“Learning twice”: Overlapping Memories and Places of Childhood

This chapter draws from a qualitative research project that examined how childhood memories inform teachers’ understandings of both childhood and education. The authors’ stance is that childhood memory signals an internal place of childhood that is animated by the return of surprising, complex, and sometimes difficult feelings. They suggest that the intricate nature of childhood memory is both a “non-place and a real place” (Johnson, 2006, p. 83) as well as an “emotional situation” (Britzman, 2009, p. 130). The chapter explores how encounters with participants’ memories inspired two of the research members to immerse themselves inside the place of childhood to account for the intersection between participants’ recollections and their own childhood memories. Through this memory work, or “learning twice” (Britzman & Pitt, 1996), the authors posit that childhood memory is a destabilizing and generative force that researchers may use to generate knowledge about teaching children and to analyze social contexts affecting childhood experience.