“Now the Pieces are in Place…”: Learning through Personal Storytelling in the Adult Classroom

This article examines the potential of personal storytelling as a pedagogical method. When incorporated into the educational experience, autobiographical stories serve as a primary and fruitful link between lived experience and curricular content, a connection integral to adult learning. These stories enable learners to identify congruencies and incongruencies between their meaning systems and the concepts being learned. They also give adult learners increased insight into their own learning and development. In this article we discuss the “truth” of these stories, examine some important issues related to their use in the adult classroom, and then give a detailed example of one particular method, that of concept‐focused autobiographical writing.