Collaborative Autoethnography Research Articles

Mentoring social work adjunct educators: A collaborative autoethnography provides a blueprint for support

Mentoring social work adjunct educators: A collaborative autoethnography provides a blueprint for support

Where is our way? A collaborative autoethnography of overseas‐educated Chinese female PhDs' academic career decision journey

AbstractGiven the intricate and competitive global academic landscape and Chinese female PhDs' critical situation of being marginalized and otherized, this study aims to examine the academic career decision‐making experiences of three unmarried and childless Chinese female PhD graduates. Collaborative autoethnography is employed to delve into the three authors' experiences and reflections regarding the influential factors impacting their job‐seeking and decision‐making process as recent graduates, who earned their PhD degrees in 2022 from three popular destinations for international students in East Asia, namely Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan. Research findings indicate that various contextual and individual factors have shaped the authors' decision‐making and diverse career options were adopted to strike a ‘happy medium’ between long‐term career aspirations and increased competition for academic positions. This study provides implications for policymakers and university administrators to attract highly skilled female international professionals and overseas‐educated Chinese female PhDs considering a professional career in academia.

Proctoring as a human substitution for online summative assessments in a comprehensive open distance e-learning institution: Opportunities and obstacles

At a comprehensive open distance e-learning (CODeL) university in South Africa, assessment practices were converted and offered online during and post COVID-19. Innovative proctoring methods were applied to secure the authenticity of online summative assessments. However, the use of such proctoring tools to ensure ethical behaviour of students during summative assessments remains questionable, as these tools are not infallible. A qualitative approach was applied to explore ways in which online proctoring tools can contribute toward ensuring authentic summative assessments. Through the application of collaborative autoethnography, the researchers obtained insight into opportunities and obstacles that may influence the effective use of online proctoring tools to support summative assessment activities. Findings indicate that students would go to great lengths to consult unauthorised material and share answers during summative assessments. Therefore, to enhance perceptions of ethical conduct in higher education, it is recommended that ethical principles are expanded through extended training and guidance with revolutionised proctoring technologies.

Are we (in)visible?: Toward a critical understanding of Asian women faculty experiences in U.S. sport management

ABSTRACT Research question How do Asian women faculty’s intersecting identities influence the ways in which they identify, fulfill, and negotiate their roles in the White and masculine field of sport management? Research method We used collaborative autoethnography in which the researchers themselves were the method and the participants for this study. The purpose of using this method was to use systematic introspection and retrospection to understand the researchers’ collective experiences. Results and Findings We provide four narratives of the researchers as the findings. Themes from the narratives included masculinized, Westernized sport as an oppressive institution, forever unsettled between insider and outsider, gendered and racialized/ethnicized immigrant women. Implications Theoretically, this study extends the use of intersectionality to an understanding of Asian women experiences in the racialized and gendered space of sport. Practical implications include that sport management programs must be designed with Asian and minoritized women in mind and provide relevant resources such as support networks, therapy groups, informal mentoring, and targeted Ph.D. recruiting.

Conversations on grief and hope: a collaborative autoethnographic account exploring the lifeworlds of international youth engaged with climate action

This paper explores the lifeworlds of international youth involved in climate and/or environmental social action, narratives that have been largely absent from a literature that has tended to focus on ‘traditional’ youth activists located in the urban Global North. Written as a novel collaborative autoethnography involving youth as co-authors, the paper a) collectively reflects on the stories of youth from different countries and cultures on their journeys towards climate action, and b) foregrounds an emotional framing to examine these experiences. The youth co-authors, whose experiences are the focus of this paper, form part of innovative international Youth Advisory Board, set up to provide peer support to youth new to climate and environmental social action, as part of our British Academy Youth Futures-funded participatory action research project. We examine the youth’s narratives exploring opportunities and barriers they have navigated, their inspirations and the intersections with a range of other socio-cultural factors.

Modeling a Community of Practice for Global Competence : A Collaborative Autoethnography of College EFL Learners

In our increasingly interconnected contemporary society, the imperative of nurturing global citizenship and competence is evident when it comes to addressing the multifaceted challenges stemming from globalization. This study explores strategies for bridging the gap between in-class and out-of-class learning while expanding the reach of global competence into out-of-class learning settings. Building upon the General English course model by Oh (2021), which focuses on fostering global citizenship and competence, this research investigates the feasibility of implementing a supportive Community of Practice (CoP) model tailored for out-of-class learning environments. This study specifically assesses the potential of an online CoP model as a platform for the continuous cultivation and application of global citizenship and competence. Employing a collaborative autoethnographic approach, the research delves into the experiences of five university-level English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners actively participating in this CoP. The research scrutinizes various dimensions of their engagement, encompassing their experiences within the CoP, prospective enhancements to the model, and the impact of digital tools on their learning journey, such as machine translation and ChatGPT on their learning journeys. The findings of this study illuminate the transformative effects of CoP activities on learners' attitudes, learning strategies, and the development of global citizenship and competence. Furthermore, it underscores the pivotal role of learners proactively harnessing technology, such as the ones mentioned above, in advancing both their level of global citizenship and their language proficiency. Additionally, the research underscores learners' comprehension of the rationale behind learning activities as a critical factor in fostering meaningful engagement. Ultimately, this research offers a blueprint for nurturing the essential skills and perspectives necessary for learners to evolve as engaged global citizens in an interconnected and interdependent world. It aligns with the imperative of fostering global competence in response to the pressi ng demands of our globali zed era.

Creating comics, songs and poems to make sense of decolonising the curriculum: a collaborative autoethnography patchwork

Decolonising the curriculum is a complex endeavour, with the potential to cause harm as well as benefit. People doing the work might find themselves questioning their personal and political identities...

“Not so good vibrations”: five collaborative autoethnographic accounts of Brian Wilson, his life, music, rock “n” recovery’

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of the life of the musician Brian Wilson from five different perspectives.Design/methodology/approachThe authors used a mixed method of collaborative autoethnography, psychobiography and digital team ethnography to try and better understand the life and contributions of Brian Wilson.FindingsEach of the five contributors provides different insights into the life and music of Brian Wilson.Research limitations/implicationsWhile the focus of this paper is on a single individual, a case study, the long and distinguished life of Brian Wilson provides much material for discussion and theorising.Practical implicationsEach individual presenting to mental health services has a complex biography. The five different contributions articulated in this paper could perhaps be taken as similar to the range of professional opinions seen in mental health teams, with each focusing on unique but overlapping aspects of the person’s story.Social implicationsThis account shows the importance of taking a biological-psychological-social-spiritual and cultural perspective on mental illness.Originality/valueThis multi-layered analysis brings a range of perspectives to bear on the life and achievements of Brian Wilson, from developmental, musical, psychological and lived experience standpoints.

Fulfilling the Regenerative Potential of Higher Education: A Collaborative Auto-Ethnography

Moving towards sustainable futures in which human and natural systems increasingly flourish together asks not only for technological innovation but also for social, cultural, psychological, and spiritual transformation. Regenerative education is an upcoming strand of theory and practice seeking to understand the enabling role educational systems can fulfill in this process. This paper aims to advance the notion of regenerative education from the perspective of two regenerative principles: (1) living the question of vocation and (2) embracing emergence. To do so, we—as a teacher–researcher and a student–researcher—engage in collaborative auto-ethnography against the background of a regenerative educational experiment we participated in together, which we refer to as “Graduate with Hope”. Our collaborative auto-ethnographic process was built around the practices of journaling and diffractive letter conversation. Through it, we meditate how (1) fostering a regenerative educational experience asks for the embrace of the pedagogical paradoxes of structure, shared agency, educational space, and transformation, (2) embracing these paradoxes can be confrontational and trigger inner development, and (3) sustaining commitment in this context asks for an ongoing practice of “talking the walk”. These perspectives can inspire educational professionals to design for, engage in, and study regenerative forms of education.

Going beyond boundaries: A collaborative autoethnographic study of three teachers’ negotiation of cognitive/emotional dissonances

Teachers undergo various cognitive/emotional dissonances along their professional journeys. These dissonances may provide growth points for teachers to develop further if they receive responsive mediation, which guides them toward the higher levels of professional development. Thus, understanding how these dissonances interact with contexts along the axis of time and place plays an important role in charting teachers’ developmental trajectories and providing relevant mediation for them. Using collaborative autoethnography (CAE), this study delves into the cognitive/emotional dissonances of three teachers at different career stages across various geographic locations, and investigates what institutional, geographical, or socioeconomic factors facilitate or impede their efforts to resolve these dissonances. A thematic analysis of biweekly individual multimodal narratives and meeting transcripts over 16 months revealed three strands of cognitive-emotional dissonances involved in teaching practices, transnational movement, and institutional and socioeconomic precarity. The present inquiry provides three important lessons regarding the ways in which teachers in liminal spaces can receive relevant responsive mediations. First, it is necessary to build a network of teachers that goes beyond their immediate institutional environment. Second, teacher identity development needs to be understood as a dynamic nexus of domain-specific phenomena and a whole person enterprise encompassing multiple sociocultural dimensions along their lifelong journey. Third, CAE itself can be a way of (re)connecting with fellow teachers and function as a safe place for addressing contingent cognitive/emotional dissonances and encouraging mutual growth. This suggests that the mediation-enabling, space-making power of CAE needs to be examined further in various contexts, such as graduate training or professional development programs.

Doctoral research, COVID-19, and political crisis in Ethiopia, Sudan, Rwanda, and the UK: challenges, responses, and recommendations.

Conducting doctoral research is a challenging endeavour, a challenge which as the growing literature on the subject has shown, the COVD-19 pandemic has made even more so. For some doctoral researchers, however, the pandemic has also been accompanied by political unrest and military conflict, putting them and their networks at risk and making their research especially difficult to sustain. We have used a collaborative auto-ethnography, and we, a group of seven doctoral researchers based in Ethiopia, Rwanda, Sudan and UK have written our experiences. Drawing upon the results of a collaborative auto-ethnography (CAE), this article records and discusses the experiences of a group of doctoral researchers who with the support of their organisation, the Social Science for Severe Stigmatised Skin Diseases (5S) Foundation, have been attempting to cope with both the pandemic and internal instability and strife. After firstly setting the context, the article explains why for the purposes of this paper CAE was adopted as our method, and then documents and discusses the experiences of seven doctoral researchers based in Ethiopia, Sudan, Rwanda, and the UK, doing so in terms of four different themes: New Ways of Working and Its Impact, Change and Delay, Mental Health and Well-Being Impact, and Qualities and Capacities. What these experiences tell us is that this group of doctoral researchers have found themselves in extremely challenging situations, which have placed exceptionally high demands on them and their support networks, and this has had an impact on their health and well-being although also been the catalyst for some more positive development. Given their lived experiences, the article finishes with a series of recommendations for future research projects of this kind.

Building Capacity for Collective Possibilities: Reimagining Research Teams in Higher Education

ABSTRACT Grounding our work in shared commitments to community care, our collective of racially minoritized higher education scholars aims to resist the often overly competitive and isolating nature of research teams in graduate education. Our commitments to community care are also in opposition to a hyperfocus on productivity as a measure of success in the academy. In this collaborative autoethnography, we reflected upon and made meaning of our experiences as a research team of racially minoritized scholars at a predominantly white institution who are striving to enact our commitments to community care. Using socialization and the theory of refusal as guiding frameworks, we identified three concepts that were vital to our efforts as a team: (a) holding space for racialization and resistance, (b) deliberate centering of the collective learning process and co-construction of knowledge, and (c) acknowledging the tension between production pressures and maintaining relationships. Our findings highlight how research teams can serve as sites of connection, refusal, and resistance for racially minoritized scholars in higher education. By committing to mutuality and our humanity, we also illustrate how research teams can be used to imagine and create new futures in the academy.

A Collaborative Autoethnography of Emotional Labour and the Role of Compassion in Community-Engaged Participatory Action Research

ABSTRACT Emotional labour (EL) is an integral and inextricable, organic aspect of human interaction and research. This paper offers the reflections of activist researchers on the nuances of EL and compassion when conducting community-engaged participatory action research in low-income settings. The authors employed critical collaborative autoethnography and reflexivity to disentangle their reflections on EL. The results comprise their testimonials (journal entries and reflections), while the discussion focuses on several themes that reflect a rich tapestry of collective experiential learnings and conversations. The EL process manifested the following themes: labour of love, looking inward: reflections of disquietude; internal and external conflict, emotional engagement and human loss; and emotional labour. The authors recognise that EL must transcend privilege, positionality and power dynamics, and that researchers must espouse compassion, empathy, mindfulness and active listening when interacting with individuals in an organisation and/or with community members. This recognition may promote solace, humaneness and efficiency when expanding EL within the context of community-engaged participatory action research.

Navigating, subverting, and replacing conventional academic structures and expectations to co-create with participatory action research (PAR) teams: where to for PAR scholarship?

ABSTRACT In this paper, six social work scholars at varying career stages and institutions used collaborative autoethnography to identify (1) structural constraints and tensions to engage in participatory action research (PAR) in the academy, (2) the strategies we have used to navigate this work, and (3) suggestions for structural changes necessary to meaningfully value this work in the academy. Key structural constraints and tensions center around questioning the legitimacy of this work, time necessary to do this work, challenges funding this work, and inherent ableism in the academy. We share case examples of strategies PAR scholars have used to navigate or subvert academic expectations, including operationalizing values, rooting in movements, uplifting accessibility and knowledge; holding accountability to community, and articulating commitments. We end with recommendations for social work institutions and funders to meaningfully elevate, support, and fund PAR work in the academy. Specifically, we see the need for social work institutions to elevate PAR training and reward systems as legitimate knowledge, build support systems for conducting PAR in the academy, revise evaluation of scholars at milestones to value PAR; funders should also work to align funding opportunities and practices with participatory praxis.

Composing a Sense of Belonging

This article narrates the long journey we have traveled in our attempts to feel part of a community. Using collaborative autoethnography, we trace the labyrinths we have traversed, first in academia and then in Al-Anon. After years of trying to develop a sense of belonging within university life and through the changes of residence that were associated with it, we both found ourselves in Al-Anon as we tried to cope with our family members. The seemingly unrelated paths in our lives came together as we realized that academic life—particularly in this contemporary neoliberal context—was often the very opposite of community building. At the same time, while we had initially attended Al-Anon in a desperate search for help with our loved ones, we unexpectedly learned that we were on the right path for becoming part of something. As a result of these experiences, both of us have developed a better sense of belonging as we have learned and practiced the Al-Anon principles and applied these principles to other areas of our lives, notably the university.

Exploring Intersections of Race, Gender, Culture, and Power: Collaborative Autoethnography, Freire, and Model for Reform

In a time when the Critical Race Theory is being used as a weapon to eliminate educational learning by ratifying American history at a proliferated rate, this study illustrates the individual experiences of racial inequity across race, gender, culture, and power. This collaborative autoethnography is informed by the Critical Race Theory and Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Crenshaw observes about criticism of CRT, “It’s not about a theory. … It’s about an effort to shut down all conversation about the sources and the reproduction of racial inequality” (2021, p. 7). Defending the application of CRT in American classrooms is beyond the scope of this study. This study illustrates that promotion of equality through having honest conversations about inequality.

Evolving Posttraumatic Growth in Family Bereavement: A Post-Intentional Reflexion

ABSTRACT The journey of growth following trauma represents a complex process of finding meaning following loss. Post-intentional phenomenological reflexion on a bereavement experience and collaborative autoethnography provide avenues for continued evolution, multiple meanings, and becoming. This investigation draws from a collaborative autoethnography created during a family bereavement experience. A researcher participant and her family reflect on the loss of a family member one year after his death. This reflection of posttraumatic growth offers themes of healing and continued relationship after a death. Findings include a creative representation of themes in a post-intentional letter.

Digital Health Implementation Strategies Coproduced With Adults With Acquired Brain Injury, Their Close Others, and Clinicians: Mixed Methods Study With Collaborative Autoethnography and Network Analysis.

Acquired brain injuries (ABIs), such as stroke and traumatic brain injury, commonly cause cognitive-communication disorders, in which underlying cognitive difficulties also impair communication. As communication is an exchange with others, close others such as family and friends also experience the impact of cognitive-communication impairment. It is therefore an internationally recommended best practice for speech-language pathologists to provide communication support to both people with ABI and the people who communicate with them. Current research also identifies a need for neurorehabilitation professionals to support digital communication, such as social media use, after ABI. However, with >135 million people worldwide affected by ABI, alternate and supplementary service delivery models are needed to meet these communication needs. The "Social Brain Toolkit" is a novel suite of 3 interventions to deliver communication rehabilitation via the internet. However, digital health implementation is complex, and minimal guidance exists for ABI. This study aimed to support the implementation of the Social Brain Toolkit by coproducing implementation knowledge with people with ABI, people who communicate with people with ABI, clinicians, and leaders in digital health implementation. A maximum variation sample (N=35) of individuals with living experience of ABI, close others, clinicians, and digital health implementation leaders participated in an explanatory sequential mixed methods design. Stakeholders quantitatively prioritized 4 of the 7 theoretical domains of the Nonadoption, Abandonment, Scale-up, Spread, and Sustainability (NASSS) framework as being the most important for Social Brain Toolkit implementation. Qualitative interview and focus group data collection focused on these 4 domains. Data were deductively analyzed against the NASSS framework with stakeholder coauthors to determine implementation considerations and strategies. A collaborative autoethnography of the research was conducted. Interrelationships between considerations and strategies were identified through a post hoc network analysis. Across the 4 prioritized domains of "condition," "technology," "value proposition," and "adopters," 48 digital health implementation considerations and 52 tailored developer and clinician implementation strategies were generated. Benefits and challenges of coproduction were identified. The post hoc network analysis revealed 172 unique relationships between the identified implementation considerations and strategies, with user and persona testing and responsive design identified as the potentially most impactful strategies. People with ABI, close others, clinicians, and digital health leaders coproduced new knowledge of digital health implementation considerations for adults with ABI and the people who communicate with them, as well as tailored implementation strategies. Complexity-informed network analyses offered a data-driven method to identify the 2 most potentially impactful strategies. Although the study was limited by a focus on 4 NASSS domains and the underrepresentation of certain demographics, the wealth of actionable implementation knowledge produced supports future coproduction of implementation research with mutually beneficial outcomes for stakeholders and researchers. RR2-10.2196/35080.

Mentoring at the intersection of student and faculty retention at Historically Black Colleges and University (HBCUs) masters of public administration programs

ABSTRACTMentoring is essential for the retention and success of not only students but early-career junior faculty as well. Yet, mentorship and mentoring become an issue of equity where those with the resources (financial, human, etc.) receive and provide better mentoring. This article is a collaborative autoethnography triangulated with program documents to better understand the role, perceptions, and experiences of mentorship for Women of Color (WOC) faculty in NASPAA-accredited HBCU graduate programs. This research uses a framework where student success depends on faculty success, and investing in faculty is as important as investing in students. We found the way that faculty perceive their role as mentors is strongly influenced by past mentoring experiences, how roles and responsibilities are defined, and how these roles and responsibilities are supported and measured within retention, tenure, and promotion (RTP). We provide recommendations to retain and develop faculty to become highly effective mentors at HBCUs.

Digital Video as a Discussion Board: A Case Study and Collaborative Autoethnography of Experiences

This article presents a case study of an online class in technical and professional communication pedagogy (the teaching of technical and professional writing) that uses digital video technology for discussions. Because students in the class share their experiences using the video technology, the study uses a collaborative autoethnography framework to learn if the digital technology, Flipgrid, would enhance students’ experiences with discussions in an online class compared to their experiences with discussions on traditional discussion boards. Providing such exposure to a new technology tool can help students gain the confidence that is necessary for learning new technologies in the workplace. When the technology did not provide the hoped-for results after a few weeks, the class stopped using it, returning to the traditional discussion board in the learning management system, which can be more effective when teachers participate and organize students into small groups. Reflecting on what happened, students in the class collaborated on this article to share their experiences.