Autoethnographic Account Research Articles

Taking on the Institution: An Autoethnographic Account

The over-representation of men and the under-representation of women in senior positions in academic institutions is a familier and deep-rooted problem. While gender inequality in Higher Education Institutions has multiple causes, recruitment and internal promotion practices are particularly potent contributors to inequality regimes. This paper contains an autoethnographic account based on my failure to secure promotion and my subsequent legal action. It offers a personalized account of the experience of gender discrimination, in order to illuminate aspects of the culture of the Higher Educational Institution that contribute to this problem, and the challenges inherent in changing it. The theoretical perspective includes notions of organizational culture as gendered, drawing on the works of Louise Morley and Georgina Waylen, Pat O’Connor, Louise Chappel and Teresa Rees, as well as Carol Agócs work on institutionalized resistance to change, and theories of hidden and invisible power. The paper is a personal narrative autoethnography with self-reflection, adopting an analytic/interpretive approach. Based on an analysis of publicly available documents, personal journaling and media material, I identify four themes; (1) Slow Fuse burning, (2) From indifference to resistance, (3) Fixing me/Fixing women, (4) Solidarity. I conclude with reflections on the importance of seeing gender inequality and discrimination when it occurs and the importance of data in creating greater transparency that facilitates ‘seeing’. I also consider the importance of female anger and the importance of female solidarity.

‘We need to talk about Bona’: An autoethnographic account of fostering an unaccompanied asylum seeker

This article offers an account of the authors’ experiences as foster carers for an unaccompanied asylum seeker (and through him, supporting other asylum-seeking boys). We are both qualified and experienced social workers, now social work academics living and working in Scotland, whose practice is informed by socio-pedagogical perspectives. Our backgrounds have given us unique and finely grained insights into the daily care issues facing young asylum seekers set against a backdrop of global movement. We discuss the need to provide care that offers cultural safety; the centrality within this of recognising and seeking to understand religious beliefs and practices; the experiences of young people growing up in conditions of liminality, negotiating two very different cultures; the inadequacy of current social work responses; the importance of everyday care and relationships and the need for a curious and reflexive orientation from caregivers.

Surviving the Landings: An Autoethnographic Account of Being a Gay Female Prison Officer (in an Adult Male Prison in England)

Female correctional staff face multiple challenges when working in a male prison environment. Perceptions of competence and gendered divisions of labor are prevalent in the negotiated order of a prison. Sexuality is a dynamic that is irrelevant to the demands of a correctional officer yet a significant identity to be managed and negotiated in interactions with both colleagues and prisoners. This study adopts an auto ethnographic approach to highlight discrimination in prison officer occupational culture. Drawing upon personal narratives whilst working in an adult male prison in England, lived experiences of homophobia and sexism are presented to identify the challenges faced as a gay female prison officer. Themes of sexual objectification, homophobia and workplace incivility identify failings within the English prison service in supporting workplace diversity and inclusivity.

Student experience: 10 things I know for certain

Through an autoethnographic account of a university career journey, this paper addresses ten key themes in higher education. These are the ten principles which matter most in education. Attending to the quality of these elements will ensure that the vast majority of students have an excellent experience and that by virtue of completing their education, graduates will have the foundations they require to achieve their career goals. High quality universities keep the focus on their students, and students are welcomed and encouraged as agentic, contributing citizens, who will lead communities forward through graduate careers. The student experience is streamlined, minimising expectations of students beyond their coursework. Whereas the educators make or break the experience for the students, there are numerous other education-focussed staff roles in universities and staff must work in-concert. Universities must continue to apply digital innovation to improve processes such that student experience mechanisms, such as enrolment, are efficient and user-friendly, so that students can expend their cognitive energies on learning rather than navigating convoluted processes. One size does not fit all and university education must be delivered in ways which meet the needs and expectations of diverse student cohorts, and personalised in bespoke and supported ways for individual students. Universities seek to enhance and continuously improve student experience, engagement and retention.

An international football match experienced from within a 'working quarantine' – a photographic journey

The Covid pandemic has affected contemporary lives to unprecedented levels, including the world of sports, which have faced training and competition bans, matches and tournaments having been postponed or cancelled. However, the Union of the European Football Associations (UEFA) was keen to continue playing despite the pandemic and staged matches played behind closed doors. Thus, UEFA provided the involved parties with a strict protocol of how to organise and conduct matches in order to protect players and staff from contracting the virus, as well as to limit the risk of spreading the virus. This study provides a visual auto-ethnographical account of a European qualifier match between the women´s national teams of Iceland and Sweden. The match took place in September 2020, in the midst of the second wave of the Covid pandemic which was sweeping through Europe at the time. This visual story illustrates how the Covid pandemic was experienced in a team working quarantine and how it affected the social organisation of the match as shown by established rules and recommendations for human conduct and manifested in new norms of behaviour. The visual story further highlights how the pandemic imposed unprecedented challenges for sport teams to settle the conflicting forces of how to withhold manifested and collective team rituals under such constrains, as for the social organisations, which had to make-up protocols, at short notice, in order to keep the virus at bay. When analysed visually those protocols seemed inconsistent and illogical at times. It can however be argued, that despite those inconsistencies the protocols should be recognised as a responsible act for public welfare as they counter possible public health repercussions associated with such pandemics.

Exploring the complex emotional relationships that influence children's participation rights in early childhood education settings

Early childhood educators engage in complex and emotional work in their professional role educating and caring for children aged from birth to five years. The aim of this paper is to promote autoethnography as a most suitable method of understanding the role emotions play in the actualisation of young children's participation rights in early childhood education services. The author is a practising educator and draws upon a specific auto-ethnographic account of practice, the story of Sarah, as the focus of this paper to explore the emotional intensity of relationships in early childhood education. Autoethnography is discussed as a method to sit alongside ‘traditional’ ethnographic research to provide a deep understanding of the role of the educator embracing and enacting a rights approach in their work and what influences their decision making. In conclusion the author suggests autoethnography is a useful reflexive tool for educators to consider the role of emotions as a catalyst for change to ensure the actualisation of children's participation rights in daily practice in early childhood education.

Policing the Pedal Rebels: A Case Study of Environmental Activism Under COVID-19

Australia, along with nation-states internationally, has entered a new phase of environmentally focused activism, with globalised, coordinated and social media-enabled environmental social movements seeking to address human-induced climate change and related issues such as the mass extinction of species and land clearing. Some environmental protest groups such as Extinction Rebellion (XR) have attracted significant political, media and popular commentary for their sometimes theatrical and disruptive forms of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience. Drawing on green and cultural criminology, this article constitutes an autoethnographic account of environmental protest during the final stages of the initial COVID-19 lockdown in NSW, Australia. It takes as a case study a small protest by an XR subgroup called the Pedal Rebels. The article explores the policing of environmental protest from an activist standpoint, highlighting the extraordinary police resources and powers mobilised to regulate a small peaceful group of 'socially distanced' protesters operating within the existing public health orders. It places an autoethnographic description of this protest in the context of policing practice and green and cultural criminology. Additionally, it outlines the way in which such policing is emboldened by changes to laws affecting environmental protest, making activism an increasingly risky activity. © The Author(s) 2021.

Remembering the Battle of Pezi Sla (Greasy Grass—aka Little Bighorn) with the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho Victory Riders: An Autoethnographic Photo Essay

If one travels to Little Bighorn Battlefield National Park in late June, one can witness at least three events that simultaneously take place each year commemorating what has been called “one of the great mythic and mysterious military battles of American history” (Frosch, 2010). The National Park Service rangers give “battle talks” on the hour to visiting tourists. Two miles away, the privately run U.S. Cavalry School also performs a scripted reenactment called “Custer’s Last Ride”—with riders who have been practicing all week to play the role of soldiers from the doomed regiment of Custer’s 7th Cavalry. On this same day, a traveling band of men, women, and youth from the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho Nations who have journeyed by horseback and convoy from the Dakotas and Wyoming will reach Last Stand Hill to remember this “Victory Day” from 1876—one that historians have called the “last stand of the Indians” during the period of conflict known as the “Great Sioux War.” This photo essay offers an autoethnographic account of what some have dubbed the annual “Victory Ride” to Montana based upon my participation as a non-Native supporter of this Ride in 2017, 2018, and 2019.

Teaching while traumatized: an autoethnographic account of teaching, triggers, and the higher education classroom

ABSTRACT With this paper, we present an autoethnographic account of how two higher education teachers have navigated the classroom as they deal with their own traumatic experiences. This includes discussions of how each individual’s trauma developed and manifests in the classroom, as well as discussions of various pedagogical implications/strategies for other higher education teachers dealing with trauma. To begin, we outline the research on trauma, highlighting the ways in which the research landscape characteristically looks at how teachers (typically K-12) might better educate students dealing with trauma and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Next, we discuss autoethnography as one methodology that articulates embedded experience that is informed by power and personal reactions, responses, and experiences. We then discuss how these traumatic experiences impact our pedagogy and overall feelings of safety on college campuses, which also includes strategies that we use to mitigate the harmful effects of our traumas.

Something went terribly wrong: failing successfully

ABSTRACT In this study, I explore a time when I collaborated on an education-focused research project, which failed. I articulate my experience of failure as a positive means for improving collaborative research practice. I achieve this by repositioning the critiquing of failure through an auto-ethnographical account, integrating an adapted version of the Theory of Change framework by Hart, Diercks-O’Brien, & Powell, (2009). [Hart, et al., (2009). Exploring stakeholder engagement in impact evaluations planning in educational development work. Evaluation, 15(3), 285–306. https://doi.org/10.1177/1356389009105882]) to better acknowledge, understand and prepare for failure. Even with careful planning to execute a purposefully designed collaborative research project, success cannot be guaranteed. When failure happens, something has gone terribly wrong. However, something has also transpired that was meaningful.

Living in Silence

According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders1 approximately 37.5 million American adults aged eighteen and over report some trouble hearing. Despite the number of people affected by hearing impairment, the hard of hearing and deaf population are underrepresented. The hearing-impaired community faces a myriad of challenges in their daily lives communicating and relating to others. Unfortunately, there is a lack of resources for the hard of hearing and deaf population in schools, and a lack of affordability for hearing aids in the healthcare field. In this critical autoethnography, the author focuses on her experiences of coping with and navigating her world as a hearing-impaired individual. The autoethnographic account explores the author’s face-to-face encounters with her peers, audiologist, medical practitioners, and personal relationships centering her research on the communication barriers that often come with hearing loss including adjustments to sound, relating to others, and overcoming obstacles due to the lack of resources. The stories shared aim to illustrate how those with hearing impairments are disempowered in a world that is geared toward the hearing abled.

Cruising landscape-objects: inland waterway guidebooks and wayfinding with them

This article introduces inland waterway guidebooks as cultural objects that deserve further attention from cultural geographers who have begun to shed light on inland waterway cultures in recent years. It contributes to the wider disciplines long-standing interests in representations and representational objects, and more recently the interest in studying representations and their relations to everyday forms of practice. Focusing on a popular series of waterway guide, the Collins/Nicholson Waterways guides, I employ textual and visual analysis alongside an autoethnographic account of using these guides to examine what waterway guidebooks are, how they represent waterway spaces and how they are used in the practices of wayfinding on a narrowboat. By doing so I argue that waterway guides are powerful objects of representation that can tell us much about how waterway spaces are represented and how they are experienced with a guide in hand from the perspective of boat users. In laying out these arguments, I build on the notion of the travelling landscape-object to develop a theory of cruising landscape-objects, which I define as waterway guides that both represent, (re)produce and circulate waterway spaces at the same time as they are representational and material objects that can co-constitute wayfinding practices on the water.

Venturing outside the Bounds of IDEIA in Search of Inclusive Christian Education: An Autoethnographic Account

While US federal law, Individual with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (1975–2004), IDEIA, guarantees education to all children with disabilities attending public schools, private schools can exclude children with disabilities. Historically, Christian families have found that Christ-centered schools do not offer admittance to children with disabilities. However, some Christian schools are beginning to serve children with mild disabilities or on a case by case basis. This autoethnographic account explores one family’s vulnerability in venturing outside the protection of IDEIA to attend a local Christian school. This article also challenges the perception that children with disabilities are better served by public schools.

A view from below: some thoughts on musicology and EDI work as acts of care

ABSTRACT This article presents an autoethnographic account of the structures of inequality and legacies of colonial knowledge systems still active in Music departments in a cosmopolitan UK city from the point of view of the studentship. Institutions of Higher Education have increasingly acknowledged the dimensions of difference and exclusion in their spaces, personnel and curricula, mainly through the so-called policies of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. It is argued that these policies have failed to tackle the structural layers of discriminations in academia, creating instead an illusion of care. Drawing on the author’s involvement in the Music Departments of King’s College London and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), and focusing on disciplinary practice in music studies, this article analyses the discourses of care invoked through EDI and how they intersect with the cultural logics of neoliberal capitalism. To this end, this article presents a series of student-lecturer conversations in an exercise of self-knowledge, with the aim to illustrate how music scholars strive to care in a context shaped by coloniality and austerity.

Queer(er) Approaches to The Laramie Project: An Autoethnographic Account

Queer(er) Approaches to The Laramie Project: An Autoethnographic Account Nicolas Shannon Savard (bio) As one of the most-produced plays in the country, the Tectonic Theater Project’s 2000 docu-drama, The Laramie Project, has become a staple of theatre curricula and educational production at the high school and collegiate level in the United States. The play’s inclusion in our seasons and classrooms becomes even more significant when we consider that it is the first, and often only, representation of LGBTQ people and issues that the vast majority of our students encounter in an academic setting. The Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network’s The 2017 National School Climate Survey found that just under 65 percent of students graduate high school without ever having discussed or read about LGBTQ people or issues in any class (Kosciw et al. 58). The Laramie Project’s sustained popularity indicates that schools are leaning on the theatre to bridge that representational gap. The way it has been taken up as the gay play presents a problem, in that it can perpetuate uncontested narratives of victimization and what youth theatre scholars Manon van de Water and Annie Giannini call the discourse of the “troubled gay youth” (103). However, given this play’s place in the curriculum as the singular point of contact for many students, it is vital that we create opportunities for students to engage with the content to the fullest capacity, with a critical eye, and with explicit connections to the world we inhabit together. My critique here is not intended to discredit the valuable work that the Tectonic Theater Project has done with Laramie, but rather to hold my own community of theatre educators and practitioners to a more rigorous standard in our conversations with our students about the piece. I advocate a shift in questioning away from “could this happen here?” My own lived experience as a queer transgender person; scholarship coming out of queer, feminist, and transgender studies; and the alarming rates of violence against the LGBTQ community, particularly transwomen of color, has taught me that it can and is currently happening all over the world.1 Instead, I propose broader alternatives such as “what can we do to create a culture and systems equipped to stop homophobic violence? How are heteronormativity and homophobia operating culturally and systemically within the world presented in Laramie, and how can we recognize this in our own communities? Informed by theories and pedagogies developed by Jasbir Puar, bell hooks, Cathy Cohen, and Sarah Ahmed, this essay will provide an autoethnographic account of the pedagogical strategies I have developed over the course of four semesters to engage my own students in a queer-feminist examination of The Laramie Project and our own Midwestern community. I will begin with a critical analysis of the most popular pedagogical tools accessible to those teaching the play. The autoethnographic portion of the essay will explore the challenges I faced as an instructor in attempting to move the discussion surrounding Laramie beyond a surface-level reading, some particularly productive moments, and methods my students and I found of extending the lessons of the piece beyond the class time specifically dedicated to it. Surface-level readings of Laramie lead to post-show talk-backs and the classroom discussions surrounding the play that run the risk of becoming reductive rather than deeply critical. I have had dozens of my own students take away the message that “nobody deserves to be murdered,” ignoring the specific cultural circumstances that led to Matthew Shepard’s death and focusing on the victim [End Page 221] rather than the perpetrators. On the other hand, I have noticed a tendency among students and audience members alike to create distance both temporally and geographically: “Wow, we’ve come a long way since the 1990s” or “But that couldn’t happen here.” The latter reaction reflects the same differentiation that Jill Dolan noted in her explanation of how the original New York production, in her view, failed to create a utopian performative for its audience. The 2000 production, she writes, “miscalculates some strategies, most flagrantly maintaining the binary of rural/urban that keeps the tragedy distanced and ‘othered...

Equity Unbound as Critical Intercultural Praxis

This article traces the emergence of Equity Unbound, originally founded as “equity-focused, open, connected, intercultural learning curriculum” (Equity Unbound, n.d.) and designed with a critical curriculum approach. We outline how our design and praxis centers on social justice and how our activities and purpose have continued to evolve to respond, with care, to the needs of our networks. We then offer a critical autoethnographic account from an educator who started on the margins of Equity Unbound and later became a key co-facilitator.

Improvising Ethics? A Collaborative Autoethnographic Account of the Challenges Faced when doing Fieldwork in Zimbabwe

There are many challenges faced by scholars when designing research that is ethically compliant. These include issues of consent, confidentiality, and how to give feedback to participants, for example. However less is known about how non-South African researchers, specifically Zimbabwean doctoral students, navigate ethical dilemmas when conducting their fieldwork whilst being registered in South African universities. This gap is especially concerning given the high number of Zimbabwean doctoral students in South Africa. This paper poses the following questions: (1) What are the challenges encountered by a Zimbabwean doctoral student doing fieldwork in Zimbabwe whilst being supervised in a South African university? (2) How can these challenges be mitigated? In answering these questions, the paper uses a collaborative autoethnographic approach to empirically ground its arguments. The paper argues that South Africa’s higher education institutions have a duty to ensure research integrity of its students even if those students are conducting fieldwork outside South African borders. We observe that there is often a disconnect between formal ethical administrative processes and what actually happens on the ground. Potential solutions are to increase the autonomy and improvisation of students and supervisors in overseeing and doing research in these contexts.

Navigating Personal, Professional, Institutional, and Relational Dimensions of Community-Engaged Research

As universities around the world face plunging revenues coupled with rising expenses, many argue that today’s post-secondary sector is in crisis (Anderson et al., 2020). In some regions, budgetary challenges are exacerbated by performance-based funding models that place an increased focus on impacting local economics and communities more broadly (e.g., Blue Ribbon Panel on Alberta’s Finances, 2019). In response to growing public, personal, and institutional demands for post-secondary institutions to improve their relevance and impact, increasing numbers of academics are pursuing community-engaged approaches to their research. In this paper, two Canadian researchers provide a collaborative autoethnographic account that reflects on and examines their experiences with meaningful and authentic community-engaged research partnerships. The authors explore themes associated with navigating personal, professional, institutional, and relational dimensions of faculty community engagement. In doing so, they draw on and present a modified version of Wade and Demb’s (2009; Demb & Wade, 2012) faculty engagement model that includes relational factors informed by Bringle and Hatcher’s (2002) theoretical framework of relationships. The results of this collaborative autoethnography have broad implications for the practice of research, including implications for work-life balance, tenure and promotion, how service is recognized/categorized, and institutional ethics review board processes.

Methodological Insights Experiencing and knowing in the field: an autoethnographic account of conducting audit fieldwork in China

PurposeThis paper provides a researcher's account of fieldwork experience in conducting audit research in China. By illustrating on-site fieldwork encounters, the paper reflects stages of access negotiation and management in the fieldwork, reveals the researcher's embodied “affects” in the fieldwork and reasserts the value of researcher's openness and attention in the fieldwork.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses autoethnography as its overall epistemology. Fieldwork diaries and vignettes are written in the first-person voice to present the researcher's embodied account of fieldwork experience, researcher’s learning and coping skills in managing the fieldwork.FindingsThe research findings are not detached from the researcher's experience of the fieldwork. The fieldwork experiences in this study highlight that the fieldwork access is an ongoing process. Different stages of access negotiations, from rejection to acceptance, reveal the tensions between researcher and participants. This study draws attention to the online platform, WeChat, in connecting with auditors to learn from them and suggests openness to the fieldwork encounters and a resilient engagement with auditors.Originality/valueIn reflecting on the researcher's transformation during the fieldwork, this paper argues for a relational and engaged way of conducting fieldwork, rather than a disengaged and judgemental approach in studying auditors' working lives. The paper pays attention to fieldwork as a process and how the knowledge learned in the field is infused with researcher's fieldwork experiences.

Trying and Failing and Trying again: Work in the Media

This paper is an historical auto-ethnographic account by a middle aged journalist who has worked in the English language media in India for about 20 years. English language media staff is among the best paid in the country. Even so, work conditions are far from ideal, and the pandemic this year has rendered several journalists jobless. This is a personal account of one career trajectory that spans book publishing, work on national radio, newspapers and a news agency. Growth prospects are curtailed for women in the news media; one boss at the Times of India¸ India’s largest English daily, told the author that her “body language” betrayed a lack of interest in work.