As I was writing this article I came across a fascinating autobiographical blog post which began with the words, 'The more I debate education the more convinced I am that people’s own educational biographies impact their idea(s) [1] I agree with this wisdom but I think we can go much further.As a teacher our own educational and learning experiences and biographical histories hugely impact on our beliefs, values, pedagogical thinking and practices. Who we are and how we have become who we are is the result of the history of experiences we have had and how we have responded to the ever unfolding present, reflected on and tried to make sense of our past and imagined and planned for our uncertain future
 
In the past few weeks I have been thinking about the idea of 'personal pedagogies' the pedagogical knowledge, theory and beliefs we develop over time, from many different sources and experiences that we make our own and draw upon in order to practice as a teacher, facilitator, activist or whatever role requires us to draw upon this resource.
 
One of the things I did was to facilitate a #lthechat on Twitter to explore the idea with people who were interested. The format of Twitter is quite limiting for explanation of complex ideas so I created a picture to stimulate discussion (Figure 1). Pictures are the way I visualise something they enable me to make what I imagine visible and they enable me to engage people and gain their perspectives (feedback) on my ideas. I know from many experiences that this works especially if the picture is incomplete and people can add their own ideas or alternative perspectives.
 
Figure 1 The first version of my personal pedagogies visualisation used in the #lthechat 08/13/17

​Intuitively, I know when confronted with a new teaching situation that I must draw upon this way of thinking and doing but its only when I take the trouble to think about my own history that I can see the origins of my visual thinking and representation lie in my childhood interest in drawing and painting. Its only through reflecting on the things I have done in my life that I can see how this interest has transferred and been used in lots of different roles and how, as new technologies have become available I have used these to improve my ability to communicate. The way I involve myself, and others (I often work with Kiboko Hachiyon an illustrator) in the creation of pictures to help me visualise and explain is a fundamental feature of my pedagogical practice when I try to engage learners and peers in learning processes and so in this way it has become an integral part of my pedagogical practice.
 
I use this illustration to show how, with a bit of effort, we can construct a biography that seeks to make sense of our pedagogical journey and identify the origin of the knowledge, beliefs and values that influence our thinking and practice as a higher education teacher.
 
OPEN INVITATION
If you would like to join our Personal Pedagogies project please join our open conversation between March 27-31 on the #creativeHE Google+ Forum
https://plus.google.com/communities/110898703741307769041
During this conversation you will be encouraged to create and share your own pedagogical narrative.
 
Alternatively, if you would like to create and share your own pedagogical narrative I would be very interested to see it.

References
Mcinerney L (2012) Schooling Biography blog post
https://lauramcinerney.com/2012/11/25/schooling-biography/

Where learning is concerned the present and the past are most definitely connected along a complex trajectory. Our past learning clearly influences how we perceive and act in the present but also what we do in the present can be connected to our past. Over the last few weeks, two incidents in my life have drawn my attention to this principle.
 
Two weeks ago my wife and I spent a very enjoyable evening with some friends swapping life stories and family histories. During the evening our host mentioned that he had written several articles, including some that had been published in the Hindu Times, a prestigious Indian newspaper. He spoke at length about one of these articles, which was concerned with a trip he had made with his family to the place of his birth - Kashmir. His family home had been burnt down in the conflict that emerged in the 1990's and they had fled the country. Even though Kashmir is still quite dangerous he made the journey with his children to show them his country and to see for himself what it was like. I was moved by his story and the next day I found and read his article 'Back to the Valley' and was moved even more by his story. I kept reflecting on what he had said until I realised that he had created an ecology in his present life to revisit and explore his past so that he might, experience and understand more deeply his past and his relationship with it and his family might know him better and appreciate their relationship with his past.

​This week I am fortunate to be on holiday with my wife – in fact the first we have taken without our children. So that is quite a novelty in itself. I found the cheapest deal on-line and it happened to be in Tenerife. As I write this we have just returned from a day trip to Mt Tedei the dormant volcano which dominates the south centre of the island. We took a taxi from outside our hotel and drove an hour into the mountains, through the steep pine clad slopes and clouds and then out into the stunning brightness and our first site of the towering volcano with its classic pyramid shape reaching 3700m.
 
We spent the next four hours driving around the volcano and I was happy as Larry. Why? because just for that few hours I reached back in time to a life I once had and I became a geologist again. By that I mean my interest was engaged like a geologist, I thought like a geologist, I wondered and puzzled like a geologist, I poked around in the rocks and picked rocks up to examine them like a geologist, I saw and observed like a geologist, I speculated on the structures I was seeing, I drew on my knowledge if volcanic geology and my past experiences of seeing volcanic geology to interpret what I was seeing, I tried to make sense of what I saw and tried to explain what I was seeing to my wife (who didn’t know me when I was a geologist and had never seen me in this mode). Actually, she was interested and that encouraged me to say more. 

I felt like a geologist (well as much as one could be without actually being systematic, taking samples and making a map). I certainly gained a sense of satisfaction when I came across a public notice that explained the geology and it more or less confirmed what I had been seeing and saying. Not only that, I wanted to talk about some of my experiences as a geologist and the people I had worked with as a geologist which took me into my past when I worked as a geologist in Saudi Arabia (far left).

​My experience amongst the landscapes and rocks of Mt Tedie triggered something quite deep that was cognitively, emotionally and physically a part of me. A way of being that although I did not practice it: a bit like riding a bike. The experience was overwhelmingly positive I felt pleasure, excitement and joy at being in the landscape and puzzling the geology of that landscape, handling the materials of the landscape and remembering knowledge I had not used for many years. It reminded me that even though I don’t have a label called geologist.. being a geologist is part of my identity and I will carry it to the grave (or at least as long as I am conscious of my past).

This incident in my current life, brought about by the circumstances of our holiday, provided a good example of how the physical things we do in our present can connect back to the past and remind us of who we are, what we have done and how we have felt, far more than an act of remembering alone could ever do.  One could argue that I created an ecology for achieving this experience involving the context – the holiday in Tenerife, the affordance – in the geology of the particular place and space, the resources - our taxi driver who provided us with access to the space, the knowledge I had developed in the past and the knowledge  available in the public notices, the conversations with my wife, the relationships with the rocks and landscape, with the subject, the spaces – that contained these things and my relationship and interaction with all these things.. and my past.

One of the fundamental principles I learnt as a geology undergraduate,  made famous by geologist James Hutton, is the 'present is the key to [understanding] the past'. These two seemingly unconnected incidents in my life conspired to create the belief that exploring our past through the things we do in the present is a subject worth exploring so we will use this idea as the theme for the October 2017 issue of Lifewide Magazine. If you have a story that is relevant to this idea, and you would like to share it through our magazine, please leave a comment or get in touch. 

Source
Raina S (2016) Back to the Valley Hindu Times
http://www.thehindu.com/features/magazine/back-to-the-valley-back-to-jammu-and-kashmir/article6386499.ece