Locating self at the centre of learning: Theory, practice and the lived experience.

Abstract

One o-going challenge for those teaching in higher education is to engage students in learning activities that are deemed meaningful and professionally relevant. Acknowledging this challenge, students in undergraduate and graduate papers at The University of Waikato have been introduced to using stories to analyse a range of satisfying and dissatisfying experiences. This process requires students to analyse and interpret the social construction of a lived experience through self and collective reflection of written memories. This paper comments on the process of having students connect between their everyday life and university study, provides a background to the memory-work methodology, and discusses how students can apply and respond to using this theoretical framework to acquire knowledge relevant to professional practice in the workplace.