Academic Autoethnographies

Academic Autoethnographies: Inside Teaching in Higher Education invites readers to experience autoethnography as a challenging, complex, and creative research methodology that can produce personally, professionally, and socially useful understandings of teaching and researching in higher education. The peer-reviewed chapters offer innovative and perspicacious explorations of interrelationships between personal autobiographies, lived educational experiences, and wider social and cultural concerns, across diverse disciplines and university contexts. This edited book is distinctive within the existing body of autoethnographic scholarship in that the original research presented has been done in relation to predominantly South African university settings. This research is complemented by contributions from Canadian and Swedish scholars. The sociocultural, educational, and methodological insights communicated in this book will be valuable for specialists in the field of higher education and to those in other academic domains who are interested in self-reflexive, transformative, and creative research methodologies and methods. “This book illuminates how autoethnography can engage authors and researchers from varied epistemological backgrounds in a reflexive multilogue about who they are and what they do. The creative representations of the lived experience of doing autoethnography sets the book apart both methodologically and theoretically, revealing how rigor and critical distance can serve to position autoethnography not only as a personal self-development tool but a tradition and method in its own right.” – Hyleen Mariaye, Associate Professor, Mauritius Institute of Education, Mauritius “This compelling book foregrounds autoethnography as an innovative and creative research methodology to generate reflexive sociological understandings of teaching and researching across disciplines in higher education. Rich, evocative and authentic accounts reveal unique possibilities for the transformation of teaching, learning and research at personal, professional and socio-cultural levels.” – Nithi Muthukrishna, Professor Emerita, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

The shift to a neoliberal agenda has, for many academics, intensified the pressure and undermined the pleasure that their work can and does bring. This book contains stories from a range of autoethnographers seeking to challenge traditional academic discourse by providing personal and evocative writings that detail moments of profound transformation and change. The book focuses on the experiences of one academic and the stories that her dialogues with other autoethnographers generated in response to the neoliberal shift in higher education. Chapters use a variety of genres to provide an innovative text that identifies strategies to challenge neoliberal governance. Autoethnography is as a methodology that can be used as form of resistance to this cultural shift by exploring effects on individual academic and personal lives. The stories are necessarily emotional, personal, important. It is hoped that they will promote other ways of navigating higher education that do not align with neoliberalism and instead, offer more holistic and human ways of being an academic. This book highlights the impact of neoliberalism on academics’ freedom to teach and think freely. With 40% of academics in the UK considering other forms of employment, this book will be of interest to existing and future academics who want to survive the new environment and maintain their motivation and passion for academic life.

Brimming with examples, this book demonstrates how qualitative researchers can use autoethnography as a method for qualitative research. Topics include a brief history of autoethnography; the purposes and practices of doing autoethnography; interpreting, analyzing, and representing personal experience; and evaluating autoethnographic work.

Creating Autoethnographies is an introduction to autoethnography, a form of autobiographical personal narrative that explores the writer′s experience of life. The first ever practical text on this increasingly popular research method, it provides a background and considers some of the criticisms of the approach. It is suitable for all social science students, both at postgraduate and also upper level undergraduate stage. The book is structured to mirror the process of writing about experience, from establishing an idea through to the process of writing and the development of creative writing skills, and provides detailed worked examples of the whole process. The final two chapters are devoted to exploring two cases in which readers can see the principles discussed in action. There are also a wide range of case studies drawn from a wide a range of social science disciplines and exercises throughout the text. In the book, Tessa Muncey identifies a number of trends in social science research, such as the increasing focus on the individual and giving a voice to service users, that are resulting in an increase of interest in narrative research. Creating Autoethnographies is a timely contribution to the field. Tessa Muncey is one of the leading names in this field and is the annual organiser and chair of the Mixed Methods Conference.

"An extraordinarily rich, provocative, and engaging conversation; one that invites--in fact demands--our participation." - Don Brenneis, University of California, Santa Cruz

The second edition of the award-winning Handbook of Autoethnography is a thematically organized volume that contextualizes contemporary practices of autoethnography and examines how the field has developed since the publication of the first edition in 2013. Throughout, contributors identify key autoethnographic themes and commitments and offer examples of diverse, thoughtful, effective, applied, and innovative autoethnography. The second edition is organized into five sections: In Section 1, Doing Autoethnography, contributors explore definitions of autoethnography, identify and demonstrate key features of autoethnography, and engage philosophical, relational, cultural, and ethical foundations of autoethnographic practice. In Section 2, Representing Autoethnography, contributors discuss forms and techniques for the process and craft of creating autoethnographic projects, using various media in/as autoethnography, and marking and making visible particular identities, knowledges, and voices. In Section 3, Teaching, Evaluating, and Publishing Autoethnography, contributors focus on supporting and supervising autoethnographic projects. They also offer perspectives on publishing and evaluating autoethnography. In Section 4, Challenges and Futures of Autoethnography, contributors consider contemporary challenges for autoethnography, including understanding autoethnography as a feminist, posthumanist, and decolonialist practice, as well as a method for studying texts, translations, and traumas. The volume concludes with Section 5, Autoethnographic Exemplars, a collection of sixteen classic and contemporary texts that can serve as models of autoethnographic scholarship. With contributions from more than 50 authors representing more than a dozen disciplines and writing from various locations around the world, the handbook develops, refines, and expands autoethnographic inquiry and qualitative research. This text will be a primary resource for novice and advanced researchers alike in a wide range of social science disciplines.

The Routledge International Handbook of Autoethnography in Educational Research presents diverse and rigorous contemporary research at the intersection between autoethnography and educational research. The handbook investigates the bidirectional connection between autoethnography and educational research in relation to four themes: enhancing teaching and teacher education with autoethnography; enlarging doctoral study and supervision with autoethnography; conducting identity work and relationship-building via autoethnography; and promoting social justice through autoethnography. In addition to the synthesising introduction and conclusion chapters, the 27 main chapters in the handbook cover current research from Africa, Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States and Venezuela. The chapters present novel applications of several key concepts and research methods, including activism, arts-based research, critical reflection, decolonising feminism, doctoral study and supervision, hybrid identities, Indigenous research, migrant education, racism, researcher self-efficacy, teacher identity, visual autoethnography and writing as voice. This book will be of use to all researchers, and doctoral and Masters students, using qualitative and autoethnographic methods in Education and related fields.

The research paper has become so ingrained in higher education that its benefits are assumed to be self-evident, but the connection between student writing and learning is not always clear. Educators frequently discuss the lack of critical thinking demonstrated in undergraduate research papers, but it may not be that students will not invest in writing assignments - it's possible that many cannot with the educational support currently provided. Through theory and examples, and with ACRL's Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education integrated throughout, Reading, Research, and Writing: Teaching Information Literacy with Process-Based Research Assignments shows just how difficult research assignments can be for novice learners, and offers concrete plans and approaches for building assignments that enhance student learning. Information literacy and writing-from-sources are important skills for college graduates who leave formal education to be professionals and, hopefully, lifelong learners. Librarians must examine the broader picture that their piece fits within and work across disciplines to produce truly literate - and therefore information-literate, college graduates. -- from back cover.