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Fechter, Jason H.

College of Education and Social Services

2011

Ed. D.

This dissertation presents a perspective that clinical psychologists will benefit from the research methodology called Scholarly Personal Narrative (SPN) (Nash,2004). The author is a faculty member in a clinical psychology graduate program and a licensed psychologist in the State of Vermont. SPN research is argued to be an acceptable genre for psychological inquiry whose inclusion will broaden the knowledge base of clinical psychologists. Narrative writing has been met with skepticism due to a perceived lack of academic rigor however SPN is unique within the academy as a methodology for integrating first person narrative discourse with traditional academic research. In this method personal stories and traditional research cross-fertilize in a mutually edifying scholarly inquiry. This paper is itself an SPN about the value of SPN for the knowledge base, education and training of clinical psychologists. It is told through the personal narrative of the author questing for perspectives on human psychology other than that provided in the mainstream ofpsychological science alone.
Research Methods; Narrative; SPN; Clinical Psychology; Psychological Science, Leadership, Higher Educational Policy; Teaching Pedagogy; Constructionist; Post Modem; Pluralism; Master's Practice.