Learning from Our Lives: Women, Research, and Autobiography in Education.

Learning from our lives: Women, research, and autobiography in education. Eds. A. Neumann and P.L. Peterson 1997 ISBN 0-8077-3593-0 New York: Teachers College Press 261 pp

Neumann and Peterson stated the main objective of their book, Learning from Our Lives: Women, Research, and Autobiography in Education, was to describe the lives and roles of women doing educational research. They achieve this goal as editors by seeking contributions from 11 women (including themselves) actively involved in educational research. The essence of the assignment to each contributor was to write of her experiences as a researcher, beginning with early life experiences seen as related to later life, educational experiences, especially at the graduate school level, professional experiences, and personal experiences. In addition to describing the various experiences, they were to reflect on them and how they contributed to the making of the person they are now.

Readers may well find themselves becoming qualitative researchers as they begin to identify the many similar patterns emerging from these autobiographical recollections, as well as some distinct differences. One major theme echoed throughout the writing is that of relationship or connectedness in many manifestations. The most prominent of these is the strong relationship between authors' personal and professional lives. Certainly for many of the authors, their ethnic and cultural backgrounds were important factors in who they became as researchers. Also discussed are the importance of mentor relationships, especially in graduate school, parental and familial relationships in both positive and negative ways, collegial relationships (again both positive and negative), and relationships with the subjects of their research. Another important theme revealed in this book was that of the importance and power of education and the realization of a personal empowerment as a result of education and learning. Education allowed these women to progress as professionals and at the same time often helped them to become advocates for their subjects as well. Within this theme, some wrote of the struggle to achieve approval in both personal and professional lives. This particular theme was poignantly reflected as a very lonely struggle for some of the researchers. Some authors spoke of the influence of chance on their lives and of not having set goals; they sometimes took a rather circuitous route to their ultimate achievements.

Throughout the book, however, perhaps the overriding theme was one of passion. Each woman, for whatever reason or for whatever influence, was passionate about her research. Each woman was creating what Maxine Greene labeled "alternate realities." Concha Delgado-Gaitan describes this effort as trying to create a balance between the known and the unknown to create a new reality, what she calls "borderlands." Each woman was bringing new information to light through her research and adding to or helping to shift previously constructed paradigms related to education and learning. And after all, isn't this what research is to be about? For women as researchers, it would seem we really do learn from our lives and "... scholarship often stands (at least in part) as a statement of personal identity" (Neumann in Neumann and Peterson, 1997, p. 110).

This book will be especially appreciated by we who are researchers and college or university professionals, especially perhaps those in early stages of their careers. Our struggles, and our ultimate successes are shared. It will also be a good resource to graduate students just beginning to pursue their research agendas. The sections on early educational experiences will also be insightful to gifted girls, helping them to see they are not alone in their struggles with seeming conflicts between who they are intellectually and as potential professionals and who they are emotionally or more as individual young women. The book is one more good contribution to the long line of literature on women in general, and specifically women's progress and contributions in education.

Reviewed by Carol Story, Associate Professor at Johnson State College, Vermont, and a Contributing Editor of the Roeper Review.