Beyond the Edges: Crossing the Boundaries of Identity within Autobiographical Beginnings

Abstract

In this chapter, I explore my autobiographical beginnings as a means of better understanding what brought me to the research I explore throughout this text. As Clandinin and Connelly as well as Clandinin and Caine suggested, examining our own stories along with the stories of our research participants is essential to understand the identity-making process. Autobiographical beginnings within narrative inquiry bring to the surface those factors influencing the researcher’s perspectives, thus locating the researcher within the inquiry as well as within a larger life context. The experience of metaphorically travelling back into the muskeg where I grew up in Northern Saskatchewan and then writing about it shaped the structure of my reflections on this inquiry into identity-making and curriculum making on the edges of community. In this chapter, I refer to the edges of community as a metaphorical space or spaces occupied by people positioned or constructed as marginalized from a dominant norm positioned or constructed as central to a community. I suggest a reframing of our understanding of spaces conventionally referred to as marginalized as well as contend that the notion of marginalization, itself, is a metaphor. In my inquiries into identity-making and curriculum making, I attend to the ways in which people’s positioning within communities is complex and shifting. As this chapter illustrates, our individual identities are multivalent and inextricably intertwined with who we are, who we were, and who we wish to become, whether we are researchers, teachers, or pre-service teachers.

Citation

Clarke, C.L. (2019), "Beyond the Edges: Crossing the Boundaries of Identity within Autobiographical Beginnings", Landscapes, Edges, and Identity-Making (Advances in Research on Teaching, Vol. 33), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 99-118. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-368720190000033009