Talking about one's "personal experiences" in classroom discussions

[marvel2375]

Hi everyone,

Now that the spring semester at my grad school has begun, I can't help but notice that for several of the anthropology courses that I'm registered for, professors have been explicit about not wanting students to talk about "personal experiences" in classroom discussions. I am wondering how other graduate students and/or faculty, especially those with a background in anthropology/qualitative research feel about this practice? This announcement caught me off guard as I'm used to professors who encourage students to "connect the readings to one's personal life" whenever response papers are assigned. I am also a proponent of authoethnographies, so I have mixed feelings about this. I talked to a couple of students who were in favor of this policy as they were getting annoyed by students who would come in to class having not done the readings and would "derail" the discussions in class. However, could this really explain my department's new classroom participation expectation? I should note that this isn't my first semester at this school.

I am curious to hear other people's thoughts on this topic!

[GreenEyedTrombonist]

The problem may be the difference between ethnographic and anecdotal evidence. Your professors may be trying to help students make the shift to thinking as qualitative researchers. I've had someone in my anthro MA who used anecdotal evidence to make broad generalizations that really weren't applicable. This student ultimately ended up dropping from the program after a semester because they didn't take qualitative (or quantitative) data that contradicted their anecdotal evidence seriously (leading to issues with faculty and low grades on papers from not properly supporting their arguments). 

[kittyball]

I think @GreenEyedTrombonist has a very important point. Those who make broad generalizations with often just one story are annoying! And in this case and in the case you mentioned, that some students don't do readings and only talk about themselves have something in common, that is students in both cases are not learning new things, only pouring out what they already have. Perhaps if we raise the threshold of the discussion, talk more about theories, this type of students would back off because it's more difficult to talk about something you don't know what it is. Anyway, it's just my quick guess on the practical level.

But to answer your question directly, whether talking about personal experience is a bad thing itself, I certainly don't think so.

Personal experience essentially makes who we are. Or we perceive the world through personal experience. And in fact, doing ethnographic work is technically personal experience as well. I know a very successful professor who couldn't be stopped talking about his personal experience(I tried. Because he changed the subjects too quickly before they were fully discussed.It was like whack a mole!), and he once said, we are the instruments of understanding the world(something like that, sorry I don't remember the object of the sentence, I just remember "instruments"). So in that sense, connect readings to one's personal life is an excellent and engaging way to study anthropology.

Of course, personal experience could be misinterpreted or wrongly used, ets., which tends to happen a lot, and it could get very annoying. But that's really not the right reason to give up on that perspective. I believe the better we connect our own experience to readings, the better anthropologists we would be.

 

Edited January 20, 2018 by kittyball
typo

[bananabear]

It makes me wonder why some schools ask for a 'diversity statement' and how one's unique background could contribute to the richness of discussion in the classroom/community. if drawing on personal experience is frowned upon, why ask that? 

Edited February 5, 2018 by bananabear

[hats]

This is the first I have heard of such a policy, but I can see the sense in it. If professors encourage students to limit their discussion of personal experience, that seems sensible. Like you said, your program has seen a history of personal experiences derailing class from the readings! At least in my program, about a third of the first years and about one second year will usually not have done serious ethnography yet. Holding space for those students to contribute is important. But while limits on the monopolization make sense, a ban totally does not. Does this apply to every class? My first year core social theory class never really got into people's ethnographic experiences, which was fine and appropriate, but for some of the more topical classes, talking about your own research is part of the point. If it's across many classes, the difference between ethnography and anecdotes may be what they want to get at. If it really is a ban on ethnography (not anecdotes) in the majority of your classes...I can only say, 'yikes.' But perhaps there could still be a rationale I haven't considered. Have you asked your professors or older students about this?

[marvel2375]

On 2/4/2018 at 8:14 PM, hats said:

This is the first I have heard of such a policy, but I can see the sense in it. If professors encourage students to limit their discussion of personal experience, that seems sensible. Like you said, your program has seen a history of personal experiences derailing class from the readings! At least in my program, about a third of the first years and about one second year will usually not have done serious ethnography yet. Holding space for those students to contribute is important. But while limits on the monopolization make sense, a ban totally does not. Does this apply to every class? My first year core social theory class never really got into people's ethnographic experiences, which was fine and appropriate, but for some of the more topical classes, talking about your own research is part of the point. If it's across many classes, the difference between ethnography and anecdotes may be what they want to get at. If it really is a ban on ethnography (not anecdotes) in the majority of your classes...I can only say, 'yikes.' But perhaps there could still be a rationale I haven't considered. Have you asked your professors or older students about this?

I should clarify. It's not an "official" policy or written on the classes' syllabi or anything like that. It was more of "this is what classroom participation should look like" announcement that was given at the beginning of almost every class during the first week of the semester. Those students who I talked to about this also added that they were getting annoyed with students who would make comments along the lines of, "As I am a member of group X, that makes me an expert on this topic". So, I am not really sure if this is a backlash against identity politics or something else.

[~Mufasa~]

Obviously we can't really get into the professor's head here, but in my own experience, I have found that sometimes students use personal anecdotes as a way to talk 'around' the texts. It's unclear whether they really understand the assigned readings or even read it carefully, because it's fairly easy to extrapolate a broad theoretical idea (even just reading an online summary) to a personal story. It usually depends upon the individual students, but I do sometimes get frustrated with how derailed a class can get when people, rather than talking about the text or relating it to other texts, relate it to their own research. Further, having not done my own ethnographic research yet, it's hard to contribute if everyone is talking about their fieldwork.

I think relating to personal experiences and research has its place. But that place is probably after we have walked through the text, make sure we understand it in depth and have identified some strengths and problematics.