Susan Friedman, a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at the University of South Florida, has found through her own teaching experience that incorporating autobiographical texts and self-writing into her pedagogical practices can foster a classroom environment that pays attention to subjectivity to promote mindful, ethical behavior in both…

This paper draws on research which took an auto/biographical and narrative approach in order to investigate mainstream teachers' and teaching assistants' experiences and understandings of inclusion. Throughout the 2003/04 academic year, three researchers made three visits to one primary and one secondary school to talk with individuals and groups.…

For one instructor, her work in autobiography began with an interest in understanding how her past has influenced her present work of teaching. Autobiography is an interpretive act and both a reunion and a release from the past. While there is commitment to truth in writing an autobiographical text, the autobiographer necessarily engages in the…

Despite the stereotype of today's undergraduates as having an inadequate literacy level, a teacher of English at a large midwestern university was surprised to find that students' literacy autobiographies reflect what might be called a conventional literacy success story, one that represents a strain of American autobiography dating back to…

Situated between academic discourse and that kind of personal writing that is only for the writer herself, autobiographical writing could serve as a middle ground in which first-year college writers render and describe personal experiences yet at the same time explain and analyze them. In "Lives on the Boundary," Mike Rose offers some…

A doctoral student's interest in self-culture connections led her to observe an English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) writing class focused on autobiography and read all the students' papers. Autobiographical writing not only gives ESL students a chance to write about what matters to them, but the teacher can capitalize on students' cultural…

Although the recent thrust toward writing as interaction with a text has led to de-emphasis of personal-experience writing per se, autobiography, if approached in the context of textuality (in Roland Barthes's sense), can provide a model for writing as a means of discovering one's identity--of interacting with life as text and with the written…

The best way to understand and appreciate the forms and structures of autobiography is through the creation of lifewriting stories--memoirs, portraits, reminiscences, anecdotes, family histories, etc., which provide entry points for exploration in life experiences. Lifewriting texts provide the best point of penetration for the developing reader…

Based on the idea that telling personal life stories can be a voyage of self discovery, freeing up images and memories that have long remained hidden, this book explains techniques to help individuals learn to write vivid autobiographical stories and life narratives. Whether used at home, in a classroom, or in a therapy environment, the techniques…

Discusses complexities arising when teachers and teacher educators use autobiographical texts to reflect on their personal/professional selves. Data come from an ongoing research project on teachers' autobiographies, which involves a group of educators at various stages of their career who meet regularly to write and share their autobiographies.…

Describes an autobiographical writing assignment in which preservice teachers reflect on their past language experiences in order to examine the important elements of language development. Presents samples from student essays demonstrating that the factors influencing language development are varied and yet consistent. (RS)

Describes how one English teacher developed an approach to teaching writing that was based on asking students to write memoirs or personal narratives. Presents an amalgam of letters written to a newspaper and to three co-authors of an article published in "The Chronicle of Higher Education" regarding the use of personal writing in freshman…

Provides eight citations and annotations, including plotlines and thematic overviews, of autobiographical writings suitable for English instruction purposes for middle-school students. (HB)

Describes a project in which elementary school students create a computer-generated time line of milestones in their lives, noting such an activity can give them a good start on writing autobiographies. (SM)

Reviews "Stories Lives Tell," Carol Witherell and Nel Noddings; and "Turning the Soul," Sophie Haroutunian-Gordon, which include autobiographical accounts of participation in narrative and dialogical activities in formal and extra-school contexts. The books raise questions about the benefits and limitations of this approach for educational…