Writing the personal as research

Despite exponential growth in the field of narrative inquiry, personal narrative writing by research participants remains a seldom used research method. This article explores what it meant to the author, a former writing instructor, and her participants, adult college students, to use personal narrative writing by research participants as part of a larger qualitative study that examined the impact of college on adult worker education students. The author found that writing the personal was one way for adult students to begin to locate and critically interrogate their educational experiences and begin to revise their understandings of their educational journeys. This article explores the potential of personal narrative writing to engage participants in a research paradigm that moves them towards a more structural understanding of their previous educational failures and a heightened sense of their agency.