Weaving the Threads Between: Collaborative Auto-Ethnographic Reflections on Experiences of Migrant Learning and Teaching in Australia

Abstract

This article aims to use the two authors’ life experience, as English teachers, and university academics in the U.K., China and Australia, to improve an understanding how life trajectories can assist exploration of cultural difference and changes. Our experiences can be utilized as a means of understanding how responses to change and cultural differences can be influenced. Using a collaborative auto-ethnography research method offers readers opportunities to engage with the text through encountering the cultural nuances in these transitional journeys. The analysis is undertaken through the theoretical lens of transformational learning, cultural identity, and space. This paper will be of benefit both to academics in multicultural settings and to pre-service teachers in postgraduate programs. First, it will assist in sensitizing readers to become more culturally aware and competent through understanding how change across cultures can be beneficially accomplished and, second, by showing how constructive change can influence all evolving cultural identities within vibrant, multicultural and multilingual contexts such as we experience in Australia.