Little research has been directed at the psychological development of poor women. So as to better understand this group, the results of a qualitative study of 20 white, semi-rural women receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children (welfare) are reported in this paper. All of the women were completing a two-year college degree. Their process…

New voices and perspectives from an increasingly diverse student body challenge educators to reconsider customary ways of seeing and doing the business of teaching writing. This challenge led researchers at Rhode Island College to create an informal writers' group with peers rather than instructors as facilitators. Writers' Informal Network (WIN)…

Noting that researchers rarely ask urban fathers about their perspectives and choices regarding fatherhood, this pilot study examined the experiences of urban fathers, focusing on their views of the challenges of fatherhood and how they accounted for both their irresponsible and their promising fathering behaviors; the study's larger goal will be…

Personal narratives from first-year English teachers reveal that the social system of the schools in which they teach, the instructional system and its accompanying curriculum requirements and restraints, and the nature of the student population become dominant in determining teachers' behavior and their attitudes toward teaching. (HOD)

Explores the role that creative autobiography, as a critical pedagogical strategy, can play in the construction of diverse perspectives in multicultural teacher education settings through the experiences of 28 students. Creative autobiography means an artistic or creative presentation of one's life story. (SLD)

Describes a study that asked undergraduates to list three personally memorable incidents concerning library use in order to understand the human experience of libraries and implications this understanding has for library use and service, education, and design. Discusses results of content analysis, phenomenological analysis, and grade levels at…

Discusses the use of teacher-generated biographical material as a vehicle for introducing culture-based content into the classroom. The rationale behind the concept of teacher-generated biography is described with reference to adult general English students in Japan. (Author/VWL)

The speech children spontaneously quote was examined in 2 studies involving personal narratives from 96 children aged 4 to 9 and speech in 25 children aged 1 to 5. Findings showed that frequency of reported speech increased with age and direct quotation was more common than indirect or summarized quotations at all ages. (57 references) (Author/LB)

Israeli researchers collected stories from secondary teachers in their staff room, examining form and function of storytelling. The stories described situations where the teachers had terrible classes or students but succeeded in improving things. The teachers' stories created images of the ideal teacher and socialized teachers to those images.…

Presents an analysis of five first-person oral narratives of Aboriginal children of Western Australia recorded outside the classroom. These narratives are compared with a first-person oral narrative of a non-Aboriginal child and with teacher-led interactions in the classes of which the Aboriginal children are members. (26 references) (Author/CK)

Conducts an ethnographic study, collecting life stories from people with mental retardation living at London's L' Arche community (a center of group homes with disabled and nondisabled residents). Uses Robert Cole's methodology of interpretive narrative, and explains the procedure. Argues that these life stories provide insight that can help…

Mothers' ways of structuring conversations about past events are related to children's abilities to structure personal narratives. When mothers provided temporally complex and informationally dense narratives about the past to their 2 1/2-year olds, the children recounted similar accounts a year later. (Author/BB)

Focuses on the experiences of African-American women; and considers the interaction of sex and race in the development of sense of self, sense of self in relation to others, and ontology through interviews with 12 African-American women. Similarities among women across race are suggested. (SLD)

Students from a predominantly Navajo high school discuss their lives, educational experiences, culture, and aspirations. They value their home language and culture, but want to achieve success in the wider world. Students' views often contradict educators' perceptions. School communities must build on these differences, rather than on homogeneity.…

Notes that Brazilian street children are socially branded as criminals, limiting their opportunities to improve themselves and believe they can change their lives for the better. Draws on interviews with street children to provide a true picture of daily struggles and demonstrates ability and creativity in many situations. (LBT)