Anecdotalization: From individual to collective learning through intimate accounts

This chapter claims a two-fold learning potential in the sharing of intimate accounts of personal epiphanies by education policy researchers. Communicating to others stimulates the researcher’s self-reflection and brings to consciousness what she has learned about the research/ed word and the self; practicing a method for communicating such learning to others acts as a bridge between individual and collective learning, as it prompts larger lessons for the benefit of the wider community of education policy researchers. Illustrating this double learning loop, the author draws on “anecdotalization” as a method for interrogating her research practice and to draw larger lessons from her being with and in the research/ed world. Hence, she shares two epiphanies from her fieldwork, implicating a UNESCO institute and a European educational stakeholder, which had multiple consequences for both her research methodology and her being a researcher and academic more broadly.