Re-Envisioning Academic Competition

Abstract

Collaborative autoethnography (CAE) allows researchers to reflect on their collective work together and how their various identities co-construct knowledge. This chapter, theoretically guided by a multilingual competence framework, presents our experience of collaboration as doctoral international students in an article devoted to language policy. This autoethnographic study draws on our field notes, self-reflections, text messages, transcripts of video recorded Zoom meetings of our research project, and an interview with our professor. Through discourse analysis, the data were examined to explore the development of leadership, collective wisdom, and co-authorship development. Specifically, we discuss strategies employed such as mindful competition, a multipurpose cooperative strategy that we utilize to advance our ideas, avoid confrontation, negotiate leadership, and co-construct knowledge. We argue that our collaborative work, beyond securing publication opportunities, became a pathway for transformative learning and an empowering navigational tool to thrive as junior scholars and graduate students in the United States. We also discuss how this critical and collaborative journey strengthened our personal relationships, sharpened our views and stances about the “publish or perish” culture, assisted us in establishing a collegial community, and built trust among us. Thus, collaborative autoethnography can serve as an instrument in the self-learning process in which doctoral students can reassess and challenge the cultures/discourses/ideologies that surround them and, in addition, bring them together for mutual development as emergent scholars.