Relocating the Personal

A rich array of interesting ways to teach personal writing critically and in settings where it has typically been excluded.Addressing the current and growing interest in the personal, the self, and the autobiographical not only in the teaching of writing, but also across many disciplinary and subject fields, Relocating the Personal describes a rich array of practical approaches to teaching the personal in settings where it has been excluded.The author argues for the teaching of writing as a political project in schools and communities, and for a notion of the personal which is not simply equated with voice. The construct of narrative is preferred, because it allows teachers to examine all personal writing as a representation and not the same thing as the writer's life. Strategies are developed for examining how experience is portrayed and how it might be written differently, with material effects on both the personal text and the writer's person.>Barbara Kamler is Associate Professor of Education at Deakin University in Burwood, Australia. She is the editor of Constructing Gender and Difference: Critical Research Perspectives on Early Childhood.