, "Vindication of the Rights of Woman" which was published in 1792 and consisted of the first sustained argument for female…

A phenomenological interview process in two stages was employed to elicit the life stories of six academically gifted college students. Participants' stories were edited with themes identified and interpreted by the researcher. A sample life history of a high achieving female college senior is provided. Commentary by the researcher focuses on the…

Already a standard technique in anthropology, the life history method is widely used in the development of oral and local history, and within educational and social science research the method is growing in popularity. This is in large part due to the growing respectability of qualitative research in general. Part I of this paper explains the life…

This fifth volume of a six-volume study of a school district code-named "Milford" sketches life histories and careers of the school's original faculty some 15 years after the school was founded. Section I outlines the study's problems and procedures; describes the faculty as a group of true believers initially characterized by humor, inexperience,…

This final volume of a six-volume study of an elementary school called "Kensington" in a school district code-named "Milford," examines its own assumptions and procedures. After the brief, introductory chapter, which presents the methodological appendixes of the preceding volumes as a serial, chapter 2 discusses exploratory and…