Hosted by the Graduate Program in Critical and Creative Thinking, UMass Boston
Monday, February 12, 7:00-8:30pm ET, online in Zoom
Free and open to all. RSVP here to receive the Zoom login information.
Scholars such as Dominice (2000) and Merrill (2020) have explored looking at one’s life history as itself an educational process of learning about ourselves. In this session, we will experiment with the process of the Educational Biography as a reflective practice. This involves not only recognizing the meaning of past experience but also see it in the light of current actions – how we approach things now in our work and lives. In this mini-workshop, we are focusing most directly on the role of schooling in our life history. In our short time available, we will will move through a series of short reflective activities that help us to raise issues about our educational background and then follow with additional dialogue to collaboratively develop more understanding about these issues. The Educational Biography might ask us to address questions such as the following:
- How did my schooling fit into the educational journey that I’ve taken through life? What parts of my education were served in other ways, outside of schooling?
- What were some key incidents, moments, or milestones that I consider to be important learning experiences?
- What have I come to understand about my ways of learning (or thinking)? Do they represent both benefits and constraints?
- What is the relationship between my earlier schooling and current personal and professional directions? Are there any connections between what I liked or what I “was good at” in school, and what I do now for work? Is there an interesting evolution between then and now?
- Does our educational history suggest anything to us about what should be maintained or changed about my working or living practices? What is on the horizon of my next phase of learning and development?
We hope you will join us for this session as we learn from each other and put reflective practice in action. Additional details may be added here as they develop.
References:
- Dominicé, P. (2000). Learning from Our Lives: Using Educational Biographies with Adults. The Jossey-Bass Higher and Adult Education Series. Jossey-Bass Publishers, 350 Sansome Street, San Francisco, CA 94104.
- Merrill, B. (2020). Biographical Inquiry: A Collaborative and Egalitarian Approach to Adult Education Research. In Doing Critical and Creative Research in Adult Education (pp. 15-24). Brill.
