Learning from Our Lifes: Auto/biographical Narrative Enquiry: Dr. Linden West

This workshop introduces auto/biographical narrative research as a form of in-depth qualitative enquiry-and illustrates its power to illuminate complex processes of adults and lifelong learning, including our own. The focus of the day is on three overlapping stages in research: first generating rich and thick narratives from diverse students and, second, how to analyze and theories them, in empathic, reflexive and rigorous way. Third, how such material can then be refined and re-presented in written form, as case studies, published articles, and even books. The workshop provides the background to this form of research, alongside experiential work on interviewing learners and interpreting the stories they tell. Participants will have an opportunity to interview and be interviewed as well as to work with others on making sense of narrative material.

Co-sponsored by: Office of the Associate Dean for Research, College of Education

Dr. Linden West is Professor of Education at Canterbury Christ Church University and a Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of the Arts. He has been Visiting Professor at the University of Milano-Bicohcca and at the University de Paris Nanterre. He also works as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist. he has been an historian of popular and workers education while his main contemporary interest in applying auto/biographical and narrative enquiry, and interdisciplinary psychosocial perspectives, to diverse educational, social, cultural, political and psychological phenomena. His new book, written with Laura Ferment. “Transforming Perspectives in Lifelong Learning and Adult Education: A Dialogue,” focuses on building dialogue across difference as well as on the conditions which nurture or constrain transformation and transformative learning.