This study investigates the experiences of academics who became department heads in a post-1992 UK university and explores the influence that being in the position has on their planned future academic career. Drawing on life history interviews undertaken with 17 male and female heads of department, the paper constitutes an in-depth study of their…

Early teacher socialization research in the 1980s examined student-teachers during their transition from pre-service to in-service contexts, and argued for a limited effect of teacher education programs compared to students' initial socialization into the profession of teaching as past-students or apprentices of observation. Although…

Learners' biographies affect their engagement with knowledge and shape how their learning is understood. This article uses an educational life history approach to investigate how students' social and cultural educational experiences affect their engagement with their university. Qualitative evidence is presented from interviews with students with…

Although we may claim our students are developing a sociological imagination, it is quite another to realize this in our teaching and our students' performances. Through a professional move from teaching in Chicago to Maine, I was led to rethink how I teach the sociological imagination. I argue that if we are to teach the sociological imagination,…

Traditional research methodologies (questionnaire surveys) ignore the role of institutional contexts in defining and structuring human agency. Biography and ethnography acknowledge context's importance in constructing leadership systems and treat followers' implicit theories more effectively. This article discusses the purposes, problems, and…

Using life-history interviews with three tenure track teacher educators, this article examines teacher socialization experiences, investigating how life histories can highlight the process of becoming faculty, noting change efforts that may lead to radical reforms, and discussing whether schools of education merely perpetuate traditional norms and…

Paper explores the idea of biography writing as a medium for teacher development and reflection, focusing on the ethnographic biography to provide student teachers with context in preservice education and describing a one-semester course in Switzerland in which student teachers were paired with experienced teachers to complete ethnographic…

Examines the central place of pedagogy in teacher educators' lives, discussing resulting contradictions and coherence as they struggle with current institutional contexts. A life- history narrative of a tenure track teacher educator emphasizes the importance of pedagogy. Implications for teacher educators, institutional contexts, and the…

This symposium on adult learning and human resource development consists of three presentations. "Adult Learning Principles and Concepts in the Workplace: Implications for Training in HRD" (Margot B. Weinstein) reports on findings from interviews with restaurant employees who reported that training practices using adult learning…