Autoethnographic Account Research Articles

COVID-19 and the quality of mathematics education teaching and learning in a first-year course

This article is vested on the need for higher education educators to be reflective on their practices in order to configure effective ways to interact with the students and knowledge for specific courses. It is uncontested that education systems globally are under constant pressure to respond to the changing needs of societies. The outbreak of COVID-19 has reminded us that the complexity of education needs responsive practices to facilitate effective teaching and learning across all levels of schooling globally. All over the world, the normative ways of teaching and learning evolved drastically in the first quarter of the 2020 academic year when teachers and students found online offerings to be the dominant option available as a sequel to the pandemic conditions. In South Africa specifically, students and teachers were thrust into virtual teaching and learning situations with the majority of them having no preparation for this shift. This article presents an auto-ethnographical account of the knowledge gaps in the teaching and learning of mathematics education in a first-year education course in an online space. We used auto-ethnography to discuss our experiences of teaching limits and continuity. We argue that teaching the topic on an online platform constrain student teachers’ procedural thinking, conceptual development, and demonstration of their thought processes during mathematics learning and assessment. We also discuss our experiences of developing assessment tasks for the topic and how students identified cheating mechanisms to answer questions in assessments.

Staff of Life: Preserving Yeast, Memory, and Humanity

The line between life and death is blurry. For one organism to live, others must die, turning first into food, then units of energy, and then fodder for new life. Performance itself is a play between liveliness and stabilizations, sensory immediacy and documented pasts. In the culture and practice of food, parallels abound. A notable yet humble example is witnessed in fermentation practice and the use of starter cultures, whether bacterial, yeasty, or both. Even as such cultures are consumed by a production process, they are renewed by it. This autoethnographic account of a cycle of three performances centred on an inherited sourdough starter explores the ways in which performance with food can act as a process of preservation, as well as an exploration of life, death, and states of being that may exist in between. In using a yeast culture that is more than 25 years old, I have attempted not only to perpetuate the tiny bodies within the flour-water paste but also to embody in a larger way the attitude and essence of the culture’s original user. Probing the preservation of humanness through food practice and artistic improvisation, I propose an alternate sense of memory, ecology, and mortality.

Facilitating Black identity and advocacy: creating cellphilms for reflecting on issues affecting Black students

Ethical facilitation is of paramount importance if educators are to address the issues that plague Black students. This paper presents an autoethnographic account of my experiences facilitating two cellphilm workshops with self-identified Black university students attending two universities in New Brunswick, Canada. Nestled within African-Canadian Feminist discourse, I explore my positionality as a Black international female student. I reflect on the ways my racial awareness and experiences led me to employ participatory arts-based methodologies to empower Black university students to vocalize their experiences and disrupt the hemogenic White dominance and anti-Black racism in academia. I describe being approached by a pair of White faculty members to facilitate two cellphilm workshops, engaging in pre-workshop planning and first cellphilm workshop, and the ways I engaged in ethical praxis to stimulate trust and create a supportive environment for participants. I next describe creating a cellphilm as a support mechanism in response to participants’ cellphilms. Finally, I examine post-production activities that took my facilitation and activism beyond cellphilm creation as I reflect on how I disseminated and capitalized on my various positions within the university to raise awareness of racist practices that exclude and marginalize Black students.

Choosing to Thrive: An Autoethnographic Journey of Cancer, Companionship, and Carrots

In this autoethnography, I explore the companionship experience of someone supporting a cancer patient who is endeavoring to thrive in the face of this disease. A wide range of studies has been conducted on the emotional and social issues relating to cancer and specifically to breast cancer. Appropriately, most of the research relating to the personal narrative focuses on the stories of the person who has been diagnosed with cancer, and limited research has highlighted the perspective and experiences of their companions. My primary goals for this autoethnographic research are to: (1) Begin to answer the question: What role do we take when cancer becomes a reality and how do we provide helpful companionship? (2) Provide a template for personal narratives for companions, and (3) Share a path toward transformation for those that want to thrive. Autoethnography was selected as the qualitative inquiry method to gain meaning and understanding of the role of a companion to a person experiencing cancer. Most qualitative research methodologies are directed toward the study of others; however, in this case the primary focus of the research design is on self. This autoethnographic account of my experience as a companion to someone with cancer highlights the importance, both for you and the one you are supporting, of using your voice, owning your space, writing your story, and building a sense of community.

But How Am I Doing? Autoethnographic Reflections of a Beginning English Language Teacher

Beginning English Language Teaching (ELT) brings many issues teachers experience that questions one’s teaching confidence and abilities. Seeking feedback from teaching peers can be invaluable, but self and student feedback can quell fears and doubts. Sharing such experiences with others involves risk, but can assist others on their journey to becoming confident ELT teachers. To reflect on my experiences as a beginning ELT teacher, an autoethnographic account is presented. It displays my fears, the need for constant feedback and the eventual acceptance that I did not need constant reassurance to evaluate my teaching performance. This account also demonstrates the usefulness and contributions that an autoethnographic account of me as a beginning teacher may bring. First, it discusses the field of beginning teaching and challenges doing ELT may bring. This is followed by an explanation of writing an autoethnography, ethical considerations and background details on this account. The autoethnographic account is written using constructed vignettes to demonstrate moments of crisis and resolution. This account closes with a discussion and some conclusions about the value of using autoethnography in the ELT field.

Learning ODeL through active participation: a collaborative autoethnographic case study by engaging in an online learning course

ABSTRACT In this paper, we set out a collaborative autoethnographic account of our reflective journey to deeper understandings of open, distance and e-learning (ODeL) through enrolling, participating and completing the first module in a course on technology-enhanced learning (TEL). As authors, we both enrolled for the course for different reasons. The course was offered by an outside institution, as part of capacity building at our university. The course, conducted fully online, was highly interactive and participatory. Through our participation, collaboration, reflection and experiences in the first module of the course, we were encouraged to develop written definitions of ‘distance education’ (DE) and ‘technology-enhanced learning’ (TEL). Our approach to studying our definitions was analytic, even though we were both participants and researchers. The analysis was based on the Community of Inquiry framework. Our findings reveal that our definitions evolved to include deeper, more complex, more comprehensive notions of DE and TEL. The analysis also revealed an unfolding of the definitions within our own contexts. We recommend that professional development of ODeL practitioners and stakeholders take place through being a student in an active, collaborative ODeL environment to enhance take-up practices.

(S)cars: Exploring America's Automotive Self

The article opens with an autoethnographic account of its author's encounter with the American sense of space in the context of the clash of his own and American cultural norms related to car ownership and car use. The initial anecdotes, in which the negative experiences of the authors lack of knowledge of the essentials of the car culture in the US prove to be instrumental in the process of learning and adaptation, lead to a more profound, historiosophic reflection upon the cars as vehicles of ethics across American cultural history.

From Ecophany to Burnout? An Anthropologist’s Reflections on Two Years of Participating in Council-Citizen Climate Governance in Eastbourne

In July 2019, Eastbourne Borough Council declared a climate emergency and committed to making Eastbourne carbon neutral by 2030. In order to achieve this, citizens together with Council created a unique model of council-citizen collaborative climate governance, the Eastbourne Eco Action Network (EAN). EAN’s main strategy has been the setting up of targeted working groups, each bringing together Councillors, engaged citizens and providers, and each tackling a specific area of climate action through a combination of infrastructure, institutional and behavioural changes. As an environmental anthropologist living in Eastbourne, I was involved in this process right from the beginning, having had my own ‘ecophany’—the realisation that the climate emergency required urgent action—in February 2019. Two years and one pandemic later, in this paper I reflect on the overall experiences and challenges of EAN’s and Eastbourne Borough Council’s work towards town-wide carbon neutrality to date, discussing possible factors (structural and other) determining varying successes and failures. At the same time, this paper provides an auto-ethnographic account of what ‘engaged anthropology’ means in practice, mapping out the real contributions anthropologists can and should make in local climate action, but also reflecting on challenges encountered along the way.

Reading Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Celebrating the work of Paulo Freire for his healing influence, this paper gives an auto-ethnographic account of the author’s personal, pedagogical and political liberation process reading Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Raised in a conservative patriarchal middle-class atmosphere in central Turkey, the author analyzes her own story of liberation as a woman, as a young scholar, as non-native English-speaking language educator and a citizen of a democratic republic. The author describes how she realized her own subjugation by reading Freire (2005) at a time of personal and political crisis and how she tried hard to find her personal voice. She also depicts the impact of the book on her pedagogy, on her relationships with students and on her liberatory praxis. Finally, the author tells how she transformed her understanding of the dynamics of social transformation reading Freire’s dialogic, problem-posing pedagogy of the oppressed.

Modelling change in self‐narratives and embodied experience: A multicase study and autoethnography

AbstractThe article documents a multicase study of the researcher’s own clinical work with four clients who each presented with embodied expressions of distress. The researcher practised within a ‘narrative‐dialogical’ framework and set out to build theories of therapeutic change. However, a parallel thesis emerged during the project: an autoethnographic account in which the researcher’s uses of supervision, personal therapy, dreams and life events capture data on the ways in which the therapist’s theories of change are modelled in the therapeutic space—with varying degrees of confidence and success. Sessions were audio‐recorded and coded for qualitative markers indicating the emergence of novel self‐narratives. A reflexive narrative running throughout the work highlights the superordinate role of reflexivity in theory development. Therapeutic change was typified by an evolving internalised map of self and world, with corresponding change in embodied experience. The article highlights techniques deployed by the therapist in highlighting and building upon moments of innovation with the therapeutic process. As an analysis of one therapist’s practice and the experiences of their clients, the study generates theories for ongoing exploration and study. The continuous evolution of change concepts reflects the theory‐building work of clinicians in their everyday practice. The study highlights the use of self as research instrument and offers a candid and intimate example of how practitioner research might be structured and delivered.

Challenges of Co-Teaching: Reflections on Social Justice Pedagogy in Prison

Co-teaching and critical pedagogy appear to be complementary approaches because of their emphases on collaboration and addressing issues of power inequality. However, my experience co-teaching a 10-week public speaking and creative writing workshop for prisoners while trying to advance social justice was fraught with challenges that were exacerbated by the carceral context in which co-teaching and critical pedagogy were incorporated. This essay provides an autoethnographic account of several tensions related to the promotion of transparency about teaching practices, student agency to shape the learning experience, and critiques of power. The paper concludes by offering practical recommendations that other prison pedagogues working in prisons can consider before incorporating co-teaching into their praxis.

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.

Moving with Fitbit: Body Narratives, Fit Subjectivities, and Racialized Discipline

ABSTRACT In this article I use an auto-ethnographic account of personal Fitbit use to develop the interrelated concepts of body narratives and fit subjectivities. Body narratives are data-informed personal rationalizations we make about the state of our bodies. For example, we can use personal Fitbit data to form a post hoc rationalization to explain aches and pains from being sedentary the day before. The same goes for increased energy from a longer-than-average workout or a negative mood following a low sleep score. Body narratives are further enhanced through gamification, which provides feedback loops for narrative construction, and encouraged through technological nudges built into the device and application. Fit subjectivities emerge as identities that conform to the disciplinary technologies and culture of late capitalism and the neoliberal focus on individualized care for one’s body. Fit subjectivities encourage people to view their body as a portfolio of data points, a digital other, to optimize in the marketplace. Fit subjectivities are also communicated through the new media ecology of late capitalism, such as with the hashtag #fitspo on Instagram, wellness YouTube channels, and corporate wellness programs. Both disciplinary concepts must also be racially contextualized, since ideal bodies often conform to white standards. Ultimately, the ability to qualitatively use the quantitative data of Fitbit and its app is explained as an extension of the project of knowing and disciplining oneself and the digital other. Negotiating this process will characterize the further integration of technology into our bodies under the current regime of late techno-capitalism.

Expendable young males

ABSTRACT Surf lifesaving in Australia is an iconic community volunteer service. Surf lifesaving members must attain their bronze medallion, which includes fundamental first aid and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) techniques in order to patrol the beaches. Each year thousands of rescues and first aid procedures are conducted on the beaches of Australia as volunteer patrolling surf lifesavers carry out their community service. However, there is a sport attached to this community service, which has arguably become the ‘face’ of surf lifesaving in Australia. Some athletes are professional, and others gain a range of sponsorships. Many others are juniors and Masters competitors. The national championships each year draw anywhere between 5000 and 8000 competitors and spectators. Not without its critics, the masculinised nature of surf lifesaving has come under scrutiny in the past (Booth, 2001). Significantly, this is a paper about young males and the way in which masculinity is socially constructed within both a sporting and broader social and cultural context. It is also a paper that challenges the way in which the male body is endorsed, perceived, and used in a utilitarian manner from boyhood through to early male adulthood, across a range of settings thereby creating a normalised conception of the male body throughout life. Using surf lifesaving as vehicle through which young males can be explored, it identifies the role of sport in the creation of this normalisation and specifically highlights, through an autoethnographic account, the expectation placed on young males within the masculinised sporting setting of surf lifesaving in Australia.

If I knew then what I know now

AbstractIn this essay, I present an autoethnographic account of my gender affirmation surgery and subsequent recovery. Surgery is considered as the benchmark for people like me but remains little discussed. In the organizational literature the focus is on those who may transition and those who have transitioned, not on the surgery itself. It is glossed over in popular accounts to leave the impression that one goes to sleep one day and wakes fully formed the next. These accounts pay little heed to the somatic, embodied nature of surgery and issues of body dysphoria, euphoria, transition, potential detransition, and retransition. Such accounts affirm a binarized gender narrative where surgery normalizes bodies to meet the expectations of a cis‐normative society. Moreover such accounts do little justice as to what happens next since surgery is seen as the outcome of transition rather than part of the process.

A Pedagogue's Progress, the Cunningham Turn, and the Birth of Creator Studies

As partners in an ongoing global research initiative over the past 6 years, Queensland University of Technology Distinguished Professor Stuart Cunningham and University of Southern California Clinical Professor David Craig mapped the rise of two competing communication and media industries, Social Media Entertainment and Wanghong. Alongside other vanguard scholars, Cunningham and Craig identified and framed the emergence of Creator Studies, an interdisciplinary field of studies focused on the dynamics of new forms of cultural production across social media platforms from diverse fields, methods, and epistemologies. These developments are described within a picaresque auto-ethnographic account of Cunningham's influence on the author's progression from Hollywood producer to scholar and pedagogue.

Embodying antiracist White Latinidad in medieval studies

AbstractThis essay presents an autoethnographic account of my coming to acknowledge my own whiteness while my Puerto Rican mother stressed that I was Boricua above all and my non‐LatinX White grandfather called me “the best kind of mix, a Texa‐Rican.” In my presentation at the inaugural RaceB4Race symposium, which was titled “How to Begin Embodying Antiracist Whiteness in Premodern Studies,” I began with a brief history of the United States Census forms since 1970 to demonstrate the socially constructed nature of the panethnic categories “Latino” and “Hispanic” that led to my mother's emphasis on my Latinidad rather than my whiteness, which, in turn, led to my own ethnoracial confusion. I draw upon research in medieval studies, LatinX studies, critical race studies, raciolinguistics, and critiques of institutional diversity work. One of this essay's goals is to stress that the violent identity erasure that Black LatinX, as well as other Black, Indigenous, People of Color, experience in addition to the racism they face every day is different from the ethnolinguistic exclusion and erasure that I experience. I share my narrative of learning to own my white identity to emphasize our need for truly intersectional practices within scholarship and institutional work with the hope that more White colleagues will reflect on the ways that their whiteness not only hinders their ability to see whiteness as a racial identity, but also contributes to the ongoing violence we perpetuate on our colleagues of color, even those of us who identify as white LatinX. These hindrances prevent us from fully embodying and enacting antiracist practices within medieval studies and academia more broadly.

Troubling/trouble in the academy: posttraumatic stress disorder and sexual abuse research.

The potential and actual impact of traumatic research work on researchers has been of focus in academic literature for at least the past 30 years (Alexander et al., Violence and Victims, 4(1), 57-62, 1989; Bahn and Weatherill, Qualitative Research, 13(1), 19-35, 2012; Coles et al., Violence Against Women, 20(1), 95-117, 2014; Coles and Mudaly, Child Abuse Review, 19, 56-69, 2010; Connolly and Reilly, Qualitative Inquiry, 13(4): 522-540, 2007; McCosker et al., Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 2(1): 1-13, 2001). This period of time—over 30 years ago—is approximately same age I was when I commenced writing this paper as a result of my direct experience with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a consequence of academic research. For the entirety of my life, researchers have been writing their accounts of trauma, and yet it is an experience that I, and many others, still endure. In this piece, an autoethnographic account is used to explore my diagnosis of PTSD as a consequence of involvement on an academic project examining particular aspects of sexual abuse. In doing so, I examine how PTSD is approached and addressed within the academy, the serious impact that working with traumatic material can have, and suggest a number of approaches that can be considered to address this. These include outlining how we can plan for trauma in research, how considerations of trauma should be built into institutional review boards and ethics applications, and how we can best understand and address the unfair impact that trauma has on fixed-term and casual staff members.

Pandemagogy and Online Teaching: A Case for Online Teaching

The Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) is not merely a medical crisis; it is also a social one. It has paralyzed all aspects of public life, leading to closures of all “non-essential” public spaces, chief among them, schools. Universities across Canada have shut down and moved online in an attempt to halt the transmission of the deadly virus. What many initially thought would be remote learning for just a few weeks, turned into months. Now, for the foreseeable future, remote learning will be the new normal. However, this poses unique challenges for educators and students, because there is no universal access to high-speed internet in Canada, which means that those who have access to it can transition online with ease; while those who do not have access are left behind. In an effort to work through these challenges, this reflection paper offers an autoethnographic account of online learning and its associated challenges during COVID-19. It makes the case for public internet and pandemagogy.

Delayed PhD completion: an autoethnographic account of academic ableism

ABSTRACT Although equity, diversity, and inclusion have become increasingly important to Canadian higher education institutions, research on experiences of disability in post-secondary institutions is limited. What’s more, the perspectives of disabilities from non-disabled academics far exceed that of those with disabilities. In the existing literature, disabled faculty and graduate students have outlined their experiences with academic ableism and the various barriers it has caused them. Applying a disability rights perspective, I use autoethnography to outline the ways academic ableism has manifested in my PhD program. More specifically, I develop a narrative that considers the relationship(s) that exist between dis/ability and chronic pain on one hand, and the ableist notion of “time to completion” on the other.