This reflection paper engages with two academic readings. The first, Brockmeier's essay on autobiographical memory, explores how the stories we tell about ourselves shape self-perception and identity, using Ian McEwan's novel Saturday as a case study. The second, by Schraube and Marvakis, examines how digital technology has transformed student learning — enabling more interactive, participatory education while also risking commodification and depersonalization. The student writer connects both readings to personal experience, reflecting on positional identity, selective memory, and the evolving relationship between teachers and learners in digitally mediated environments.
Brockmeier, J. (in press). "Dissecting memory: Unravelling the autobiographical process." In Beyond the Archive: Memory, Narrative, and the Autobiographical Process. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.
The stories we tell about ourselves, and how we remember events, can have a profound effect on our conceptions of "the self." Brockmeier's essay examines how fiction and autobiography can both shape self-perception. To analyze this concept, Brockmeier uses Ian McEwan's novel Saturday as a kind of case study, which makes the narrator's stream-of-consciousness about both mundane and important matters its driving focus, rather than external events.
Selective remembering and selective forgetting involve both cognitive and psychological factors: memory is a neurological process, but emotions also affect how and what we remember. Forgetting is not necessarily a bad thing — it can enable us to experience things afresh when we revisit them, rather than solely dwelling on the negative aspects of the past.
This essay is particularly interesting because of the extent to which it highlights the different ways we tell our own stories — to ourselves and to others. There are a number of elements to any individual's character: one can be a friend, a student, and a child, depending on the relationship with the person to whom one is speaking. This positional identity often affects how we see ourselves and therefore what we remember and what we forget when speaking and interacting with someone.
Experiences can seem — and probably are — very disconnected, but by telling a story, an individual is able to create a coherent sense of meaning and identity from these seemingly random fragments of memory.
"Changing self-narratives can reshape identity"
Schraube, E., & Marvakis, A. (2015). "Frozen fluidity: Digital technology and the transformation of students' learning and conduct of everyday life." In E. Schraube & C. Hojholt (Eds.), Psychology and the Conduct of Everyday Life. London: Routledge.
Digital technology has become ubiquitous in the modern classroom: even traditional classrooms now usually have some online component, such as chatrooms or message boards. This can be useful because online technology facilitates regular communication between students and teachers. New technology has been particularly useful in moving beyond the old "internalization" model of learning, in which students were envisioned as passive subjects who watched more experienced individuals perform tasks and then replicated the process by rote. Digital technology allows for a more interactive experience and underscores the extent to which teaching and learning are interrelated processes, given the intimacy of communication between teacher and student. It is often said that the best way to learn something is to teach it — and students can act as teachers when they are more familiar with certain forms of technology than the instructor.
"Double-edged impact of technology on learning"
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