Considering (auto)biography in teaching and learning about race and racism in a diverse university

ABSTRACT

The ‘sociological imagination’ – the recognition of the relationship between ‘private troubles’ and ‘public issues’ (Mills [1959] 2000. The Sociological Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 8) – is central to the discipline of sociology. This article reports findings of a 2014 study which investigated students’ views on whether the development of the sociological imagination could be more explicitly embedded in a module on Race and Racisms through an (auto)biographical approach from teachers and the module’s racially diverse students. After reviewing benefits and challenges to an (auto)biographical approach, the article presents findings from a student focus group, concluding that students would welcome (auto)biographical approaches to the topic of race and racism, with the caveat that this is handled sensitively with steps taken to minimise the risk of emotional harm.

KEYWORDS:

• Autobiography
• biography
• race
• sensitive issues

Acknowledgement

Thank you to the students who participated in this research, and to Dr Julian Lamb and Dr Sarah Hayes for their encouragement of the project. Thanks also to two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Demelza Jones http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5985-1972

Notes

1 My use of ‘race’ reflects my understanding of the term as a fictive social construct which nevertheless has tangible impacts in the social world.

2 See: http://www.ethicsguidebook.ac.uk/

3 A more representative sample would have been achieved if all eleven students who were interested in participating had been able to attend. Under other circumstances I would have been more flexible with timings or offered a second focus group to enable wider attendance, but unfortunately the timescale imposed by the PGCert, alongside other research and teaching commitments, meant this was not possible.