A study addressed two challenges in American teacher education: (1) the differences in background between a largely Euro-American teaching force and the diverse pupils it serves; and (2) the difficulty of teaching about literacy and culture in responsive ways. Working with a group of teachers, the study used ethnic autobiographies, written by…

A good English teacher is one who draws from his students stories that reveal the unique dignity of their personalities and the unique coloring of their experiences. The author shows how this is done, emphasizing use of student writing models as motivation, and stressing sensory diction. (Author/JB)

The efforts of a teacher to create a learning environment conducive to the intellectual growth of every student in his class. (IR)

The author, California's Secretary of State, reviews her own advancement as a Chinese-American woman, noting education as the key factor. She considers the remaining task of changing traditional social habits and urges women to become involved in government. Part of a theme issue on women and leadership. (SJL)

An indigenous Peruvian sociologist of the Arakmbut people describes his educational experiences, including Harakmbut education for survival in the Peruvian rainforest, primary education in a village school with a national "Spanified" curriculum, scholarships that enabled an academic secondary and higher education outside the rainforest,…

Explores how gender reform was formulated in education policy documents during the transition to democracy in South Africa. Examines the autobiographies of men and women in South Africa. Investigates the connections between these autobiographies and policy documents that focus on gender reform during this period. (CMK)

Four devalued, largely missing areas of teacher education should be reconsidered in reconstructing curriculum for teacher education: autobiography, inquiry, reflection, and critique. Preliminary results are discussed from a study of a year-long experimental teacher education program which incorporated these four components. (IAH)

This paper argues that faculty career studies have neglected important work in life-span human development and narratives of the academic life. It suggests that such studies should use recent contributions from the behavioral sciences, pay attention to scholarly and scientific biography/autobiography, be discipline specific, and use varied methods…

Describes an activity in which fifth-grade students researched the lives of famous mathematicians, wrote autobiographies, and constructed a life line for each. (11 references) (MKR)

The well-known "Up from Slavery" is actually Booker T. Washington's second attempt at an autobiography. The earlier work, "The Story of My Life and Work," was written primarily for African Americans and published in a ghostwritten and poorly produced edition in 1900. The two versions are compared. (SLD)

Advocates the value and importance of asking prospective teachers to tell autobiographical stories about their teaching experiences. Describes in detail the story of one prospective English teacher's journey from recent graduate to professional teacher and her initiation into the English teaching discourse community. (HB)

Describes the experiences of the participants in a graduate course called "Research in Written Composition" that nurtured the exchange of writing among teacher and students. Narrates the experience of one student and the instructor as a record of an empowering relationship and presents numerous excerpts of their journal writing. (HB)

Describes a high-school course called "Autobiography" that discusses nonfiction and gender. Describes how students write their autobiographies piecemeal while reading and discussing a partly autobiographical work of fiction, and how the course eventually centers around identifying biases of different sorts in one's own and in others' writing.…

A junior high school teacher shares the story of a childhood dominated by poverty, family alcoholism, sexual and physical victimization, and haphazard school attendance. Surviving these traumatic experiences (and a teen pregnancy) was not easy. This teacher's background enables her to unearth covering-up strategies used by children trying to…

Scrutinizes the author's response to a seemingly stereotypical male narrative written by a student fitting the disruptive macho male stereotype. Examines how teachers respond to stereotypical male narratives of conquest and individualist triumph, and whether their responses to such essays are not conditioned by their responses to the authors. (TB)