Liberating Scholarly Writing: The Power of Personal Narrative PDF
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LIBERATING SCHOLARLY WRITING The Power of Personal Narrative LIBERATING SCHOLARLY WRITING The Power of Personal Narrative ROBERT J. NASH Foreword by Carol Witherell Teachers College, Columbia University New York and London Publishers by Teachers College Press, 1234 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027 Copyright 2004 by Teachers College, Columbia University All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, or any information storage and retrieval sys- tem, without permission from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Nash, Robert J. Liberating scholarly writing : the power of personal narrative / Robert J. Nash ; foreword by Carol Witherell. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8077-4526-X (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 0-8077-4525-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. English language—Rhetoric—Study and teaching. 2. Academic writing—Study and teaching. 3. Autobiography— Authorship. I. Title. PE1404.N38 2004 808′.042′0711—dc22 2004042282 ISBN 0-8077-4525-1 (paper) ISBN 0-8077-4526-X (cloth) Printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Foreword by Carol Witherell vii Acknowledgments ix 1. Personal Narrative Writing Matters 1 A Brief Interlude: Richard Rorty—A Philosopher on a Mission 10 A Personal Confession 12 In Conclusion 21 2. What Is Scholarly Personal Narrative Writing? 23 Your Own Life Signifies 23 Hearing the Sound of Your Own Voice 24 Memoirs, Personal Narrative Essays, and Autobiographies 27 Just How Personal Does SPN Writing Have to Be? 30 But Where’s the “Truth” in All of This?: A Quick Primer on Postmodernism 32 But Where’s the Scholarship? 42 Scholarship from a More Personal Angle: To Be a Scholar Is to Be a Lover 46 A Closing Reflection: Ruth Behar—My Ideal Scholar 48 3. Tentative Guidelines for Writing Scholarly Personal Narratives 52 The Three Most Common Fears of Writing Personal Narratives 52 Ten Tentative Guidelines for Writing SPNs 56 A Closing Reflection: Jane Tompkins— An SPN Writer Extraordinaire 70 4. Narratives of Transition and Self-Empowerment 75 Confronting the Chasm 75 Kelly: “A Personal Account of One Athletic Trainer’s Journey through the Lessons of Life, Learning, and Teaching” 76 v vi Contents David: “Embracing Human Suffering—Toward an Emotional Pedagogy” 81 Joe: “A Lost Season—The Nature, Culture, and Prevention of Athletic Team Hazing” 85 Pamela: “Living a Life Beyond Fear—A Narrative Exploration of College Career Counseling and Student Affairs Professional Preparation” 90 Conclusion: Transition and Self-Empowerment 96 5. Narratives of Authenticity and Connection 99 We Profess Who We Are by the Way We Live Our Lives 99 Dave: “Who Am I and What Am I Doing Here?—Postmodern Education that Supports Identity in a ‘Normal’ World” 101 Patti: “Composing a Pedagogy of Mattering—A Scholarly Personal Narrative on What It Means to Matter in Education” 107 Doug: “Reconciling the Life of the Spirit with the Life of an Educational Leader—A Personal Account of 25 Years of Policy Work in the Vermont Department of Education” 112 Lou: “Preparing Holistic Educational Leaders through the Use of Instructional Narrative—A Personal Account of One Principal’s Leadership Persona” 119 Conclusion: Authenticity and Connection 126 Epilogue 128 6. Writing Ourselves as Educators and Scholars: Controversies and Challenges 130 Passion, Resilience, and Faith 130 Ethics: Do We Own Our Own Lives? 131 Truth: Are Facts the Same as Truth? 136 Politics: Why Do Certain Discourses Get Privileged in the Academy? 141 Writing Is Writing: Starting, Sustaining, and Finishing 156 Notes 161 Bibliography 167 Recommended Books on Writing 171 Index 173 About the Author 179 Foreword “We teach who we are,” Parker Palmer reminds us. Throughout my work as a teacher, scholar, and teacher educator, I have found this to be true. Liberating Scholarly Writing stands to have a profound and radical impact on educators, educational researchers, and professionals in coun- seling and human services. Writing from his experience as a teacher in an urban school and a professor of 35 years at the University of Vermont, Nash offers an engaging personal narrative as an educator who has lived by Palmer’s principle. After reading this lively narrative of the life of a gifted teacher and scholar, which includes excerpts from his students’ personal narratives, I find myself enlarging Palmer’s statement: “We teach and learn who we are and who we might become.” Isn’t this dual- ity of teaching and learning, of being and becoming, at the heart of all teaching and learning? I loved reading this book. Nash considers his purpose to be one of gathering and reflecting on the meaning of his life as a teacher, learner, writer, philosopher, husband, and father. And so, as you might imagine, this is a courageous and profoundly honest book. Following in the narra- tive tradition of such scholars such as Ruth Behar, Jerome Bruner, Kieran Egan, Madeleine Grumet, Richard Rorty, and Jane Tompkins, Nash has offered a compelling intellectual and philosophical case for the impor- tance of personal scholarly narrative in academic research and writing. He fully realizes his intent to pose autobiographical narrative as a “counter-narrative” to the faceless, de-contextualized research paradigm that has dominated scholarship in the professional schools for much of the past century. This is an important contribution to our intellectual life at a time when education seems to have lost its way, from the regressive move of K–12 education toward the kind of standardized instruction and testing so characteristic of the 1950s to the isolated disciplinary silos typical of much of higher education today. Both regressions are driven by fear; both need to be transformed into the pursuit of meaning, under- vii viii Foreword standing, reflection, and inquiry that will guide our ethical, compassion- ate uses of our knowledge and skills. What better vehicle for such trans- formation than narrative? Here’s the paradox and the gift of this work: Even as Nash offers cogent examples of scholarly personal narrative (or SPN) as a form of scholarly research that is a radical departure from more traditional re- search designs, he skillfully grounds this approach in methods and truth criteria that draw substantially from social science, science, philosophy, and the humanities, all. Locating himself within the constructivist and postmodern intellectual tradition, Nash explores through his own and his students’ personal narratives the ways that autobiographical writing and story-telling can reveal the meaning that resides and is taking new shape inside us, as well as among us as teachers and learners. Whether reflecting on literature, a classroom event, a research ven- ture, an event in our personal lives, or the tumultuous world we find ourselves in today, we evoke, compose, and live the stories that shape our personal and professional lives and give us meaning. I have long felt that teachers who have this capacity for self-reflection, and who can pass it along to their students through authentic personal narrative within the subjects that they teach, extend a gift of great value. Truly excellent teaching—in any subject, at any level—requires that we be fully present to our students in an inquiring and reflective sense, even as we each strive to make sense of the content before us and of our shaping of our world. The sense-making will come from our ideas, our questions, our creative work, and our shared passion for truth and meaning. Nash’s scholarly personal narrative and those of his students have touched my life as a teacher, a scholar, a writer, an aspiring (and largely self-taught) philosopher, and someone who has always been seized by questions about other people and about the world we live in. No “one-inch picture frame,” this work. Rather, Liberating Scholarly Writing offers a panoramic view of one teacher’s journey, documented in the richest of narratives from his own and his students’ lives and work. It’s a monumental undertaking, so honestly offered, and of great importance for professionals in education and human services and for those who educate them—for those who seek to understand the power of narrative in teaching and learning and in unleashing all that we might become. Carol Witherell, Professor of Education Lewis & Clark College, Portland, Oregon May 2004 Acknowledgments My gratitude to all my students who have taken my Scholarly Personal Narrative (SPN) Writing Seminar is incalculable. I do not say this in any pro forma way. Without them, I just could not have written this book, period. Although I accept full responsibility for everything that I say here, my reason for even thinking about constructing such a text is due exclusively to the inspiration and challenges of my SPN students over the last half-dozen years. Moreover, I am secure enough to acknowledge that many of these students have been far more skilled SPN writers than I. I have learned much from these special, gifted writers, as well as from all the others who, like me, struggled patiently, sometimes despairingly, to construct narratives that were honest, self-disclosing, and scholarly, all at the same time. I especially want to thank the following students for their permis- sion to include extensive samples of their writing in this book: Dave Amsden, Patti Cook, Pamela Gardner, Joe Gervais, Tina Green, Kelly Johnson, Lou Lafasciano, David Moore, and Doug Walker. I also want to express my profound appreciation to the following faculty at my university for their continuing, strong support of SPN scholarship in a professional school: Judith Aiken, Linda Backus, Penny Bishop, Judy Cohen, Rebecca Gajda, Deb Hunter, Bridget Turner Kelly, Cindy Gerstl-Pepin, Ray Proulx, Jen Prue, Betty Rambur, Peg Boyle Sin- gle, and Nancy Welch. Even though all but the last faculty member is a qualitative or quantitative scholar, each of them has kept an open mind and heart concerning the worth of SPN scholarship; but, more than this, each has kept me going during the rough times when I was trying to develop this controversial scholarly research approach for a professional school. I continue to value the personal encouragement of scholars from other universities, including Kathleen Knight Abowitz, Jeni Hart, Mi- chele Moses, Ernie Nalette, Ray Quirolgico, Jonas Soltis, Carney Strange, ix
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