The Personal is Pedagogical? Using lived experience and displaying vulnerability in teaching settings (original) (raw)

Greenwood, Sharon ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4143-4430(2021) The Personal is Pedagogical? Using lived experience and displaying vulnerability in teaching settings. BSA Alcohol Studies Group Virtual Workshop: 'Thinking critically about lived experience of alcohol in social science research and teaching’, Online, 15 Sept 2021.

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Abstract

This paper reflects on the potential for using lived experience within teaching settings. My PhD (2013-18) examined the impact of parental substance use on young adults – driven by my personal experience of maternal bereavement, aged 22. During my PhD, I was frequently ‘warned’ about the ‘dangers of disclosure’ to participants, readers, and potential colleagues. This view felt at odds with my underlying values as a feminist researcher: why are accounts of our personal lives and connections we have to a topic viewed as ‘unscholarly’ within academia? I found this critique to be ubiquitous in educational spaces: to what extent do we expose our personal histories in our teaching? In 2019, I started a teaching-track lectureship, where my research focus switched to consider my practice, rather than wider social phenomena. Reflecting my approach to research, my pedagogical approach draws from wider feminist principles of relational thinking, empowerment, and of diverse ways of ‘knowing’. This paper discusses how I grappled with this tension, advocating for a more integrated, explicit discussion of one’s relationship to the topic. I argue we present a stronger understanding of the ‘personal is political’ through reclamation of one’s personal history and position – in this case, in educational spaces.

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