Life/ography as Storytelling: Using Letters, Diaries, Journals, and Poetry to Understand the Work of Female Leaders

This article reflexively engages and discusses a Life/ography project involving two female superintendents of schools in two U.S. North Central states who are dedicated to making their respective districts a better learning community. Life/ography is used to refer to life history, oral history, and biography as valued qualitative research approaches for understanding the social world of individuals—in this case, of female leaders. Originally, the study began with curiosity about gender issues; however, it became a study of shifting patterns in the workplace and the structure of work. The values of stories about real-life individuals lead us to understanding a person’s life in context in all of its raw truth, beauty, and suffering. By using letters, diaries, reflective journals, and poetry to augment the interviews in the study, Life/ography offers many paths to access imagination, curiosity, and critical reflexive practice and thought