Autoethnography – it’s a start
How does this happen? What are the characteristics? How is data collected, analyzed and reported? So many questions to ask and answer as I begin this eCampus Ontario action research into my open educational practices.
I’ve begun with an article found on an initial web search – Autoethnography: An overview by Carolyn Ellis, Tony E. Adams & Arthur P. Bochner. Autoethnographic research is “an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyze personal experiences in order to understand cultural experience” (Ellis, Adams & Bochner, 2010) where the writing and story is both process and product. It is a way to create “meaningful, accessible, and evocative research grounded in personal experience“. This form of research “acknowledges and accommodates subjectivity, emotionality, and the researcher’s influence on research”. It “expands and opens a wider lens on the world, eschewing rigid definitions of what constitutes meaningful and useful research”.
PROCESS: the author uses hindsight to retroactively and selectively write about past experiences. The researcher may also interview others, consult texts, analyze photographs and artifacts, and revisit recordings to help with recall. ‘Epiphanies’ are self-claimed situations that are remembered as events where insight was gained. Culture, values, beliefs and shared experiences are described to allow readers to better understand the context. Field notes become records of observations, reflections of cultural events. An autoethnographer examines experiences analytically, applying a set of theoretical and methodological tools, while using research literature to “frame” the research. Comparing and contrasting personal experiences with research literature is a common element.
PRODUCT: researchers engage readers in an evocative story using many common storytelling techniques (character, plot, chronology, scenes) in order to illustrate new perspectives. ‘Showing’ and ‘telling’ the story conveys information to communicate and engage the reader. Writing can be done in first person, second person and third person viewpoints. These “thick descriptions” facilitate understanding of these personal and interpersonal experiences. A variety of autoethnographically forms include indigenous/native, narrative, reflexive and dyadic, reflexive, layered accounts, interactive interviews, community, co-constructed narratives, and personal narratives (Ellis, Adams, & Bochner, 2010).
ISSUES: researchers live in connected contexts so ‘relational ethics’ should be paramount. Autoethnographic researchers IMPLICATE ‘others’ in their stories. It is critical to “allowing these others to respond, and/or acknowledging how these others feel about what is being written about them and allowing them to talk back to how they have been represented in the text.” (Ellis, Adams, & Bochner, 2010). Also important is the protection of privacy, safety, identity of others by altering or masking identifying characteristics, while being aware that these protective devices shift the integrity of the research (Ellis, Adams, & Bochner, 2010). Reliability, validity and generalizability are also important factors for the autoethnographer. Works are often criticized for being not scientific or too ‘artful’, and for being “insufficiently rigorous, theoretical, and analytical, and too aesthetic, emotional, and therapeutic” (Ellis, Adams, & Bochner, 2010). Ellis, Adams and Bochner (2010) state “Autoethnography, as a method, attempts to disrupt the binary of science and art.”
Reference
Ellis, C., Adams, T., & Bochner, A. (2011, January). Autoethnography: An overview. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 12(1). Retrieved from http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1589/3095
