Abstract
Listening to Our Audiences at Home and Throughout the Country
FOR YEARS, WE HAVE HEARD THE PLEAS OF STUDENTS, administrators, staff, and faculty to be able to write more personally—for publication, course assignments, theses, and dissertations. We have heard educators throughout the United States talk about the value of personal narrative writing as a way to take a different in-depth look at an experience, a social condition, and other profession-related phenomena. The approach that our colleagues want is what we call “me-search”—bringing the “me” into the research. Our intent in this article is to demonstrate how taking a vigorous approach to this “me-search” can positively shift what is perceived of as “knowing” in higher education. While we use an example from student affairs to illustrate how this “me-search” process can combine with traditional research to broaden the understanding of knowing, we are convinced that it applies across contexts, from undergraduate classroom to administrative boardroom.
Educators are hungry for this change. For example, at a recent national pre-conference workshop for ACPA, we heard the following comments from our attendees:
From a residence director: “Just once I'd like to tell my personal story—in a publication—of what it was like for me to live in a residence hall when I first started college. I was scared, completely cut off from my family for the first time, and paired up with a roommate with whom I had nothing in common. I think my story would really help resident advisors whom I supervise, and elsewhere, to understand what many first-time residents think and feel about this anxiety-producing experience, and why some first-year residents adopt so many self-destructive behaviors in order to cope.”
From a judicial affairs administrator: “It seems that most of the decisions I make in my job are ethical decisions, and yet I've had no formal training to do this. I'd love to write a dissertation in my doctoral program that describes the highs and lows of my personal experiences with cheating students and angry faculty through the years. I'd also enjoy doing the scholarly analysis and informed policy recommendations that are expected of me. However, my advisor won't allow me to combine personal narrative writing with formal analytical writing. He thinks that this type of mixed-methodology research project would be too ‘subjective,’ too ‘non-empirical.’ Isn't there a way to partner what you call ‘me-search’ to conventional notions of so-called rigorous ‘research’?”
From an ALANA [African American, Latino/a American, Asian American & Native American] administrator: “Some of the best training I've ever received in working with students of color in my office comes from my experience with StoryCorps, the creation of David Isay. StoryCorps is built on a few basic assumptions: Evoke the personal stories of the persons who come into your office. Let your students know that their lives matter, and that they will be remembered. And, most of all, know that genuine listening is always an act of love. I now start my meetings with students by asking them questions that exhibit my desire to listen to their stories in order to better understand who they are. The more I work with the StoryCorps idea, the more I wonder why I was never encouraged to do this type of writing in my master's and doctoral programs in higher education administration. Learning how to do this type of StoryCorps ‘writing’ would have made me a far better listener. Come to think of it: Why can't writing be an act of love like listening?”
From a tenure-track faculty member in a student affairs program: “I've got two young children to take care of, and a relationship to nurture with my partner who's also an academician; and yet the professional demands on my time, and hers, are unbelievably grueling. Will I eventually have to make a choice between my personal life and my professional career, especially because getting tenure and promotion in my department depend on published research in technical journals and a successful record of securing outside grant money? All of this just isn't fair. If I'm always worrying about one-half of my life while I'm away servicing the needs of the other half, am I really doing justice to either? Wow, would I love to write in a down-to-earth, honest way about this issue in my life! I am sure of one thing though: After I get tenure, I don't intend to publish one more piece of coerced research in order to win the favor of faculty evaluation committees at this university. From that point on, I will write only about what truly fuels my fire about being a faculty member who works closely with student affairs leaders.”
A Brief Guide for Writing Spn Manuscripts
MANY EDUCATORS WHOM WE BOTH RESPECT and admire raise the following types of questions: How can personal narrative writing ever be considered real scholarship? What on earth can personal narrative writing contribute to the important day-to-day work that student educators do? In what ways can this type of writing earn academic cachet from campus colleagues who are rooted in traditional research?
Please understand that we are not critiquing traditional research formats in the field. We are methodological pluralists, embracing all research methodologies and respecting their contributions to education. We believe that each research approach serves a justifiable purpose in terms of an academic discipline's unique body of knowledge, respected scholarly traditions, field-tested standards of inquiry, and intended outcomes. Rather, we want to honor the needs of those faculty, administrators, and students who desire to ground their observations equally in their own subjective experiences as well as in the “objective” research of the experts.
These people want to engage in both me-search and research. Some want to start from the “outside” of examining a problem (research) but end up on the “inside” by exploring the personal implications of their findings (me-search), while others desire to start from the “inside” and go to the “outside.” The craving to combine me-search and research has turned into a hunger. We encounter hundreds of educators each year who are starving for alternative ways to produce well-respected scholarship. During the last several years, we have advocated for Scholarly Personal Narrative (SPN) throughout the country in order to satisfy this hunger.
Scholarly Personal Narrative writing is Robert's original creation. DeMethra has helped Robert to further develop the genre in a number of collaborations. SPN is composed of four components: pre-search, me-search, research, and we-search. Pre-search is the act of choosing, and narrowing down, the topic and themes to be written about; me-search places the writer's personal narrative front and center in the manuscript; research involves casting the pre-search net into the pool of experts and scholars and seeing what catches; and we-search explores universalizable implications for practitioners and scholars along with further possibilities for study.
Scholarly Personal Narrative writing is similar to the following research genres but not co-identical with any one of them—narrative research, auto-ethnography, phenomenology, and self-authorship. Similar to these methodologies, SPN is ethnographi-cally self-interrogating; it starts with the writer's life rather than with the lives and research of others; it uses the author's personal story to test out a hypothesis; and it functions as a way for writers to author themselves by exploring an abiding concern that seriously interests them from a developmental perspective.
While SPN is akin to the research methods listed earlier, it also stands alone in the following ways:
The researcher's “I” voice is distinct, sometimes candid, and unique throughout the manuscript. It is the personal voice as well as the trained scholar/researcher's voice.
The primary intention of an SPN manuscript is to convey a clear sense of the major themes/principles/beliefs running throughout the manuscript.
The author's stories illustrate, and serve as a personal backdrop for, the presentation, and meaning, of all the collected data.
SPN writing starts with the me, reaches out to the you, and ends up with universalizable/ generalizable themes that connect with the larger we.
SPN writing takes creative risks and departs, at least some of the time, from the more conventional research writing formulas, rubrics, and templates. The guiding framework in SPN writing is always based on these questions: What? So what? Now what?
SPN writing emphasizes that a personal story is worth telling, particularly when it illustrates a thematic point worth sharing with readers.
SPN writing strives for both creative vigor and intellectual rigor.
It's all about the Stories
We present here an email to Robert, sent recently by a tenure-track faculty member of color, Stephen John Quaye, who teaches courses in race, social class, student learning, qualitative research, and ethnic diversity at the University of Maryland. Stephen had just finished reading Robert's 2004 book Liberating Scholarly Writing: The Power of Personal Narrative. Following these excerpts, we share a letter in response to Stephen that we hope our readers might find helpful as they strive further to understand the meaning of SPN writing. In its own right, we consider Stephen's letter to be a very effective, albeit brief, example of SPN writing.
Dear Robert,
Thank you for your insight that the work of the professoriate is “all about the stories,” as much as it is “all about the scholarship.” I am left to wonder, however, why it is that some people's stories get heard, privileged, and become mainstream, while others struggle to get their narratives heard, are silenced, and even marginalized—all in the name of academic “rigor.” Words and stories connote meanings, which have differing interpretations given the lens, background, and identity of the listener or reader. Consider, for example, a snippet of my own story as a faculty member. In my role as “junior professor,” certain corresponding and subtle meanings are implied by the use of “junior”—inexperienced, early, opposite of senior, lacking, needing help, having child-like tendencies, not ready yet, or still emerging. Yet, this is one version of a story that emerges with the use of a seemingly empty word.
An alternative narrative is the following: In comparison to most of the general public, my status as “junior professor” is a uniquely privileged position wherein my voice and career hold status, importance, and meaning. These polar stories create a perplexing situation where I feel simultaneously marginal and powerful—a sense of in-betweenness where I struggle to negotiate multiple identities. I tell my stories daily—when I am teaching, in advising meetings with students, in my writing to academic journals, in my conversations with my colleagues, in my processing through my journaling, and in my frivolous and meaningful Facebook postings. The point is that stories have an audience—those with a larger audience gain a sense of meaning about their voice, status, and identity. Those with a smaller audience gain meaning about their marginality, lack of status, and identity. However, writers usually do not have the privilege of knowing the size of their audiences.
I've found that my writing works best for others when they see me represented in my words and are able to find themselves in what I write as well. My contention is that in order for that seeing to occur, my readers need to know who I am, my values, my fears, my vulnerabilities, my insecurities, my passions, my lingering questions, and my longing desire to achieve success in my own way within academia. Scholarly personal narratives invite those possibilities.
I think deeply and often about writing, voice, narratives, and how best to convey one's ideas in print. My best thinking on these matters at the moment (with the permission to alter my views as my thinking becomes more complex) is that my voice is always present in whatever I write; my voice just looks and “sounds” different. So, even though I privilege scholarly personal narrative-type of writing (me-search) because of the manner in which I am drawn to personal stories, risky tales, and compelling narratives that challenge oppression, conventional standards, and hegemonic positions, I also know my academic voice is important given my position as an assistant professor. And the academic voice, for me, is the more difficult voice to develop and utilize. This voice does not come as naturally as my narrative voice, but, yet, each of these voices has its place, purpose, and time. So, for the time being, I am working to develop multiple voices so that I can engage with, and learn with and from, different people across various contexts. More importantly, I am trying to find ways to merge my narrative voice with my Academic voice. Thank you for the reinforcement (the sustaining “food for my soul”) that I get from your writing about what you call “SPN.”
Sincerely, Stephen
Dear Stephen,
We appreciate your letter, as teachers, practitioners, and authors. You have captured effectively the intent of Scholarly Personal Narrative writing. When done well, SPN combines scholarship, personal stories, and universalizable themes and insights in a seamless manner. Either wittingly or unwittingly, you've done this in your letter. And, of course, we also understand that, as a “junior” faculty member, you must be responsive to the research conventions of your scholarly discipline whenever you publish. Tenure, promotion, and other traditional faculty “rewards” depend on how well you follow these conventions in your research and publications.
However, as you also point out, whenever you write as a scholar, there needs to be a way for you to freely express the resonant sounds of your own personal voice, and to proudly tell your own stories of meaning. These are who and what you are, and you refuse to abdicate these essential dimensions of yourself Why, you intimate, do you need to conceal or deny the diverse identities that make up the self in your published writing? Why can't your storied voice, and your multiple social identities, ring out loud and clear throughout your research? By the way, these are also the questions that come up again and again in our student affairs classes.
What our SPN students through the years all have in common, despite their many salient differences, is the similar conviction that you express, Stephen. Our students want permission to write about their lives in their own voices; moreover, they want to include all aspects of their identities, as well as express all their multiple intelligences and perspectives, in their writing.
And, so, in order to prepare our students for Scholarly Personal Narrative writing, we ask them to try to take a position on something with strong conviction and by displaying palpable affect in their language. We give them permission to allow their authorial voices to be clear, distinct, and strong, and, above all, personal. We tell them to resist the conventional academic temptation to be “objective”: stoical, qualified, subdued, abstract, and distant. We fully acknowledge that, at times, it is okay, even desirable, to try to be detached or dispassionate, and, at other times, even scientific and objective. But it is also okay, particularly when writing about topics that are vitally important to them, to be fully engaged and excitable, to be transparent and vulnerable.
Once again, thank you so much, Stephen, for affirming our work on behalf of a different type of scholarly writing—a genre that fully respects the approaches of more traditional research genres, but one that also pushes the boundaries of scholarship by taking some warranted, unorthodox authorial risks whenever possible.
Robert and DeMethra
When Me-Search Meets Research: “Finding My Biological Father”
COINCIDENTALLY, WHILE WRITING THIS ARTICLE, we received the following personal reflection from one of our current graduate students, Vanessa Santos Eugenio, a Filipina-American, who works as a student affairs educator in a major division in our university. Here, in part (and with her permission), is what she said about the value of SPN writing—both personally and professionally. Vanessa weighs in from a graduate student's perspective on the significance of me-search writing for the more formal research she is doing on the topic of US militarization in foreign countries, and the fatherless children that soldiers leave behind. As important, professionally, she sees herself working as an academic advisor with this kind of population in the future.
I was first introduced to the SPN style of writing in 2007 in a human development course on family dynamics. It was the first time in my academic life where I was invited to take a deeply personal experience and write about it for academic credit. Not only was I encouraged to express myself emotionally, but I was also given the opportunity to research it and to universalize it for its possible personal and professional impact on others. I wrote about my initial encounters with my biological father when he found me twenty-two years after my birth in the Philippines. My final me-search writing project was composed of a series of letters. I used this opportunity to process the reasons why my mother and I were abandoned; why I was left fatherless (one of my most salient identities) while growing up in a small, rural Vermont town.
For the very first time, I was given permission by a professor (a former student of Robert's) to write about something that was near and dear to my heart and soul. I was no longer “voiceless” in my writing. I was able to give a personal voice to an identity issue that student affairs scholars have largely ignored—the tragic effects of militarization in Asian countries, and the effects of fatherlessness on daughters and sons—all told from the personal backstory of the raw journey of one “orphan” trying to build a relationship from nothing with an absent father who comes into her life when she becomes an adult.
I am, to this day, continuing my me-search [and] research on this topic. I am finding strength and liberation in my journey, and I am in the process of telling a story of vulnerability, resilience, and transcendence. Without the possibility of recounting my personal connections to my main theme of American militarization in the Philippines, and its lifelong effects on the daughters and sons left behind by military dads, I could not have done the research with any kind of passion or direct involvement. This research and me-search will dovetail very nicely with what I plan to do in my workplace.
Vanessa makes the point very well (as does Stephen) that scholarship is as much a matter of me-search as it is research. In fact, me-search and research serve as the vital connective tissue in an SPN manuscript. In contrast to the decontextualized view of traditional scholarship and data gathering, Vanessa shows how her research is inseparable from her personal story. It is no coincidence that personal narrative writing during the last few decades has found a home in such “connective” disciplines as multicultural studies, women's studies, religious studies, postmodern philosophy and literature, and certain types of composition and rhetoric studies. Many feminists, social justice activists, and postmodern authors feature fresh new types of me-search in order to emphasize the lived life of the writer-scholar as the major source of questions, perspectives, and methods. Moreover, for oppressed people of color throughout the world, personal narrative scholarship has given them long overdue permission to insert their own authentic voices into their writing.
Both Vanessa and Stephen acknowledge their gratitude to me-search SPN writing for giving them back their voices. They both make the case that it is impossible to remove the “me-search” from the “research,” just as it is impossible to remove the “me-search” from the professional work that faculty and student affairs educators do with students in all venues in higher education. Me-search is a highly transferable professional skill. How so? We say: Find the student's story, and you find the heart and soul of the student. This is what we call “me/we-search connectivity,” whether in writing, advising, mentoring, or instructing. Everything starts with forging a human relationship with our readers, and also with our clients, students, advisees, and supervisees. This is the lesson that SPN writers like Stephen and Vanessa continually teach us.
How Scholarly Personal Narrative Writing Can Enrich our Student Personnel Narrative Practice
BOTH OF US ENJOY the guilty pleasure of creating catchy phrases (e.g., “me/we-search connectivity”), as well as collaborating on uniquely original ways to represent our ideas. When authoring this article with the objective of introducing another research genre to further strengthen the voice of student affairs educators in particular, DeMethra noticed that SPN could also stand for Student Personnel Narrative. Among the numerous professional titles we both have on our campus, and within the field of student affairs, one of our most salient identities is that of the student personnel professional. Whether preceded by the words “college” or “student,” the term personnel is present in two of the field's premier organizations (ACPA and NASPA).
In this section, we will show that Scholarly Personal Narrative is a research genre that allows the Student Personnel Narrative to be experienced from the direct personal perspective of the writer/researcher. What follow are a few of the guidelines for Scholarly Personal Narrative writing that we mentioned earlier, and how they might enrich the Student Personnel Narrative. We are convinced that educators, both faculty and staff, can be even more effective as practitioners in their day-to-day work, if they know how to write in the Scholarly Personal Narrative genre. Why? Because the skills necessary for SPN writing are coextensive with the skills needed for practicing the Student Personnel Narrative.
Resist the temptation to be a “me-search self-doubter.” Do not waste time perseverating over the question: “What's so interesting about my puny little life?” We strongly believe that every person's life is a story, and every story has the potential to teach. If you let your me-voice ring loud and clear in your writing and in your professional work with students and colleagues, they will listen! At the deepest levels of human experience, our voices will overlap with others, even though, on the surface, each of us may look, and behave, very differently.
Robert has written at length about how each and every one of us has to confront, and resolve, the same existential enigmas. Each of us must make our own meanings, and shape our own identities, both as individuals and as members of groups. It is our me-voice that speaks with personal candor, courage, and integrity to our audiences. When our me-voice is special and resonant, it will help others to understand, and use, their own me-voices more clearly and more wisely. Isn't this basic to the work educators do with all our constituencies? Isn't our work all about giving students permission to discover, and/ or take back, their voices, and then teaching them how to use these voices to their fullest potential?
Our Student Personnel Narratives are essential to the success of all constituencies in higher education, not to just one professional group. We are the ones who live with our students in residential life, hone leadership skills as academic advisors, hold our students accountable as their supervisors and teachers, and watch them up close as they develop into whole human beings. Much like the comments made by a residence director in one of our training sessions, many educators remember what it was like for them when they were in the same position as the 400-plus residents for whom they are charged with building a safe community. Undoubtedly, personal stories of residential educators, either spoken or written, have informed housing-policy revision and, at times, policy creation. Similarly, the professional narratives of other educators have informed senior leadership of the needs of our students in and outside the classroom, and the importance of meeting these needs in order to produce well-rounded, world citizens.
We all have student and colleague stories, both humorous and serious, that have happened in the “trenches.” These types of stories often endear the reader, or listener, to us and to our field. While serving as the Coordinator for Academic Integrity, DeMethra experienced a variety of emotions, and follow-up interactions, from students who were involved in the judicial process. In this role, DeMethra separated, as best she could, the policy violation from the vital core of who that person was. One day she was in an electronics store and a clerk approached her. The exchange went as follows:
Store Clerk: Hi! Remember me? How can I help you?
DeMethra: I'm sorry but I don't remember you. Are you at UVM?
Store Clerk: Yeah, it's me, Tony, from the cheating thing. We met, and I got an F for cheating. But you were so nice to me, even though I did something wrong. I left feeling okay about who I am as a person and that I made a huge mistake that I'm paying for.
DeMethra: (smiling) I'm glad you had a good learning experience and left with your dignity intact. That is my goal. You are not the sum of one bad choice.
Store Clerk: I'm taking the class again and getting help from a tutor. Thanks again for being so nice to me. Let me know if you need help finding something in the store.
This exchange between DeMethra and Tony illustrates the balance between professionalism and personalism that educators often contend with—upholding university policy, holding students accountable for their actions, and all the while working hard to leave students with their dignity intact. These kinds of narratives remind us, in the day-to-day work that we do, of who we are as human beings. They also draw attention to our primary charge—to help our students realize their best selves in all types of situations, both good and bad. These are also the stories that make for powerful Scholarly Personal Narrative writing.
Let your knowledge of theory and practice shine. Seek out the research behind the phenomena you may be observing in your student populations. These theoretical references can serve practitioners well in board of trustees presentations and in addressing other student affairs educators and academic faculty members. Also, if there is no known theory related to the particular phenomenon you observe with your students, create it! Name it, talk about it, develop it, and add to the theoretical knowledge pool of our field. What you do in your SPN writing as a scholar can be eminently useful to you as an SPN educator-leader on campus. The key, however, is to know how to use research and scholarship to make your case on behalf of students, rather than letting academic methodology and content use you, as so often happens in the world of academe.
Show how you are able to transform what could be grueling work with students, with long unpredictable hours, into rewarding work that encourages the fullest human development of our students and colleagues. We urge the young educators in our courses to be on the lookout for their special niche in the work that they do. Is it a subject matter (e.g., student development or leadership theory) that they want to bring to the attention of their student population? Are they interested in the professional development of colleagues in their specific venue on campus? Are they seeking to create cross-department, or cross-division, partnerships? Whatever it is, we encourage them to be enthusiastic and joyful while doing it.
We challenge you to find the rigor and the vigor in your work and then share this work with others. We caution you that the temptation of professional rigor mortis (rigidity) is ever-present, and it can be kept at bay only with a heightened commitment to be vital in your work. This will be your continuing reminder to create, and sustain, a vigorous, dynamic, student personnel narrative that you can be proud of.
The Student Personnel Narrative is one of the liveliest narratives that circulates on our collegiate campuses. Student affairs professionals have experiences with students, faculty, and other staff members that often fall into the category of “I could not have made that up in my wildest dreams!” Be proud of these real-world narratives and how your unique experiences have shaped your own inner and outer worlds. Don't be afraid to tell your personal/professional stories to others, and what you have learned from them. Show the connections between them and how you have sharpened your ability to prioritize, how you are able to set aside time to take care of yourself, and how you have made new contributions to your field, your students, and your colleagues.
We are extremely hopeful that Scholarly Personal Narrative writing will continue to open the doors for scholarship to infuse the self. Dr. Heewon Chang said it best in the foreword to our most recent book, Me-Search and Re-Search: A Guide for Writing Scholarly Personal Narrative Manuscripts. She stated that SPN “ [has] the boldness to bring ‘self-examination’ into the realm of scholarship … [and] is about self narratives (the ‘me-search’ part) and about scholarly meaning making (the ‘research’ part)” (pp. ix—x). We would add that SPN also has the boldness to allow itself to be used as a tool for improving the work of all educators. What works for the scholar should also work for the practitioner. In this sense, scholars and practitioners partner in a common endeavor.
We finished writing this article a few weeks before the start of a new academic year (2011—2012) and prior to the first meeting with the usual, overflow group of graduate students in our elective SPN writing course. Much of what we have introduced in this article will be the foundation of our weekly course meetings. Thus, it is only right to end this article with the words we will put in the beginning of our SPN course syllabus:
We believe each of you has a unique story to share that will resonate with others. SPN will challenge you to share yourself, make meaning of your experiences, and then present them in such a way that they are clear and can have value for others. Be courageous, be unique, and above all share your Student Personnel Narrative via Scholarly Personal Narrative writing.