Abstract

DURAN NARVAEZ, Norma Constanza; LASTRA RAMIREZ, Sandra Patricia  and  MORALES VASCO, Adriana María. Autobiographies: A Way to Explore Student-Teachers' Beliefs in a Teacher Education Program. profile [online]. 2013, vol.15, n.2, pp.35-47. ISSN 1657-0790.

Autobiographies depict with words life stories, personal experiences, and perceptions that allow researchers to deeply understand the way people see life, reflect, and construct meaning out of experiences. This article aims at describing the contributions of autobiographies as valuable resources in qualitative research when exploring people's beliefs, personal knowledge, and changes as a result of experience and learning. This is all based on a research project carried out at a Colombian public university, where students from the undergraduate English teaching program wrote their language learning stories which were used as an instrument to garner data. The project also aims at demonstrating how these narratives exhibit human activity and diverse events that may have a significant effect on the epistemologies and methodologies of teacher education.

Keywords : Autobiographical narratives; qualitative research; students' beliefs; teacher education.

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