EMPOWERINGNONTRADITIONAL STUDENTS CAREERS THROUGH AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WRITING Jos GonzlezMonteagudo

EMPOWERINGNON-TRADITIONAL STUDENTS' CAREERS THROUGH AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WRITING José González-Monteagudo María T. Padilla-Carmona José M. Lavié-Martínez University of Seville (Spain) <monteagu@hotmail. com>

Autobiographical writing in university formative settings The autobiography is an innovatory educational project at university level, a practical activity in writing which focuses upon life histories and an attempt to conduct educational investigation from the standpoint of practical teaching. The autobiography is at the same time an adventure, a risk and an open project. It is also a self-generating project, continually renewed through the course of its own development (Pineau, 2000; Pineau & Le Grand, 2002).

CONTEXT: SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CHANGING LANDSCAPES • • • - Globalization. - ICT. - Cultural diversity and global mobilities/migrations (travel, tourism, international students, migrants): around 200 million of international migrants in 2007, 3% of world population. - Crisis and reconfiguration of Nation-states and democracy. - Massive production of research, knowledge and information, available wherever and whenever (beyond time and space). - Personal and cultural identities evolving dramatically. - New contexts and contents in socialisation, learning, social relationships, family and love, work, leisure. - Reflexivity, uncertainty, individualism, relativism, risk. - In this context individuals need to develop processes of biographization to give/construct meaning in relation to their lives.

THE 1980 s: FROM CULTURAL AND LINGUISTIC TURN TO NARRATIVE/BIOGRAPHICAL TURN • • • Critique of grand narratives (dominant ideologies and social theories: Technoscientific approach, Marxism, traditional religions, Positivism, Structural. Functionalism, etc): Jean-Francois Lyotard. Stress on change, diversity (culture, society, generations, gender, sexualities), uncertainty. Anthropology: Clifford Geertz, Works and Lives: The Antrhopologist as Author (1988). Sociology: Ken Plummer, Documents of Life (1983; 2 nd edn: 2001); Daniel Bertaux, Biography ans Society: The Life-History Approach in the Social Sciences (1981); Norman K. Denzin, Interpretive Biography (1989). Oral History: Paul Thompson, The Voice of the Past: Oral History (1978; 2 nd edn: 1988; 3 rd edn: 2000). Philosophy: Paul Ricoeur, on time, narrative identity: Time and Narrative (1984, 1985, 1988). Pshychology: Jerome Bruner, on life as narrative, narrative knowledge/identity: Actual Minds, Possible Worlds (1986). Education: Ivor Goodson & Stephen Ball, Teachers Lives and Careers (1985); Gaston Pineau (and Marie-Michèle), Produire sa vie: Autoformation et autobiographie (1983). Human Sciences: Franco Ferrarotti, Histoire et histoires de vie. La méthode biographique dans les Sciences sociales (1983); Donald E. Polkinghorne: Narrative

MEMORY AND HISTORICAL MEMORY • • • New Warwick journal on Memory Studies. -Narratives of radical evil and Holocaust: Primo Levi, If This is a Man. -Physical and digital archives of oral and written heritage. -Places of memory (Lieux de mémoire): French historian Pierre Nora, 7 volumes. -Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (Africa, Latin America, Asia and Central Europe. Mandela and South Africa’s case). Trauma, wars, victims. The Spanish case of Civil war and the Dictatorship: Zapatero’s law on Historical Memory. [The Guardian, 16 th Nov 2009: “Brown plans apology to UK children in care who were transported in Australia and Canada. 150, 000 forcibly removed from 1920 to 1967. Many were abused and treated as unpaid labour]. -Social and cultural context saturated of personal and collective memory: manipulated, constricted, abusively exerted (Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 2004). -Psychotherapies, Literature, Media, Films, Social Sciences: Narratives and storytelling in the foreground. -Collective and group memories. Social and generational transmissions of memories. -Social movements, Testimony, Oral history: Engagement with marginalized people.

KEY ISSUES IN BIOGRAPHICAL APPROACHES - Biographical turn - Self and Identities - Time - Memory - Self - Methodology - New technologies (adapted from Roberts, 2002, ch. 10).

THE ORIGINS: ‘’REALIST’, CLASSICAL BIOGRAPHICAL RESEARCH • Anthropology: Study of culture of North American Indians based on biographical accounts. Paul Radin: Crashing Thunder (1926). Research themes: cultural change and description, relations between culture and personality, deviance and social marginalization, role analysis, socialization, values. • -Chicagoan Sociology: Thomas & Znaniecki: The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (1918 -1920, 5 volumes; vol. 3: Autobiography by a Polish baker). Use of letters and autobiographies. Social reformism. University innovation in both teaching and research. Study of migrations, social change, urban and industrial contexts.

THEORETICAL APPROACHES - Neo-realism and Postpositivism - Critical theory - Pschoanalysis, Narrative psychology and Human growth - Hermeneutics - Phenomenology - Post-structuralism and Feminist approaches

PERSONAL DOCUMENTS • -Autobiographies, biographies and auto/biographical writings. • -Personal and professional journals. • -Letters, emails and digital communication in social networks and so on. • -Written and visual curriculum vitae. • -Photos, videos, digital documents of image and sound. • -Objects, personal and cultural artefacts. • -Lifelines. • -Biographical interviews. • -Field notes and other stories from the field. • -Conversations. • -Family stories and genealogical trees.

CONTEXT AND AIMS The target group of non-traditional students includes adults, but also first generation students, women in a situation of inequality, workers, people with immigrant origins, and generally students from educationally disadvantaged background conditions. In this paper we will concentrate on autobiographical writing as a tool of empowerment, reflectivity and creation of personal resources to promote completion and avoid dropout in HE.

CONTEXT AND AIMS Autobiography makes it possible to explore the past the present and even the future of the autobiographer in the framework of the family, social networks, the local community and the widest institutional and sociocultural contexts. As a training instrument, autobiography favors: - self-knowledge; - the ability to analyze the past; - the setting up of connections between the experience lived, the present, and future projects; - the identification of the most important factors that condition the personal and educational evolution of the autobiographers.

J. BRUNER ON AUTOBIOGRAPHY, SELF & AGENCY Autobiographies are related to self and agency as well as to culture and social dimensions. In order to stress the complexity and holism of autobiographies, we focus on Bruner’s contributions (González. Monteagudo, 2011). The problematic and unstable character of stories becomes expressly evident in narrative autobiographies, or to put it another way, in the narratives where the author, the narrator and the main character coincide. Bruner goes as far as to claim that the development of autobiography may be the most important research project in the field of psychology.

METHODOLOGY Our proposal of educational autobiography has a guided approach. In the training we have aimed to combine group sessions, centered on oral work, with the students' autonomous work, which consists of developing the educational, family and social life story. Educational autobiography is a suitable instrument to explore the deep roots of learning carried out throughout life. The genealogical tree, the analysis of the family group, the commentary on the local environment, the lifeline, the personal shield or coat of arms and the learning narratives in different contexts (family and couple, school, peer groups, associations, information and communication technologies, leisure, the world of work) are some of the questions proposed as storylines of the written autobiography. These themes are offered as work possibilities and never as points that must be tackled.

Biographical tools • Lifeline or timeline consists of a chronological representation of the most important events in a person's life, along a temporal axis that is developed between birth and the current moment. This makes a first representation of the personal path organized around the family, school and other environments easier. • The personal shield or blazon is a symbolic representation of personal identity, articulated around four elements: a) the most important memory of childhood; b) the most fervent wish concerning the future; c) the favourite leisure activity; and d) the main quality subjects attribute to themselves. The shield favors work on the imaginary through graphic expression and the freedom of criteria to communicate one's own identity. • Work on objects.

Biographical tools • The narratives of learning experiences, frequently organized from birth to the current moment are organized in connection with the major educational stages. • Photographs and visual documents. Digital technology facilitates the task of reviewing, ordering and reproducing the most significant images. • Finally, the reflective and interpretive analysis makes an overall view of the process carried out possible, as well as establishing connections between the different contents worked on, susceptible to a personal and narrative articulation (for example, from a temporal perspective, connecting with the past, present and future; or in terms of learning settings, such as the family, school, means, peer groups and others). It is a matter of building meaning from lived-out and recounted experience. This implies reflection about personal identity and its connection with the personal and interpersonal history, as well as widest social and cultural structures.

Trainer’s roles In this activity the trainer takes on various roles: a) the facilitating of guidelines to carry out the activity, from its own voluntary nature, to guarantee that the activity be a joyful experience of creative work, intellectual autonomy and profound affective experience; b) the motivating of the desire to search and research, aimed at recuperating evidence, experience and feelings, in dialogue with the family, mentors, friends and educators; c) the accompanying of the process of writing and the facilitating of strategies to unblock difficulties and encourage progress; and d) the reduction and relief of anxiety and unease that some students experience, who refuse to abandon the activity in spite of the difficulty that they experience.

Results / Benefits The autobiography permits us to establish close links between the education offered by the university, the experiential world of the student and the socio-cultural background to the whole. Also it opens up a powerful process of personal reflection, analysis, questioning and maturation.

Transitional spaces We can think of autobiographies as transitional spaces for learning in which there may be changes in the students’ understanding as well as positive benefits of story telling. This may be especially true in the case of students with low cultural and economic capital.

Constructing learning careers and identities as learners The use of biographical methods enables the nontraditional student to reflect upon their learning and experiences in higher education. This process also enable them to identify what facilitates their learning or not and identify strategies for improvement at an individual, departmental and institutional level to develop a successful learning career. Autobiographies also will provide an in-depth understanding of how non-traditional students develop or not a learning career and identity. The voices of participants are central, as they will inform potential strategies identified for policy and practice. Also we have been trying to involve students in the process of planning and implementing autobiographical writing.

Analysis • The students place their own story better, this being understood as their personal itinerary and as a development that can only be clearly understood in the context of broader family, educational, historical and socio-cultural contexts. We believe that this effort of understanding the relationships between the individual development and the contexts of development promotes the construction of a theory by the students. This theorizing -which turns out to be very inconsistent, depending on the capacities of the different students- aims to contribute to the most difficult problem that this activity displays. We are referring to the construction of a personal theory that sheds light on the relationships between the personal biography, the contexts of the development of the intermediate level (the family, the school and the community environment) and broader socio-cultural areas. In the intersection of these three vertices -biography as a micro-level; close contexts as an intermediate level; and global contexts as a macro -level- is, we think, to be found the most decisive formative and reflexive principle of educational autobiography. The theorizing that is attempted is backed by the group debates, the carrying out of biographical activities in small groups, the search for relationships between worked out readings and the autobiographical story, the autonomous search for documentation and the analytical and reflexive writing.

Innovation and empowerment Autobiography makes possible navigate between subjective narratives and sociocultural analysis and reflections. This approach favors innovation and empowerment in HE contexts, making possible the development of the reflectivity competence. Even in the current critical situation of the European societies, Higher Education continues to be a pathway to empowerment and intellectual and moral autonomy. In this context autobiography has already produced fruitful results.

GUIDELINES FOR BIOGRAPHICAL INTERVIEWS (I) • • • Thompson (2000), from the perspective of an oral historian, proposes these elements in his life story interview guide: general information; grandparents’ generation; siblings/cousins/uncles/aunts; daily life in childhood; community and class; school; employment; leisure and courting; marriage and children; changing daily life; later life.

GUIDELINES FOR BIOGRAPHICAL INTERVIEWS (II) Atkinson (1998) suggests to search for information on these aspects: - birth and family of origin; - cultural setting and traditions; - social factors; - education; - love and work; - historical events and periods; - retirement; - inner life and spiritual awareness; - major life themes; - vision of the future; - closure questions.

GUIDELINES FOR BIOGRAPHICAL INTERVIEWS (III) From a sociological gaze, Miller (2000) advises to work on significant social and historical processes affecting family life: - socio-economic changes; - the move to cities and other alteration in migration patterns; - changes in state social policy; - demographic changes; - patterns of the transfer of material wealth between generations (inheritance); - the effect of parents; - broken marriages and ‘postmodern’ family structures; - the interactions between siblings’ trajectories; - changes in social relationships over time; - collective memories.

EDUCATIONAL AUTO/BIOGRAPHIES. RESEARCHING AND DOCUMENTING FAMILY CONTEXTS (GUIDELINES) (Gonzalez Monteagudo, 2006) • a) home considered as a physical space; • b) attribution of meaning to spaces and places of home; • c) narratives on daily objects of home; • d) structure of family communication and interpersonal relationships; • e) family emotional world and attitudes toward feelings; • f) analysis of use of time by the different members of family, as well its evolution during the life span; • g) symbolic and spiritual universe prevalent in the family; • h) leadership, power and management of conflicts; • i) family transformations and changes in function of social and cultural evolution; • j) perspectives on future and open questions for working.

ANALYSING DATA. • -Reading and re-reading of data (transcripts of interviews, field notes, diaries, visual data, other written data, questionaries). • -Relating data to research objectives. • -Relating data to the literature review (key disciplinary concepts). • -Relating data to the literature review (previous researches undertaken on similar or related themes). • -Relating data to social, economic, cultural and institutional settings. • -Comparing and establishing differences. • -Constructing typologies, patterns, categories.

COMPARING MAIN STRUCTURAL FACTORS IN SOCIETY AND CULTURE • -Time (age, generations, different historical moments, social change, modernization processes). • -Settings (family, school, media, group of pairs, religious settings, workplace, leisure, associations). • -Social classes and SES. • -Cultural and ethnic frameworks. • -Gender. • -Combining and crossing main structural factors (ex. , males, young, unemployed, etc). • -Relating individual careers, family settings, local communities, and broader social and cultural contexts (Micro, meso and macro levels).

LOCATING DATA IN SOCIAL AN CULTURAL CONTEXTS. BEYOND INDIVIDUAL AND SINGLE LIFE STORIES • • • Different national, regional, local, cultural, social and institutional contexts have some general traits which can help to situate our data. Some of these traits are: Contemporary and recent history. Features and backgrounds of the prevailing political system. Shared values, norms and beliefs. Ideologies. Use of time, including its implications in relation to yearly cycles of holidays, work, timetables. Styles, traditions and socially legitimated ways of socialization, education and family values (about children, young, adults and elderly). Self-perception of society and groups; stories, narratives, myths, which have been legitimated in different ways. Traditions, feasts and celebrations. Policy, laws and rules. Power structures. Leadership styles. Social, economic and cultural profile of the local communities in which are located our participants or our field. Groups and associations active in the social arena: political parties, trade unions, religious groups, media. Companies, labour market and the private economic sector.

CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES • The critical approach stems from the Marxism and the Frankfurt school. • The focus is placed in concepts such as totality, consciousness, alienation, ideology and critic. • An important goal of this approach is to explicit activities and processes which are usually taken for granted. • The critical perspective pays special attention to power relations and to inequalities as a result of the institutional functioning. • Strong interest towards conflicts and strategies of resistance and empowerment by groups and individuals.

WRITING AND REPRESENTATION “Writing is the dark secret of social science” (Plummer, 2001).

TEXTUAL PRACTICES • “Ethnographers, like many contemporary scholars, have become increasingly preoccupied with the nature and consequences of their textual practices” (Atkinson, 1992). • There is more self-consciousness about the function of representation and written text. • Hermeneutics, Poststructuralism, Feminism and Postmodernism.

WRITING AS A NEUTRAL TOOL • From an objectivist and positivist viewpoint, writing is a neutral, impersonal instrument used to present or display the research findings and conclusions. Writing is not a problem. Language ‘represents’ reality. Logical empiricism has showed a strong interest toward language and linguistic clarification. In this context, science has been understood as a rigorous language, a system of true empirical propositions (Physicalism, Neurath, 1932).

CRISIS OF REPRESENTATION • G. Marcus and M. Fischer coined the expression crisis of representation “to refer specifically to the uncertainty within the human sciences about adequate means of describing social reality” (Schwandt, 2001). • This new intellectual sensibility shares the main traits of postmodern perspective: “… a radical questioning of the certainty and authority of scholarly text; a rejection of the search for ‘truth’ and reason as absolutes; a denial of the intellectual and moral distance between the academic and his/her human ‘subjects’; a suspicion of the ‘big’ narratives of totalizing theory (historical, Marxist, sociological)” (Atkinson, 1992).

SELF AND IDENTITY • The questions concerning the self and personal identity have been usually hidden in ethnography and even in auto/biographical research. In the fieldwork, the researcher constructs and reconstrucuts her or his self, his or her personal and professional identity. • Nevertheless, “social science –writes sociologist Susan Krieger- is premised on minimizing the self, viewing as a contaminant, transcending it, denying it, protecting its vulnerability… we paint pictures in which we hope not to exist; or if we exist, … are subordinate or nearly invisible” (S. Krieger, as cited in Plummer, 2001).

READERSHIP AND AUDIENCES • • • Potential audience or readership of research writing (Yin, 1984; Miles & Huberman, 1994; Marcus & Cushman, 1996): -Participants, storytellers, narrators, local respondents. -Colleagues in the same field and other researchers. -Readers oriented to the action (polcymakers, program operators, civil servants, practitioners, community leaders, educators, social workers, and other professionals). -Students. -Institutions and funders of research. -General and mass readers.

EFFECTS OF WRITING ON READERS • We need more reflection on effects of writing on readers and on the way the reader is changed as a result of the writing activity. • It seems correct to think that “the narrative is therapeutic no only for the teller but also for the audience” (Atkinson & Silverman, as cited in Coffey, 1999).

AUDIENCES • It is necessary to enlarge the audience of qualitative research by creating more open and democratic texts. • In some academic settings, obscurity is priced over clarity. • Popularization and democratization of social science would be a good thing, even if it is interpreted as a product of “mindless” and “journalists” without enough “theoretical sophistication” (Richardson, 1990). • Potential problems in relation to RAE (Plummer, 2001).

WRITING (STRATEGIES, TEACHING) • • • We need a deep exploration of writing epistemology and pedagogy (Van Manen, 1990). Richardson considers “… writing as a method of inquiry, a way of finding out about yourself and your topic” (Richardson, 2000) and offers us some advices to develop experimental or alternative ethnography, under the name of creative analytic practice ethnography, such as: (a) join or start a writing group; (b) work through a creative writing guide-book; (c) enroll in a creative writing workshop or class; (d) keep a journal; (e) write a writing autobiography; (f) transform your field data or transcriptions of interviews in a drama or a poetic representation; (g) experiment with narratives of the self; (h) try writing a text using different type-faces, font sizes and textual placements; write your data in three different ways (narrative account, poetic representation, drama); (i) practice collaborative writing; (j) memory work (Richardson, 2000).

TEACHING ON WRITING • We need more teaching on writing and more activities to foster a positive attitude toward personal and professional writing in teacher training, professional learning, workplace, learning of research (for example, in Ph. D and master programmes).

Thanks… • Comments / questions? • Personal or professional experiences?